Travelling Nightmares

I have a friend named Kate who has the absolute worst travel luck. And because I’m the worst type of person, I make fun of her about it constantly. Karma finally caught up with me, and I seem to have caught her luck…

It all started the day before we left when my phone did that fun, pre-April Fools Day thing where it turned off and refused to turn back on. After a frantic night waiting for the guys in the medina tried to figure it out, it was pronounced dead the morning we were planning to leave. Thankfully, I found a pretty good deal on an old model iPhone which isn’t too bad.

When I got home, Sam and I went to pay our rent, but the guy who we pay rent to wasn’t there and because my phone was new and Sam barely uses his phone, we had no way to reach him. After freaking out and trying every option, we finally got ahold of the guy hours later (after missing our intended train to Fes, from where our plane was to leave) and got on the train, arriving a little after 9pm.

Thankfully that was the end of our nightmare for the night and settled into uncomfortable beds for a quick 5 hour nap before our early morning flight.

We awoke in the morning to the call to prayer over the city, and being naive thought of this as a good omen. Like nature would let us have a peaceful trip to Rome then on to Budapest. Boy were we wrong. We arrived in Fes, passed through customs without any real hassle (Guard: What’s your origin? Me: Canada… It’s on my passport… Guard: No no ORIGIN points to face Me: Canada… Guard: Moroccan? Me: No… Guard: Where is your father from? Me: South Africa… Guard:…. lets me go) and then board.

As we are ready to go, the captain announces that a valve is stuck in the on position so they need to get some mechanics in to fix that and it shouldn’t take long. For whatever reason this ticks off a number of people (Moroccan and Italians are both loud, outspoken people. Now imagine Italian Moroccans!) who go up to the front and attempt to get off the plane because they’re paranoid that the plane will crash. This irks all the remaining passengers who then start yelling in Italian and Darija at them to sit down again and the cabin crew are using the 4 works they know in Darija to try and calm them down.

After about an hour of trying to fix this valve, the captain says safi (enough) and we all disembark back to the terminal to wait for Ryanair to bring in another plane. About an hour later, the crew informs us that the flight will leave at 8pm… a full ten hours later! At this point most people are livid and screaming matches erupt at people trying to get onto other flights. Sam and I try to find out about our connecting flight to Budapest that afternoon which we would miss because of this. They inform us we’ll be taken care of when we finally get to Rome.

Thx Ryanair….

Fast forward about twelve hours in which we slept, played cards, ate, and waited to board, we arrive at Rome Ciampino airport a little after midnight. Hoping to finally get on a flight, we discovered the Ryanair office was closed for the night and would reopen at five am. Having exactly enough money for a coffee and nothing more, we decide to join a good number of people and just take a nap on the floor of the arrivals section of the airport (which thankfully had wifi) for the night.

When we were kicked out at 5am by the janitor, we migrated over to the departures side to discover the desk didn’t open till 7, and waited some more. When we finally got to the front of the line, the lady informed us (thankfully) that they would rebook us with no cost! This was probably the best news of the day.

We decided to take advantage of the day we had in Rome and hit the streets to explore downtown. Given we had about 4 hours before we had to be back at the airport, we decided to explore the city.

Italian coffee

Italian streets

The Colosseum

The Forum

Italian Architecture

Italian cars

Italian pizza

Plus some Argentine guy’s house… Unfortunately couldn’t get a selfie with him

We managed to catch our flight which was both on time and very quick into Budapest. However since we had a hostel booked for the next night in Belgrade, we couldn’t stay in Budapest at all. Instead we hopped in a cab to the train station, stopped to pick up some dinner, snacks (Ginger Ale!!!!) and then hopped on the freezing cold overnight train to Belgrade.