Coming Home Again

Getting to the Airport

The next day I wanted to get up a bit earlier in order to arrive at the airport on time. "Earlier" finally meant 9 am - each day I waited on purpose until the two hosts were gone to work, because once more I realized that I prefered to live alone. So I got up, got ready and packed all my things into the little hand luggage suitcase. I hadn't bought a lot, but it was harder to close the bag than when I had packed before the trip. But I could close it and I didn't think that they would weight it or say anything at the airport.

When I had finished I tidied up the room a little bit and left the house. I hated going around a city with luggage, but on my way to the train station I stopped at the TESCO and bought something for breakfast - I was so hungry. Then I took the train until London Bridge and tried to figure out how to get to the airport the earliest possible. It wasn't too complicated, but the metro was highly frequented at that time of the day and I had to wait for the right train - not all of them go until the airport.

Finally, there was the right train and I even had a place to sit down. That was good, because I was exhausted from the trip and it would take about 40 minutes to arrive - at least. So I sat down and watched the last pictures of London that were passing by outside through the window. I couldn't concentrate on my book because it causes me headache when I try to read in "rolling places", such as buses, cars, trains or metros. So I just watched and thought about the time remaining in France.

Luggage Problems and Delays

I arrived at the airport much too early - typical German problem. But as I forgot to give back my Oyster Card and realized that in the 3rd floor, I had to get back to the underground station where they told me to go to the 1nd floor where I would find the Oyster Card Information Office. It was an odyssee with my annoying luggage and I had to wait half an hour because there were so many people asking silly questions. But finally I had my caution back and could return to the departures section of the airport.

I had something to eat in the café of the airport before I looked for a place to return my pounds. As always I would never receive all the money back that I had changed before, but at least some of it. After having done that, I decided to go through the security check because the airport didn't offer anything else that was interesting except the café I had already been to.

With only hand luggage it's incredibly annoying to pass through the security check - you have to open the suitcase, show all your liquids (in the zip bag of course), show all your electronic devices, put off half of you clothes etc. - and all of that in 30 seconds because the people behind you are annoyed and waiting to pass, too. Fortunately they didn't care (or recognize) that my suitcase was too heavy for hand luggage and I could pass without any more problems.

After having put all my things together again (and wearing all my clothes again), I had to wait for about 2 hours. I didn't even know my Gate, so I walked along the airport, had a look at the stores and everything, but I didn't buy anyhing, because the London Trip had already been expensive enough. When I had more than 1 hour left, I decided to have something to eat - it would take some time to arrive at home in the residency and I didn't want to starve. So I went to one of the restaurants in the airport and had a nice salad - I felt a bit sick, so I preferred to have something light for lunch. It was incredibly expensive, but at least they were fast and friendly.

After I had eaten and paid the bill I had to sit down again and wait. Unfortunately my flight was delayed and I really regretted that I had come so early. It was boring to wait at the airport for such a long time and my book was boring, too. So I bought something to drink for the flight and a magazine to make time pass faster. Finally, the boarding started and we took off to Paris. The delay had destroyed my plan to take that one special train to get back to Amiens, but as I couldn't change anything I just enjoyed the feeling to be above the clouds and would think about that later.

Paris - Amiens: not as easy as you think

One hour later I left the airplane and hurried up to arrive at the train station of the airport on time - there would be one TGV 20 minutes later and I really wanted to arrive there. I was still in time when I was next to the ticket machines, but when it was my turn and I wanted to buy one for that train it told me that it was already sold out and I could only buy tickets for the first class. I didn't want to spend so much money, so I bought a metro ticket to get to Gare du Nord and took the RER train.

At the train station I had to wait 50 more minutes for my train, but finally I was on my last piece of the journey back home. Well, there was still the bus to the residency, but that was something I was used to after all the months in France. I thought about writing my boyfriend if he wanted to eat something in the city centre when I would be back, but I was so tired and just wanted to buy something at Mc Donalds quickly and get to my bed afterwards.

That's what I did, and I was so happy to be back. Sightseeing trips are quite funny and interesting and I really like discovering other cities. But they are also exhausting and I was happy to have some days to relax before my last exam at university.

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