So far, this has been one of the most delightful, smooth, completely stress-free departures mornings back to Canada I’ve ever had. Again, I’m mostly crediting all of this to Vera and her amazing luck. For those of you who don’t know, Vera has the most amazing timing and luck of anyone I’ve ever met. She claims it mostly happens when she’s with me, but I’m not sure if I believe her. She can leave for her flight no more than an hour before it departs, but always makes it. She can leave for a train 15 minutes before it leaves, but still makes it. She can procrastinate buying movie tickets until the point that they are sold out, and the movie starts in an hour, only to have someone walk up to her offering her tickets. These are of course, but a fragment of the examples. So this morning, like the wonderful friend that she is, Vera left her place 20 after 7 in the morning to arrive at my place for 8 to accompany me to the airport and help me with luggage, that ended up weighing about 75 kilos. Yes, that’s right, KILOS.
But before I get to that, everything went smoothly catching the bus to the airport, despite it being late, and taking an eternity to get there. Even the two Arabic men that caught the bus with us, asking us random questions about directions, bus times, etc. the entire way, made the journey more interesting. At one point, as Vera and I were speaking English and laughing about something random, at this point it was probably about the Wikipedia entry of Annessens, in French one of the men says to the other man that we are probably making fun of them. I guess he had forgotten that we had been speaking in French to them not more than 30 minutes earlier. And as Vera and I love to feign innocence and ignorance with languages, we played along, looking straight at them, and laughing to ourselves. In the end as we were getting off the bus, the one cracked some joke about my giant heavy duffle bag that Vera was struggling to get out of the luggage rack, asking Vera if she had her mother packed away in there. Lol. He also asked where we were going, I said Canada. He says, “Oh, that’s why your English is so good!”. I don’t understand this, and its not the first time someone has said that to me. Does my English, when I’m speaking to a European, take on a neutral accent? I mean, you would never hear someone going up to an American saying, “Oh you have such good English!”. If they do complement them on language is usually congratulating them for speaking something other than English.
So after arrived at the airport, leisurely with 1h30 until my flight departed, we unloaded my third bag, each heavier than the last of course, from the luggage locker, with the 50 cents we were missing from the nice latino behind us, and we proceeded to drop off my bags. I was very worried that, due to the number and weight of my bags, I would be paying 200, 300, or 400 euro to check them. So as soon as we got to the check in, I stuck up a very friendly conversation with the middle aged woman working this desk, complaining good natured about the difficulty of packing up ones life in to two suitcases. After this, we started chatting, her asking why on earth I was ‘moving’ to the Prairies. Then exclaiming, when she learned I was in fact going to Saskatchewan not Winnipeg, that her friend’s boyfriend is living in Saskatchewan! She said he is a physiotherapist named Serge with a beard. Lol. Sadly, I almost guarantee that someone I know, knows Serge. I told her this last bit as she was weighing my immense bags totally up to 75 kilos. Miraculously, she not only solely charged me 75 euro (the price of one excess baggage, completely dropping all the overweigh charges that would have totalled to an additional 150), not only waved the fee I would have had of RE-checking my bags in Toronto, but let Vera and I climb up behind her desk to transfer 4 kilos from my smaller bag to the larger ones to avoid having to check it and pay an additional 200 euro.
So Vera with her Mary Poppins skills, managed to fit 4 kilos worth of stuff in to my already swollen incredibly overweight bags. Vera and I said our goodbyes, I went through Security, and still made it to my gate precisely as people started queuing up to board. I even had time to stop along the way to grab a late breakfast of a croissant and orange juice, where the man waved the 85 cents of the 5,85 euro it came to, as I only had a 5 euro bill. Standing in line I met this very nice funny middle aged Swedish man, Oly, who I think was taken by me, as he tried convincing the Flight Attendant to change his seat to sit next to me, unsuccessfully of course.
The final sequence of my incredibly quite enjoyable departure and Vera luck of a morning was having my flight to Amsterdam land a full 25 minutes early, giving me the exact amount of time needed to leisurely make my way past Passport control to my gate at the other end of the Airport. Funnily enough, as my flight was so short, I landed in Amsterdam the same time that Vera arrived home from the airport. I think that says something about either KLM or Brussels Transit.
So I’m going to save this and continue later, as my flight is about to start taxiing now. But as part of our experiment in how far Vera’s influence will stretch, I will write again during my 6 hour layover in Toronto. I swear to god, if travelling with Vera means all travel is this easy and stress-free, I’m dragging her with me everywhere.
PS. Boarding the flight I’ve already started to see many farmer jeans paired with sneakers, crocs, and hoodies. I’m a little nervous already.
UP NEXT....
Toronto and first impressions
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