I Should Have Flown.......

I have now officially moved back to Denmark, and as some of you know, my chosen method of traveling home was the bus. I was sick of flying and wanted to have some time to myself, to try and process all the things that have happened over the last few months, saying goodbye to Ireland and hello to Denmark. Also, it meant I could carry more stuff.

Turned out to be a bad idea though.

The journey had three legs: Dublin-London, London-Amsterdam, Amsterdam-Kolding. First leg went fine, except for the handle for pulling my suitcase breaking off going through customs in the port at Holyhead in Wales. That made it somewhat hard for me to carry all 4 bags comfortably, because none of them were light. Typical me.

Anyway, second leg was supposed to start at 10.30 on Thursday morning. For some unknown reason, the bus never arrived and they had to call in another driver to come and do the trip. We left London around 2pm and at that stage I was very worried about my connecting bus from Amsterdam, as they were only 1 1/2 hours apart, and we were now over 3 hours late. We could not save time by taking the Channel Tunnel instead of the Dover-Calais ferry, because the tunnel was fully booked out due to Easter. Anyway, they kept telling me not to worry, and that if the bus could not wait for me in Amsterdam, they would send it to Utrecht for me.

Just before Utrecht I asked our driver if I was getting off here or staying on until Amsterdam. He gave me the rather disappointing news, that my bus had already gone, it had left Amsterdam ON TIME. I should go to a hotel once we arrived in Amsterdam, and go to the office in the morning to see if they could put me on a train or something, because the next departure for Kolding was not until Tuesday. You can imagine my happiness....

So, at 3am we arrive in Amsterdam, and I could not see any hotels in the vicinity, so I camped out in front of the office, being far too exhausted to start trying to find accommodation at that hour. I kept up my spirits and my temperature as best I could until 7am when the office opened. Yer woman in the office was not very sympathetic, and told me I would have to go to the train station myself to try and get a ticket, no way could she go. After that I just sat down and had myself a good cry from pure misery and exhaustion.

In the timetable I found a departure for a direct bus to Copenhagen leaving at 3.45 that afternoon. Sounds good to me - no changing buses! It would get into Copenhagen 5.15am the next morning, but I did not care, at least I would then be in a place I knew, and my sister would be there too. Thankfully, they let me change my ticket for that departure, and I spend the remaining hours in the office, listening to Tori on my iPod and trying not to fall asleep. The journey went off without much drama - the drive through Holland was quite lovely. My sister met me in Copenhagen after I got off the bus, and you can imagine how relieved I was to see her!
Anyway, I am home now and have unpacked and slept and eaten, so I am back to my old giggly self. But I am never taking a bus across Europe again......