Jul
06
2008

Japan – The trip that wasn’t

OK, so this whole going to Japan thing failed badly. Basically, our flights went via Rome. My Brother came off the (late) first flight and decided he really really didn’t want to go on a flight to Japan. To be fair the flight over wasn’t great, one of my worst. So after a few panic calls home etc he made the final call he wasn’t going. So clearly I wasn’t either. So I had the bag pulled from the flight and we had to work out how to get home. I got the return tickets converted into return on the next flight home we could ones. Unfortunately it was 10pm at this point and the next flight was at 8pm the next day.

Observations from 24hours in an Italian airport:

  • People have enough bags with them to move house. I don’t understand how almost everyone has 3 HUGE bags… They must all be really really well connected drug smugglers.
  • They make you go through security to go airside when you change flights. Last I looked you were airside when you get off the plane. I think it’s all part of a cunning plan to steal yet more of your drinks based on the fact that I didn’t care enough to put up a fight for then.
  • VISA cards work sporadically at best. About 1 in 10.
  • Everyone speaks about enough English that you can get by with no Italian.
  • There are very few British.
  • There is only one shop that sells sandwiches and alike. The Italians tried to apply their love of long meals and good food to the airport. As one might have expected, it was destined to fail. Give me a WHSmiths sandwich any day.
  • People just don’t queue! God damn you people, do not try to queue jump me when I have had 3 hours sleep.
  • There is simply nothing to do. You can pace the shops, you can browse the shops, but you will be left with nothing but clock-watching in an hour tops.
  • Finding somewhere to sleep is hard. Most of the seats have immovable armrests. I call this one of the most stupid ideas ever! Especially given the number of people staying overnight.
  • When you ask the guy in the café how long he is open and he says all night, alarm bells should go off in your head when bedding down near it.
  • It’s amazingly hot and stuffy in here all the time. This certainly does get annoying. Also, the cooler air moves round. Following it is impossible.
  • Drinks are scarily expensive
  • No-one sells sweets
  • Free WiFi is nonexistent here too (so not just Gatwick) But the pay option is very good value, €15 for 5hours no bandwidth limit. However, the sign-up page is broken.
  • Italian fast food that isn’t pizza is foul. Not just tasteless, bland and pointless, but actually foul. McDonalds puts it to shame. This is not a good thing.
  • They seem to have a fascination with having their bags “security wrapped” which means covering it in slightly tinted cellophane. At €8 a pop this is very expensive for something no-one cares about. Hell, my bag isn’t even locked.
  • People seem to have this stupid way of fanning themselves with their hands. It just plane doesn’t work. I don’t get why they keep doing it.
  • Airside becomes a distant memory after the first few hours.
  • The only currency exchange is airside.
  • Digital cameras here really are quite good prices.
  • They actually have bins here. As in actually inside the airport itself! This is something that needs sorting out in Heathrow. I couldn’t find a single one in Terminal 2. I ended up using the “you can’t have this bottle over 100ml, it might blow up” one at security on the way through. Not helpful.

I think it would be safe to say I’m fed up of this place. Another 3 and a half hours until we can finally check-in and get the excitement of going through security and then a whole new place to explore, wander round, grow tiered of.

At T-minus 6hours till leaving I have come to realise some people here are very trusting. Some guy came over, plugged in his phone next to me and then asked me in Italian if I spoke Italian. Now to me that seems a little silly, but guess you have to start somewhere… And it’s not like I didn’t understand. He then said in his best English, he was going to the bar, could I watch his phone. Clearly I either had that kind, caring, compassionate, trusting look, or I looked like I wasn’t going anywhere fast. Anyway, he is gone and doesn’t look like he will be coming back anytime soon. Meh.

T-minus 4hours 30. This place is driving me insane. I can’t stand being stuck here. I’m trying not to clock watch but I can’t help it. I don’t get how people can make it through things like prison and being a long term hostage. An airport has reduced me to lifeless, bored and desperate for something new. How on earth can people get through years being in a mud hut. Bear in mind I have a laptop, phone, mp3 player and enough money. Perhaps this is more me than anything else. I know I have a very short attention span. I get bored easily and move on in my interests and focus as often as some people think. Apparently I am destined to have large boring open spaces as my weakness.

T-minus 4hours or something. Why aren’t their plug sockets everywhere? This strikes me as strange if I’m ignoring the more blunt “insane”, “stupid”, “idiotic” and “useless”. As far as I can tell, there is 1 for all the passengers. Well, to be fair it’s a bank of 3, but the point remains. Since I’ve been here I’ve used it for my phone and laptop, there have been 3 more laptops and 5 or 6 phones. Clearly in this modern day and age when people normally carry at least one battery hungry device on them the transport industry needs to catch up. Some planes and some classes have them, but paying first class for a plug is a bit OOT. Long distance trains have them, that’s a start. Had I remembered this for my trip down to Cornwall I would have just bought my laptop and a couple of DVD’s with me. It’s in the same vein as free WiFi. It should be deemed a basic service in our ever more connected world. As a side note, I’ve taken to writing in here and walks round the terminal to keep me sane.

OK, I’m now back in the UK having had a slightly interesting end to that joke of a trip. Basically, when I realized we needed to come back I went to the desk and asked them to do what they could. They printed my return ticks for a week and a bits time and changed them to the Friday. Due to a miss-understanding, bad hand-writing and someone on the desk not having their head screwed on correctly, I realized that our flight was in fact 35mins from then. At this point I did a lot of running and frantically checking in. Going through security is always going to be a joke, especially when you have a laptop, and large digital camera. We then ran through yet more terminal, onto a mono-rail, then through yet more terminal only to find the flight was delayed by half an hour or so. To be fair, probably because they had to put my bag on, but their fault, the check-in was still open.

Anyway, now home I’ve been fixing my blog, catching up on sleep and generally trying to do things…

That was an experiment I have no wish to repeat again anytime soon.

One comment

  1. Pewterfish says:

    No wish to repeat? But how will you verify your results?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *