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Stuck at Gatwick!!

No, no, do not fear, you are not going insane. You are not experiencing deija vouz ir how on earth that is spelled. I am indeed stuck, again, on Gatwick... the same airport I got stuck on when I went to the Philippines 5 months ago. To add on the irony I am again flying with Etihad, just to perfect the ressemblance. I´ll start my story on the 6th of september, the day I wa flying out of Poland. Well, the organizing committee had already left the scene so I had no idea how to get a taxi. I walked to the gas station with all my luggage (believe me, if you want to win the award, te most popular guy/gal in the gas station, do not bring all your luggage). The employ there spoke no english, yes, just as an extra point I was amazed at the incredibly low level of english spoken by polish people, even young university students, felt like being in a developing country. Well, there was a big guy in a leater jacket with long hair that walked up to me and asked, in a deeper voice than I can describe, "you need taxi?" I was mortally afraid of that big man in leather clothes and wondered if he was going to sexualy abuse me or only kill me. After not saying anything for 5 seconds I saw that he might not be such a threat after all and I nodded slowely, keeping a safe distance between us. He walked outside and as I cautiously stepped outside, preparing for a siege of big leather guys that would sell me as a sex slave in Lithuania, he pointed towards the taxis. I breath out (can you imagine holding the breath for so long, I was really red in the face) and went to the taxi driver that ofcourse spoke no english, except one word, airport... beautiful word it is.
He drove me to the airport and in I walked looking for the Easy Jet check in desk. I saw no Easy Jet desk so after waiting for what felt like forever in the line for the help desk I got there to be told that Easy Jet was in another terminal, so I had to walk for another 10 minutes to another, much smaller terminal. There all the airlines had just one line all together so the line was incredibly long and it took me 1 hour and 10 minutes getting through that line, they don´t have a luggage belt there so I had to carry the luggage with me to another place. In the plane I had a Polish couple sitting next to me, as soon as the guy sits down and he laughs and points at my feets and says something in Polish. I ws not in a good mood so I asked in a very polite english what the fuck he wanted, he pointed again to my feets and made a gesture that they smelled (which was true, I just took of the shoes that were wet, having been waring them for the last 5 hours or so, but again, I wasn´t in a good mood so I pointed at his crouch making a international sign for a very small penis and laughed my self ironically. He sent me some well chosen Polsih words which I smiled at and said: fuck you, and fuck your small dick if you can. He didn´t understand and after talking to his girlfriend that I suspect understood a bit more he glared at me for the rest of the flight. So yes, I made a good friend in that flight.
In luton airport I had to wait for 3 hours before getting a bus over to Gatwick, to make that wait worse the bar was closed... a disgrace, total and shameless disgrace.
The busride was fine and I arrived at Gatwick at 4 o´clock in the night. Apparently people is starting to pick up on my reccomendation that Gatwick is a great place to sleep because it was all full. I didn´t get my famous 2 leather sofas next the electric plug, i thought that sofa had my name!! But I slept on a common chair... way below my dignity... that night i had couple of chest pains but didn´t really think about it. In the morning when I was walking up to the check in I started getting serious cramps in my chest, stopped being able to breath and became all dizzy, i asked for a doctor and then there were paramedics putting flaps on my chest giving my oxigen and talking to me, shortly afterwards I was carried out of the airport in a bed to an ambulance. That´s my first ambulance ride. At the hospital they were a bit perplexed, nothing they tried worked, in the end they guessed that the space around the heart had expanded or something like that, caused by to much stress, to little sleep etc... they gave me some pills and told me to stop working so much or I would get a real heart attack... very cheerfull group of people :) When I was picking up my medicine I met a old guy who had been to Iceland in 1969, he gave me ride to Gatwick where I sit now, wondering when I get out of here...

posted by Tomas @ Thursday, September 07, 2006