Hiccups On Departure

Saturday at noon I woke up with sensitivity in my tooth. This tooth had been capped months before, but that afternoon I could feel the chill of the soda that probably lead to this issue in the first place. I wanted to get this checked out before getting on the plane Monday afternoon, so luckily my dentist's office penciled me in for a Monday morning appointment.

It turns out that the capped tooth had abscessed, and I was a couple weeks away from having dollops of butter yellow pus dripping from my premolar. Time for a root canal. 

Q: What's best about having a root canal the day of a 6 hour overseas flight with a 6 hour layover? 

A: Well with my mouth numbed up, I have the ability to dilate my left nostril while the other one remains normal:

Women love this. Just like Lil' Wayne says, "One nostril be flarin', and bitches be starin'"

Q: What's worst about having a root canal the day of a 6 hour overseas flight with a 6 hour layover? 

A: Everything else. 

The procedure was painless though, shout out to Dr. Eisenbrock and his team. I hope it holds out during my trip though. Just like everything in life, I try to make up for months of neglect with one afternoon of intense attention. They gave me a choice of either strong Tylenol or Percocet for the pain, but since I had never had anything stronger than Tylenol before, and didn't want my first plane ride in 20 years ending with me being detained by an air marshall for intoxication, I went for the Tylenol. 

Q: Your first plane ride in 20 years?!

A: Whoa! Be easy Mister International. Yes, as far as I can remember, my last plane ride was to Disney World. Mom says this counts as me knowing my way around air travel. I tell her that yes, as long as I have someone twice my size holding my hand the entire time, I am an accomplished air traveler. 

Liftoff

I was taking British Airways to Heathrow Airport. Plane ride was fine, I slept most of the way. I liked British Airways because when the flight attendants ask if I have any trash they ask "Rubbish?" and that just seems like a classier way to do things. Chicken curry was good. 

Expectation vs. Actual--View from the Plane at Heathrow

Throughout this travel log you'll see instances where my unreasonably high or naive expectations of international travel were met with something underwhelming. You may be experiencing these same feelings of expectation and disappointment yourself, particularly if you choose to read another post, or meet me in person. My first disconnect in what I expect and what I experience is the view flying into Heathrow. I had envisioned seeing all of London laid out for me, like Big Ben slammed right into downtown Coruscant. 

Expected view from plane at Heathrow:

Artist's Rendering

In reality, Heathrow is much too far away from London for this view this layout. Or it might not be, I wouldn't know. The entire airport was shrouded in London's famous fog:

Actual view from plane at Heathrow:

This is not an exaggeration, I could not even see the outlines of buildings until we were on the ground. 

My time at Heathrow was nice. A bunch of bustling people, bathrooms as clean as possible considering the unending crashing of wave after wave of tired travelers. I sat on the benches and nodded off during most of my six hour layover. Why so long? Well it was either a six hour layover in Heathrow or a two hour layover in Frankfurt. My company figured I needed the most time to get oriented in the most English speaking country, and for that I thank them. Any considerations that you would make for a lost, unaccompanied 8 year old child, please make for me. I was worried when I looked at the departure board and saw a plane already boarding for Budapest. I couldn't see any other flights leaving for Budapest and thought because of the time difference, there had been some confusion and that would miss this flight. It turns out that this flight was so far in the future that the board didn't even show it yet. I had plenty of time to make it to Budapest. 

Expectation vs. Actual--Passport Stamp

I have an unreasonable fascination with passport stamps. I wanted one so bad, a brightly colored, delicately filigreed decree that I had arrived on the international stage. Having never actually seen one before, I think I had placed a little too much emphasis on how cool it would look:

Expected Passport Stamp:

Badass.

Actual Passport Stamp:

A black square? Not even a triangle or something? Or at least a blue square, anything. 

I was in now in Hungary, land of a billion things I don't have a clue about. Jason, the person I was taking over for, met me at the airport with his fiancee Caroline (more about these Samaritans in the next update), and drove me to Szolnok, Hungary, where our European division (9 dudes in a single office suite) does their work.