There and Back Again

We're home!

This is the three of us (Betty, SkyePuppy, and Cathy), with our Polish minister's mom in front.

We had a wonderful time, but it was capped off by a grueling trip back.

We got up at 6:00am for a noon flight, had breakfast and left for the airport at rush hour, so it took about an hour longer than non-rush hour to get to the airport (but we allowed time for that). We waited in line to be allowed to wait in line to check our luggage, then waited in line for Passport Control, then waited in line for the restrooms then waited in line at security (and I was the lucky one behind the woman who didn't seem able to figure out what to do with her stuff at security and held up the line). We had arrived at the airport at 9:30, and finally got to our gate about ten minutes before they started boarding.

Warsaw airport is being remodeled, so LOT Polish Airlines parks its planes away from the gates and buses the passengers out to the plane. We got on a bus quickly and waited while it filled up, but it didn't move. We waited there a long time. Then they took us to the plane, where we waited for a long time. An hour and 45 minutes after our scheduled departure time, we finally took off. Apparently, someone checked his luggage on the flight but never boarded the plane. They waited for him to show up, then they had to get his bags off the plane.

Then I had the great fortune of sitting in front of a Polish-speaking woman who thought my seat was her personal playground and for nine hours kept bumping it and pushing it and pulling it back whenever she stood up and holding onto it when she put her shoes back on, but all the Polish I knew that might help in the situation was "please" and "no", and that wasn't enough, because dirty looks from me weren't enough to make her stop, and I didn't know how to say, "If you need to hold onto a seat, hold onto your own and leave mine alone!" Plus there was the lady a couple rows ahead of me who kept smacking my shoulder with her butt everytime she went back to the galley to get a drink and she never said "prosze" or anything else in Polish (or English) when she did it. And one of the flight attendants almost hit me in the face with the corner of one of his metal trays of sandwiches, but I got my hands up in time to protect myself. He said, "Sorry."

The delay in Warsaw ate up most of the two-hour layover we were supposed to have in Chicago. Sometimes they'll hold a connecting plane for delayed passengers, so we got off the plane as quickly as we could for being in the third-to-last row, rushed to Customs (or Passport Control, or whatever they call it when they decide if they'll let you back in your own country), rushed to grab our bags (which surprised us by not being the last ones), rushed to United Airlines to check our bags, but they hadn't held our flight. It had taken off 20 minutes earlier.

Back to LOT Polish Airlines to have them make new arrangements, which they did on a flight three hours later. Back to United to check our bags, then take the train from Terminal 5 (International) to Terminal 1, where we ate real salads for dinner (or whatever meal our bodies thought that was).

Then we went to security, where they pulled us out for special screening because we had been international. And the way the detectors you walk through treated the people in front of us, they looked set on super-sensitive, so in addition to taking off my shoes, I took off my belt and emptied the extra złoty coins from my pocket. They had to swab all of our carry-on and pat us down, but the TSA woman who pats down the women inspectees was also the main carry-on swabber, so that slowed everything down some more, and the people in front of us were from India and spoke no English, so their son was with them to translate and had a special security pass to let him go beyond the place where only ticketed passengers can go (he wasn't traveling with them), but the special-screening TSA people didn't know what to do with him, so that slowed things down too, and we had to wait for them to finish with him and his parents before it was our turn.

Finally, after long waits during pat-downs and swabbings, we got ourselves dressed again and got to the gate about a half hour before boarding.

The flight from Chicago to California was uneventful (as far as I could tell, being asleep). When the pilot announced that we were descending to the airport, I woke up with my eyes burning the way they do that makes my eardrums buzz at the same time. We were a half hour late arriving, but the landing was the best one of the trip and one of the smoothest I've ever had.

My daughter (who was circling the airport in the minivan) picked us up, and an hour later, we dropped off Betty and then Cathy. At home, I gave the girls their gifts and we chatted a while, then I unpacked my toothbrush and jammies, but I couldn't get to sleep, so I'm typing this. I'll try to sleep again soon.

I'm supposed to go to work Thursday (it feels wrong to say "today" but it is wrong to say "tomorrow") , but that's looking like a bad idea. I'm going to need a lot more sleep than just a few hours.

I'll post about our trip (not the flight) another time.