Oh
Luton. How you build up such great expectations for a departure, purely by
default, and then spectacularly dash them with such élan.
We
began our journey, John and I, by taking the Thameslink from central London to
Luton Parkway. A standard activity with cans of vodka-mixer added to liven
things up. This was the second trip we were taking to south-east Europe, albeit
with a shortened length of two weeks. This time we decided to ditch public
transport and hire a car for the two weeks. No backpacks and buses for us. This
trip would be air-con heavy, and Spotify playlists all the way (‘CEE Drive Time’
on Spotify, for anyone interested). The added freedom allowed us to stop en
route between our destinations, to my excitement but John’s chagrin.
We
would be starting and ending in Budapest, somewhere John had been to recently,
but I had never been. Images in my mind of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy merged
with the trappings of being the second Imperial city of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. Our route would take us to Novi Sad, Belgrade, Zagreb via Vukovar and
Jasenovac, Rovinj, and then Ljubljana. We would mostly be touring the southern
part of the Lands of the Crown of St Stephen, as they were know towards the end
of Austria-Hungary; this area also formed part of the Military Frontier at
other times, as a bulwark against the Ottoman Empire.
We
arrived at the airport and proceeded to the executive lounge. As it was daytime
and we planned to arrive in good time, we thought we would treat ourselves to
food and drink before we board. And this we did, whilst charging our phones and
finishing off last minute work/personal admin. I sank the best part of a bottle
of red wine, soaked up by some pasta and nachos. John was on a similar track.
With our gate being called after a short delay, we departed, said our goodbyes
to the maître de, and walked to our gate. We queued up, as usual, and watched
as a Wizz Air plane arrived at our gate, ending its previous journey, and
witness its passengers disembark.
This
is when the confusion began. This was clearly our plane. It was in our gate,
and the people in our queue should be boarding it. However, after an hour with
no updates and no progression on boarding, we had an announcement to say that
our flight would be further delayed, and that another gate full of passengers
would be boarding our plane, heading to Cluj-Napoca. We were told to go away
and listen for further announcements. Incredible! We could not get back in to
the lounge, so instead we sat at the bar in the main departure hall.
After
another round of drinks and snacks, John went to the gate to find out more
information. He was none the wiser. At this juncture, a guy who was sat next to
us began chatting to us. He was a young lad currently living in Budapest, but hailed
from Debrecen. We chatted about the delay, and what we were doing on our
travels. I mentioned to him the EU compensation scheme, which he did not know
about, so that lifted spirits somewhat.
After
another hour I decided I would go down to the gate. There was a bit of
commotion as the Wizz Air staff had begun to handout vouchers for food and
drink, as the delay was ongoing. No announcement of this was made, of course. When
I approached one person, she bluntly announced that I was drunk and should mind
myself. I said it’s a bit of a cheek to hand out a voucher for food and drink
to the value of £3.50 when all the restaurants and shops had now closed, apart
from one bar and a Starbucks. I grabbed my two vouchers as a consolation prize,
and returned to John. We carried on chatting to our new friend, keeping to soft
drinks now following my caution. 5 hours after our scheduled departure, we
finally had a call to go to our gate. It was just past 11pm, with a scheduled
take off of 12:10am. After much huffing and puffing we boarded, and arranged to
meet our new friend in Budapest at the end of our trip.
We
arrived to a quiet Budapest airport just after 3am. As there was no public
transport with any sort of frequency, we decided to get a taxi and claim it
back from the airline. I had tried to message the hostel we planned to stay at,
to say that we would be extremely delayed. I had received no response, so
assumed it would be OK to check in at 4am.
We
were dropped off on a main boulevard, which was wet from either a recent rain
shower or street cleaners, and approached an apartment block of faded grandeur
and tried to get in. We buzzed and phoned the hostel numerous times but could
not get in. Tired and frustrated, we began to march down the road, as we saw a
couple of international looking hotels to try and get a room at, our luggage
dragging through the puddles behind us. The first two were booked up, but the
second recommended a hotel around the corner, aptly called Soho Hotel. We
entered and thankfully they had space. I felt rather queasy when John paid €99
for basically 6 hours in a hotel. But we both needed a shower and a lie down,
and that is exactly what we did. I said that I would wake up a little earlier
and call the car hire company to tell them that we would now be picking the car
up after 12pm, rather than 10am as planned, so John could get some extra sleep.
He was the nominated driver for the first stretch on the road trip. 5am we
finally went to sleep. What a way to start!
