The long way home

I think there's a Gaelic Storm song about that. And possibly a Seinfeld episode, or at least theyllekand I felt like we were in one, trying to get home from Budapest.

First we missed our appointed take off time, b/c the dudes at the gate were too busy confiscating water that people had purchased in the airport, *after* security. wtf? We were sitting down, refusing to squish into the queue until it actually moved, so we saw what they were doing, and chugged our water quick, b/c dude, we paid for it with our last forints.

Finally we got on the plane, and had the bestest seats *ever*. Bulkhead seats - no one in front of us. Plenty of room to stretch our legs and put our feets up on the wall, etc. The pilot came on, and announced that we lost our slot, and we were looking at about 30-45 min before take off. No problem, except that we're in our seats with the seatbelt sign on, and I just chugged two bottles of water. Not to mention the tejeskave I had before boarding. so, I had to wait for an opportune moment and sneak off to oma when the flight attendants weren't looking. Then, no problem.

The flight itself was fine, aside from losing the second half of the first movie, b/c one of the monitors in business elite class wasn't working and they had to reboot the whole system. If one of the special peoples can't watch it, none of us can. They did show the movie again later on, but we had just gotten our laptops out to watch "Stargate Continuum" so didn't see it.

We landed only an hour late, and as JFK has completely given up on actually trying to bring a plane to a gate, per the pilot a "contraption" would be sent for us. The contraption was a bus, that only took a couple trips to get us all to a gate. Ok, fine. we walked into the gate, and stopped. We could see the sign with the arrow to Passport control, but we couldn't seem to get to it. After about 20 minutes, the natives began to get restless. We found a corner and sat down, called our families to tell them we had landed but weren't officially back in the country yet, pulled out our books, and watched the restless people argue with the personnel who clearly didn't give a crap, and try the emergency exit doors which resulted only in alarms going off and fake TehJerry's running to scold the person who pushed it. Finally we were told the problem was that the escalator in front of us wasn't working.

Wtf, mate? A nonworking escalator is like, stairs, right? You can walk down stairs. Oh. No, that is strictly forbidden. *headdesk*

Finally after about an hour and a half in the hallway, the brain trusts figured out they could put us back on the one bus the airport has, and take us to another gate where the escalator actually works! Yay! About three trips, another ride around the airport "Look kids, big ben, Rockaways", we arrive at another gate. Just to be rebellious, we walked down the escalator anyway.

Our luggage was already waiting for us in a lovely heap, and the train connections cooperated, so we got back to my house before 10. Faceplant, and then up at 4 to take Yllek back for the rest of her trip, which you can read the sordid details of in her own LJ.

Don't fly Delta.

Phone, and house music

So I found out why my phone didn't work. Called the verizon wireless people today, and found out that my sim card was never activated. The brain trusts at the store had neglected to tell me I needed to call this number and activate the card before I go - they told me just to put it in the phone. Dude recommended that I wait to activate it before my next trip, but there's no reason not to leave the card in. He also pointed out all the roaming charges I saved myself this trip. Heh.

Apparently when one gets one's driving license in Hungary, one is issued a cd of house music that must be played automatically whenever one starts one's car. This could be verified by Kata, were she ever to get an LJ account. Kavan would love it there.

And that is my last profound thought before I faceplant for about twelve hours.