Wanderung 24

Spring Fling

From March to May 2011

Monday April 18: Hamburg, Germany, to Cork, Ireland: (Trains, Planes, and Automobiles!)

Bob:

We started off our morning with one last shopping trip. At Aldi we found some cheap Easter candy and cute-as-a-button wooden rabbits hand-made in the Erzgebirge region of Germany that we had visited during Wanderung 2. Since one rabbit had its eyes glued to a laptop computer and the other rabbit had its ears glued to a cell phone, I thought they were perfect and bought them as gifts for Judson and Sarah!

Continuing our shopping circuit, I stopped at Lidl to purchase another light fleece jacket, this one in dark gray. And finally at the Famila shopping center that includes a Post Office, we sent off the postcards I had written and picked up some more of the licorice candy Monika liked. Then came the "fun" of repacking our suitcases to try to make all the new stuff fit in. In the end, we gave up and again used our small spare rucksack as a second piece of carry-on luggage for me for the remainder of the trip. (And it was a good thing, too, as our two wheeled suitcases turned out to be just below the 40 kilogram weight limit for both of us.)

As the Gentle Reader is probably quite aware, I am no great fan of modern air travel, so I wasn't looking forward to flying first from Hamburg, Germany, to London, England, and then from London to Cork, Ireland. But we were scheduled to meet Lois in Cork the next day and start driving around Ireland, so I resigned myself to the trip. Besides, Heinke still wasn't feeling well and had decided to see her internist that morning, so although we were sad to go we felt that maybe Heinke could get more rest without having us underfoot.

Although we had thought to take the bus to the train to the airport, the bus schedule was awkward and when Gustl offered to drive us directly to the train station we gratefully accepted. The drive to Ohlsdorf train station was fairly short, and Gustl was nice enough to walk to the platform with us and check that we took the S1 in the right direction. A few minutes later we debarked at the airport (good that we had tried out that link earlier!), and went in to check our luggage before sitting down for a nice quiet meal at the bakery/restaurant there.

Monika:

First order of business was packing. We again needed a second carry-on. I hoped we could pick up another backpack. I remember seeing a nice one at Lidl and since we had time this morning we decided to go for one last shopping spree. So we grabbed the bicycles and headed for ALDI and Lidl. At ALDI we bought some Easter candy and at Lidl Bob bought another fleece jacket, since he had been wearing the one we bought at the beginning and really liked it.

But unfortunately they no longer had the nice little backpack I had seen earlier. Oh well, the old blue rucksack just would have to do. One more stop at Famila also did not lead to anything. But we did mail all the postcards from Hamburg that Bob had written earlier.

Heinke had an 11:30 appointment with her doctor, so we decided to try the S-Bahn connection to the airport. Gustl drove us to the nearest S-Bahn station near Ohlsdorf and we hopped on the train and arrived very quickly at the airport. Really a nice connection. Check-in was quick, since we had already printed out our boarding passes and just had to drop off our luggage. We went down to the bakery and supermarket for a last Frikadellen Broetchen, yummy!

All set for an afternoon of flying we walked upstairs, through security and to our gate. Our BA airplane was already there and we enjoyed taking pictures of it.

Bob:

During the British Airways flight to London we were in an "Exit" row with plenty of legroom and free drinks (including wine) and snacks. I declined the wine as I would be driving later, but it was a very pleasant flight. The 3-hour layover in Heathrow was less pleasant, but the bus ride around the airport from Terminal 5 to Terminal 1 allowed me to get used to the visual angles of driving on the left side of the road again, which I thought was useful. We saw another huge, new terminal in construction just next to Terminal 1 and apparently when completed that will replace the old Terminals 1 and 2, according to our bus driver.

Once past the security screening for Terminal 1, we worked our way through a never-ending network of corridors and curious metal tubes snaking from one building to the other. Those big tubes make it look like a huge, alien octopus from outer space had landed on the airport. This search for the departure point of our Aer Lingus flight was long and had the side effect of making me feel rather like a rat in a maze.

But even that was better than feeling like the proverbial rat in a trap, which I felt like after I was crammed into a window seat on the Aer Lingus flight to Cork. Monika was on the aisle seat, but the middle seat was occupied by a heavy-set woman and I could not keep my legs straight as there was so little leg room that my knees pressed into the seat back in front of me. Arrrgh!

