Planes, Trains, and Violent Illness

No pictures for this one...thankfully. The trip from NYC (where I stopped for a few days to visit my friends Tom and Lindsay) to Switzerland was, to put in mildly, fucking terrible. It began, as so many bad experiences have, with a volcano. In fact, not just a volcano, but The Volcano. As in "Haven't you heard that all flights to Europe are cancelled because of The Volcano." To be fair, I was not one of the thousands of unfortunate people from all over the world who were stuck in random places for weeks, having to live in airports and rely solely on vending machines for sustenance. They were, of course, much worse off, but this is about me, so forget about their miseries for the time being. I wasn't stuck anywhere because I wasn't actually trying to travel during the week or so when flights were cancelled. I was, however, trying to travel soon after that time on a buddy-pass, meaning that I'd be flying standby (and at the bottom of the standby list, with all paying passengers ahead of me). Obviously, given all the stranded people who I just asked you to forget about, flying standby anywhere in the vicinity of Europe was not the best plan. So, nothing for it but to buy a real ticket.

Buying a ticket to Europe at the last minute can be, as you might expect, rather expensive. Given my irresponsible lifestyle, you might also expect (and be correct in your expectations) that I have somewhat limited financial resources; requiring that I purchase the cheapest possible ticket I could find, which happened to be on Jet Airways. Never heard of it? Neither had I. Turns out they're based in India (we'll get back to this).

Since my flight was to leave in the evening and arrive the next morning I, of course, planned on sleeping most of the flight and arriving in Europe fresh and rejuvenated. This is where plans and reality began to diverge. First, the plane was completely packed. This wasn't unexpected, but it led to complications with the next problem; I was seated next to a guy with Restless Leg Syndrome. No shit, this guy's legs didn't stop moving for the entire 8 hours on the plane. I know this for a fact because I didn't sleep for an instant in that 8 hours.

Ok, spending an entire trans-Atlantic flight seated next to a human paint-mixer sucks, but doesn't warrant it's own blog post, right? Well how about if the Indian food (see, told you we'd get back to this) you're served halfway through the flight gives you food-poisoning? How about if all the information you got on the internet regarding which trains to take from the Milan airport to Switzerland turns out to be wrong, necessitating that you carry your 140 lbs. of luggage (canyoning gear and climbing gear weigh a lot) through multiple train stations and the subway while trying not to puke or pass out?

I did, finally, make it to my destination. However, to add insult to injury I lost my sunglasses during the final train transfer and boarded an express train which completely bypassed my stop. When I was finally able to get off the train and get a hold of my friend Eric I begged him to just come and pick me up where I was because I couldn't face the thought of getting back on another train. Thankfully he took pity on me.

The moral of this story is: Volcanoes suck (just ask the Pompeians).