Not going home in a hurry…
More Pleasure, More Business
In this divided trip report
Part Two Onto Business
- Part One – The Pleasure
- Part Two – The Business
- British Airways Galleries South Lounge
- BA962 London Heathrow to Hamburg – Club Europe
- IBIS Budget St Pauli
- Crystal Cabin Awards Roundup
- Aircraft Interiors Expo – What you might have missed
- Back to Hamburg Airport, Hamburg Airport Lounge
- BA967 Hamburg Airport to London Heathrow – Club Europe
- Not going home in a hurry
- Compensation Fun, Games and Paperwork
- Life is in many parts
Wandering off the plane, I headed through the B Gates once again, with a sense of deja vu not being here no more than 4 days ago.
I headed to a crammed transit shuttle back to terminal 5 A, and manually cleared the border.
With that, I headed downstairs to the luggage belt.
Thankfully, lighting didn’t strike twice, and my luggage came off the belt. Well, we have that at least.
I headed for the exit back into the real world – far away from planes and aviation.
That way out…
Looking at the clock, I headed to the coach ticket office. The coach I had booked had long gone sadly, meaning it was fast turning into a night at the airport area – as trains to Birmingham thin out considerably after 21:30.
I go to the ticket booth, and was told I would need to buy a new ticket, and use the machine as the software on the ticket booking software was being updated.
I… just… give… up.
I was chatting with my friend on the phone – who was overhearing what was happening. I was on the verge of booking the Holiday Inn Express for the night, and dealing with this all in the morning when I could grab a train in peace and quiet, and forgo this pain that evening.
And my friends said they’d drive down and get me… and take me home.
I tried to politely refuse, but they insisted – and told me they would be there around midnight. They told me to settle in and get comfy.
I advised them to pick me up from departures (as it was 1) dead and 2) avoid the horrible fees). On top of that, we would be there for 3 minutes – top.
Time to collect a missing friend.
There was one more thing to do – and that was to get my luggage out of safe storage. I trundled to the other end of the terminal and recovered by ski bag – after paying the £32.50 fee to retrieve it.
With all that done, all I could do was to head to Costa Coffee and settle back down after the past few days. I also took the chance of compressing my belongings down further, putting what I had from five bags I had, and compressed everything back into two big bags, and two little bags.
With that done, coffee drunk and a few relief things done – midnight was fast approaching.
And muffins for my friends.
I grabbed my trash and headed up to the departures level, and out onto on to the drop off area. I wheeled all the way up to the north end of the terminal. Within 10 minutes, they had arrived at the depatures level, and no more than three minutes later – we were gone.
With just under 2 hours to get to Birmingham, we took our time, with my friends a coffee stop at Oxford Services (never a bad idea in the late night drives) and finally dropping me off outside my flat at 2 am (they made it back to Worcester by 2:40).
I managed to get into the flat and begun to start the mess of my data, and how the data was sitting across a hard disk, network, phone and a laptop.
And also let the Peeps meet each other.
Peepette: What do you mean your hobby is world domination? Not whilst I’m here…
TravelPeep: …
Next: Running the compensation numbers.
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