Apr
29
Back in the day, I thought backpacking through Europe meant trains. That’s what happened on Gilmore Girls, anyway. But we’re in a new century now, and trains are so passe. If you want to get from place to place in Europe cheaply, you don’t train. You fly.
Carriers like RyanAir and EasyJet get you from place to place at ridiculously low costs. I’m flying from England to Ireland for $25 USD. You may, like any reasonable person, be thinking, “How do they stay afloat?” Answer: by charging you for everything.
You can only bring one small carry-on on these flights. When I flew from Dallas to Amsterdam, I was allowed one carry-on item (a suitcase), one personal item (my backpack, which was massive), a blanket, a pillow, and leftover potato skins from TGI Friday’s. RyanAir requires you to fit all of that in one carry on. No purchases. No purses. No problems.
This was my RyanAir backpack. It’s a Trans by Jansport. It’s real small.
Should you need to check a bag, 25 euro. Should you forget to print out your boarding pass at home, 25 euro. Should your bag be too big and you get busted at the gate, 50 euro. Don’t feel like messing with fiesta seating? 10 euro. Misspell your name on your ticket? 110 euro.
That last one terrifies me. One time, I misbubbled my name on the PSAT. For years, I got mail from colleges addressed to “Miss Kbtherine A. McPherson.”
I really wonder how I got into OU sometimes.
Anyway, RyanAir is super duper stressful, particularly if you—like me—find flying to be panic-attack-inducing normally.
So, we’re flying from Krakow to Budapest, right? The train was ridiculously long and expensive, forget buses, I laugh at the idea of renting cars. We board the plane, and we are marched down the jetway to a shuttle. “Alright,” I think. “This is normal.” Washington-Dulles uses shuttles, after all. And then we get off the shuttle and stand on the runway, where we are the last people on the plane and therefore get sketchy, sketchy seats.
As we’re on the plane, flight attendants march up and down selling just about everything you can think of. Perfumes, lottery tickets, drinks, snacks, dinner. Anything and everything to make a profit. This flight lasted 45 minutes.
When we land in Budapest, it is dark. It is somewhat late at night. So what do we do? We walk on the runway. We walk from the plane through miles and miles and miles of barricades. SKETCHY.
When we board in Budapest on our way back home, we stay on the runway for ten minutes. We watch our plane come in for a landing and taxi up to us. People GET OFF OF THE PLANE, and five minutes later, we get on.
This ain’t American Airlines, y’all.
Sasha had to put that jacket I’m holding back on, or they would have charged her 50 euro for excess baggage.
I’m pretty sure that if that plane crash-landed, there’d be a flight attendant standing next to the inflatable raft collecting 20 euro from everyone who wanted to get off.
Apr
5
The truly beautiful thing about study abroad is that I can construe just about anything as a cultural experience. Grocery shopping? Cultural experience. Falling asleep on my patio at noon? Cultural experience.
Going to the movies, then, is definitely a cultural experience. My friend Sasha and I headed to the cinema inside the mall to see The Hunger Games. We figured it was a great time to see it since it came out two days earlier here (bwhaha).
The movie theater (bioscoop) is sort of hidden and off to the side in the mall, unlike movie theaters in malls back home. We had to walk down a pretty seedy hallway and up a flight of stairs to get into the box office. Once we were there, however, it looked exactly the same. Same guy in the box office saying things I don’t understand, same disaffected youth behind the concession stand, same outdated movie cutouts lounging around. It was pretty comforting.
Sasha and I decided to split a coke (not a Coke, it was lucky that Sasha was the one ordering the Sprite) and some popcorn. The medium sized popcorn was HUGE—definitely the size of a large back home—and when we ordered it, the disaffected youth asked if we wanted salty or sweet.
What?!
We stayed on the safe side and ordered salty, but I’m very curious as to what sweet popcorn is. Is it the same thing as kettle corn? Is it like putting M&Ms in your popcorn? What would it even taste like if you put M&Ms in your sweet popcorn? I’ve got so many questions, you guys.
Once we entered the theater, we were delighted to find the most comfortable looking chairs in the universe. They were red and made of something like velour, and right as I was about to fall asleep, some manager-looking guy stood up in the back of the theater and yelled something in Dutch.
Naturally, I had to go exploring, and I came back with a booklet that appears to be the summary of The Hunger Games in Dutch. We tried to translate it while we were sitting there (“I’ve got this! Something something blue something something I something tasty!”) because we were bored silly—there was no movie trivia! What is that all about? I love me some movie trivia. Don’t even get me started on the terrible radio station that plays during movie trivia.
The lights went down, but instead of the previews starting up, we saw a series of silent advertisements. They moved super quickly (each was maybe ten seconds long) and they were completely in Dutch. Which makes sense, actually, now that I’m thinking about it…
The movie started, and I was quickly engrossed. The movie was completely in English, with Dutch subtitles. It was incredibly easy to forget the subtitles were there and get into the movie, and get into the movie we did. Sasha and I were tensing up at every scene, positively freaking out when Katniss started climbing that tree…
and then the movie stopped.
Right smack-dab in the middle of the action, the movie stopped, the lights went on, and people starting filing out of the theater. Apparently, Dutch movies have an intermission in them. It’s kind of cool because no one gets up to go to the restroom or get more candy while the movie is going on, but it’s also rather jarring to just stop right in the middle of the action. It took me a few minutes to recover.
I’m definitely looking forward to the next movie we see in theaters! Dutch movie theaters are similar enough to American ones that going to see movies is still fun, but they’re different enough that I think this TOTALLY counts as a cultural experience.
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