Departure day

The departure day is finally here. And I am ... tired and exhausted. I honestly hate packing. I can never decide what clothes to take or which shoes would be the most functional, so I usually end up with a random selection of clothes and an even weirder collection of shoes (most of which I never really wear). This time it's also a bit different as I'm not going on holidays, so casual clothes and flip-flops have been replaced by smart shirts, skirts, high-heels and and enormous amount of paperwork, which is making my duffel bag incredibly heavy, but I refuse to deal with and get stressed out by logistical problems as I am determined that I WILL manage to drag all of that to my hotel.

I still have pretty much an entire day before my take off and since this is the very first time that I'm packed and still have a lot of time to spare, I have no idea what I should do with myself. The usual scenario is nothing like today. Whenever I travel and I still have a couple of hours before I need to show up at the airport, I tend to suffer a minor breakdown as my clothes haven't dried yet, there is no way I can close my suitcase (even with my brother and me sitting on top of it), I forget to put in something and then unpack everything to shove this thing or the other into the case and/or bag. Then I show up at the airport with too many pieces of hand luggage and try to explain to the check-in lady that "Yes, everything I'm holding in my hands DOES fit and WILL go into one single piece of hand luggage." They usually let me pass with a look of desperation aimed at me, the-well-travelled-passenger, who is at the airport so often that she is almost on the first name basis with the entire staff and who apparently gets completely overwhelmed by such a simple act as packing a suitcase. I am absolutely positive that people who travel with one suitcase and one piece of hand luggage only fly to a destination for a day and then back, just so they can make us, the we-cannot-pack people, feeling even more incompetent. My boyfriend is one of those people. His suitcase is always professionally packed and he always has space left in it. I watched him pack and I still don't understand how he does it! The last time we were packing together, I think he got frustrated with me and told me to sit down and watch while he packed my suitcase. I watched, but I didn't learn.

I will now go and observe my suitcase. It still isn't closed though. Maybe if I stare at it kindly, it will close. Fingers crossed....



* suitcase image credit snarking.files.wordpress.com

Travel fever

I always get so excited when I'm getting close to driving to the airport, checking-in and going through security. And not only that. I've become almost obsessed with checking my travel plans and details over and over again. I've booked the train tickets, hotels, and more tickets, checked the street view on Google maps, so I now know exactly how my route to the office looks like. A bit too much?

Have you ever felt like that? I'm so excited that I can't talk about anything else and I'm pretty sure I bore my friends out of their brain. Sorry for that guys! The funny thing is that this time I'm not jetting off to some unknown and exciting destination where I'll dare myself by tasting local delicacies such as ants, worms and similar. I'm only taking a short flight to England, which is a country I know better than I know my home town. Why such excitement then? Maybe I miss Starbucks (yes, I do fall for that, but I can't help it) and shops and sitting in parks until my behind hurts. And the endless supply of paperback novels which while and after reading them always make me wonder why things like those in books never happen to me. Why don't I meet a handsome stranger, who'll sweep me off my feet? Why do all the good things only happen in novels? Ah well, fingers crossed.

My first ever blog entry....

Oh my, here we go... I don't really know what got into me and what exactly I was thinking when I decided to try out blogging. I'm usually a rather private person and don't go public with things I do and don't do, so I must have got struck by a lightning or something. On top of that I'm an ordinary Jane. Do people actually care what a random Joe/Jane writes? Or what happens to them? Or what they think about life, world etc.? But nevertheless, trying has never hurt anybody, so I'm sure it won't do me any harm. And it will give me something to do during these summer storms that keep one locked up inside.

I've already done something that, well it doesn't exactly scare me, but it's a bit reckless, so if I had thought about it, I'm sure I would have talked myself out of it. I bought yet another plane ticket. To another country, obviously. To go there and work. The scary thing is that my position is not yet 100% secure, so considering that I'm (according to my boyfriend) a tad OCD, it's a humungous step for my wee self. I aways want to be 100% sure about everything. Which, if you think about it, is completely insane as you cannot be 100% sure about pretty much anything in life.

Now I've started the countdown. 16 more days before I take off. Before then I'll probably keep quiet as I don't want to bore anyone, who might read this, rigid. I'll keep you posted however when I do something else that scares me.