Monika:

The flight to London was very smooth. When I did the check-in over the internet, I could snag two seats in the exit row - aisle for Bob, window for me - so we had plenty of leg room. I even got a few pictures, but it was very hazy.

In London we had again had three hours wait time. But part of that was taken up by a nice bus trip around Heathrow from Terminal 5 to Terminal 1. We also had to go through immigration, and some other folderol to make sure we left again, I guess.

Bob:

Even though the flight was listed as a British Airways flight and the ones in Germany had offered free drinks and snacks, the Aer Lingus flight had no free beverages of any kind, even water, and obviously no free food. To add insult to injury, the flight crew had to continually parade up and down the aisles not only hawking the expensive food and beverages, but also engaging in sales pitches for every conceivable type of "duty-free" merchandise including watches and cosmetics, for heaven's sake!

Being physically cramped and yammered at like that really made me feel slightly claustrophobic and the entire flight became simply an exercise in endurance. Truly it was a case of "I can't wait to get out of here!" I was extremely glad when the flight ended and I could untwist myself from the seat and escape from the confines of the airplane.

Monika:

While wandering through Heathrow there was a sign "the last food before Ireland" where we had another sandwich. It was quite expensive but I am glad we did, since on Air Lingus even the soft drinks cost money, whereas on the earlier BA flight, I got a small bottle of wine with my snack for free. And this, although it was billed as a BA flight but it really was run by Air Lingus who seem have taken a page from the book from their American Airline counterparts and have decided not to feed their passengers.


 

Bob:

Fortunately our bags had successfully travelled with us, and we reclaimed them and picked up our rental car with no problem. Now began the adventure of getting to know the quirks of yet another rental car while sitting on the wrong side of the car and shifting with the wrong hand whilst driving on the wrong side of the road in a foreign country with strange traffic patterns. What could go wrong?

Well, for one thing I had to get used to the very small engine and very light clutch of the Hyundai Getz. Although I didn't exactly kill the engine as we jerked our way out of the airport, I certainly came close enough that the the car was bucking and missing and the "check engine light" was flashing on and off as we maneuvered slowly and painfully through the chain of roundabouts leading out of the airport. I also saw that the odometer listed over 96,000 kilometers and that was not very reassurring in a rental car that had probably seen hard use.

And for another thing, it was now about 8:30 p.m. and the sun was setting! If we hadn't found our B&B when we did, we might jolly well have gone bumbling about the backroads of Ireland forever in the dark without finding the narrow, uphill entrance in the dark. But God apparently takes pity on fools like us who tempt the fates, and we did find the entrance and roar up the driveway into a parking spot just as night was falling. Our B&B was, however, well out into the countryside and the traffic density was light, and that helped.

I had one startling moment on the drive when I passed a sign for "O'Callaghan's Monuments" and realized that since the O'Callaghans had intermarried with my ancestral Holmes family in Ireland, I might be looking at the business of some distant relative--that was an odd jolt I can tell you!

Much to our relief, the Flushing Meadows B&B Monika had booked over the internet turned out to be a very nice place indeed with two very nice hosts by the name Anne and James, and very quiet and comfortable rooms. After hauling my wheelie inside and unpacking a bit, I tried to find the English/Irish electrical plug adapter that would allow me to charge our various pieces of electronic gear, but I just hit a wall of fatigue and rolled over to go to sleep instead.

Monika:

Cork has a very small airport so the car rental place was easy to find. Our car was again a small Mitsubishi Getz - like the one we had in Australia during Wanderung 20 known as the "gutless wonder", only this one was a manual and did have a few more guts.

Bob acclimatized easily to right hand sitting and left hand driving, and with GPS, directions, and map I managed to get us to the B&B without any miscues before the sun went down. We were greeted by our hosts, a nice elderly couple and shown a comfortable room. It is out in the country and very, very quiet. We had no problem falling asleep.


 

Copyright 2011 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Transatlantic Cruise Map of Drive in Ireland Epilog

March 2011
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
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6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31
April 2011
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3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
May 2011
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
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