Ryanair
For those who don’t know, Ryanair is one of the budget companies that allow you to fly different destinations in Europe for just $40-100. The downside is a range of constrains they put on you. One of them is a luggage limit.
So on Sunday we barely made it to the airport on time, despite my tendency to always choose a wring exit, turn and Mira’s habit to choose the most unpopular road that goes through all possible villages and reduces speed to a snail crawling. You can add my mom’s predictions that we were never gonna make it on time and that Mira and I were immature procrastinators and lazy addicts to sleep.
Anyway, we got to the airport, put my mom and nephew on the plane to go back to Ukraine, and proceeded to our own check-in to fly to Gerona/Barcelona. At the airport when I was turning in my nephew’s rucksack to excessive luggage (he had a wide sleeping bag attached to the backpack), I saw a guy who hectically tried to persuade the airport people take his half-empty rucksack with the rest of the baggage. But these merciless people refused so he decided to abandon it.
I offered my services to recycle it. So I got a nice 75 L rucksack. Mira and I divided the content. Besides various useless stuff like stinky shoes, Mira got a wonderful souvenir. I eventually had to dump the new-found shoes as they were taking space and adding to our luggage weight besides making me high with their odor.
We managed to be the first people to check in. However, Mira misunderstood the Ryanair’s policy re luggage. They allow 15kg of checked-in luggage per person and not per bag. So here we are, having extra 13.2 kg of luggage, including newly acquired stuff and additional rucksack.
The idea/offer to paying extra 54 pounds for extra luggage didn’t appeal to either of us. So we put our sleeping bags on the floor, dumped the content of all our bags on it and started repacking. You should have seen this gipsy camp in London airport with our underwear and suspicious cables for all my electronic devices being spread on good 5 square meters of the airport floor right next to the checking-in desk and line of curious people.
Finally, we managed to spread out all these 13.2kg (and that freaken pedantic b witch as fussy about every single gram making us removing various items three times until we got from 30.4kg to 30 even). I had to put 5 shirts, two sweat shirts, a rain jacket and other stuff on me. Mira became quite round as well with all those cloth being put on her. Our carry-on was very heavy.
So imagine us, fully dressed, with our cameras, hygiene kits, bags with food on our shoulders and in our hands, with books in-between of our arms and shoulders passing security. Lo and behold, they told us they needed to check us as the scanner had identified some suspicious item in our carry-on. At this point our hearts sank down to our feet as we thought that we had forgotten and put Mira’s newly acquired artistic souvenir into a carry-on. It should be mentioned that this souvenir was a tool for digging or something and quite vividly resembled paraphernalia that once was used to murder Trotsky. However, after some time of removing my small backpack along with other repacked items from the bigger bag (a new one; thanks God it had various straps so after we tightened it it kinda shrank), and then removing original items from my small backpack itself, the security lady victoriously handed out my tiny City of Fresno souvenir knife that I had forgotten to pack into the main luggage. Nothing could convince the lady to give us a break and preserve the status quo by leaving this souvenir knife in my possession. Neither emotional (my sentimental narratives of nostalgic memories of my days in Fresno), nor rational arguments (it would be impossible to get this ‘weapon’ from the bottom of our extraordinary overpacked carry-on before the plane lands) worked.
But in the end we safely arrived to Spain, which appeared way warmer (duh) despite the late hour. We called Maritxell and Rober and they promised to get us from City Hall square. The cab dropped us off right in front of the former City Hall. We leant our belongings against the wall and I fell asleep against the City Hall main door (it was 3am). At some point the guard opened the front door to ask us not to camp next to the historic building. As I didn’t expect any changes in my sleeping arrangements, I fell inside the City Hall and rolled down to the guard’s feet. Later on we read in a Lonely Planet that this historic City Hall is closed to public and opens its doors only twice a year. Apparently, it opens its doors at least three times a year.
So on Sunday we barely made it to the airport on time, despite my tendency to always choose a wring exit, turn and Mira’s habit to choose the most unpopular road that goes through all possible villages and reduces speed to a snail crawling. You can add my mom’s predictions that we were never gonna make it on time and that Mira and I were immature procrastinators and lazy addicts to sleep.
Anyway, we got to the airport, put my mom and nephew on the plane to go back to Ukraine, and proceeded to our own check-in to fly to Gerona/Barcelona. At the airport when I was turning in my nephew’s rucksack to excessive luggage (he had a wide sleeping bag attached to the backpack), I saw a guy who hectically tried to persuade the airport people take his half-empty rucksack with the rest of the baggage. But these merciless people refused so he decided to abandon it.
I offered my services to recycle it. So I got a nice 75 L rucksack. Mira and I divided the content. Besides various useless stuff like stinky shoes, Mira got a wonderful souvenir. I eventually had to dump the new-found shoes as they were taking space and adding to our luggage weight besides making me high with their odor.
We managed to be the first people to check in. However, Mira misunderstood the Ryanair’s policy re luggage. They allow 15kg of checked-in luggage per person and not per bag. So here we are, having extra 13.2 kg of luggage, including newly acquired stuff and additional rucksack.
The idea/offer to paying extra 54 pounds for extra luggage didn’t appeal to either of us. So we put our sleeping bags on the floor, dumped the content of all our bags on it and started repacking. You should have seen this gipsy camp in London airport with our underwear and suspicious cables for all my electronic devices being spread on good 5 square meters of the airport floor right next to the checking-in desk and line of curious people.
Finally, we managed to spread out all these 13.2kg (and that freaken pedantic b witch as fussy about every single gram making us removing various items three times until we got from 30.4kg to 30 even). I had to put 5 shirts, two sweat shirts, a rain jacket and other stuff on me. Mira became quite round as well with all those cloth being put on her. Our carry-on was very heavy.
So imagine us, fully dressed, with our cameras, hygiene kits, bags with food on our shoulders and in our hands, with books in-between of our arms and shoulders passing security. Lo and behold, they told us they needed to check us as the scanner had identified some suspicious item in our carry-on. At this point our hearts sank down to our feet as we thought that we had forgotten and put Mira’s newly acquired artistic souvenir into a carry-on. It should be mentioned that this souvenir was a tool for digging or something and quite vividly resembled paraphernalia that once was used to murder Trotsky. However, after some time of removing my small backpack along with other repacked items from the bigger bag (a new one; thanks God it had various straps so after we tightened it it kinda shrank), and then removing original items from my small backpack itself, the security lady victoriously handed out my tiny City of Fresno souvenir knife that I had forgotten to pack into the main luggage. Nothing could convince the lady to give us a break and preserve the status quo by leaving this souvenir knife in my possession. Neither emotional (my sentimental narratives of nostalgic memories of my days in Fresno), nor rational arguments (it would be impossible to get this ‘weapon’ from the bottom of our extraordinary overpacked carry-on before the plane lands) worked.
But in the end we safely arrived to Spain, which appeared way warmer (duh) despite the late hour. We called Maritxell and Rober and they promised to get us from City Hall square. The cab dropped us off right in front of the former City Hall. We leant our belongings against the wall and I fell asleep against the City Hall main door (it was 3am). At some point the guard opened the front door to ask us not to camp next to the historic building. As I didn’t expect any changes in my sleeping arrangements, I fell inside the City Hall and rolled down to the guard’s feet. Later on we read in a Lonely Planet that this historic City Hall is closed to public and opens its doors only twice a year. Apparently, it opens its doors at least three times a year.