Leaving Japan
We were leaving Japan the 21st of December, and we had to do as much as possible before that. This consisted of shopping a lot... in particular for Christmas presents :) , eating a lot of sushi (which I now love by the way... who would have known) and try the teriyaki burger at Mac Donalds, and have several goodbye gatherings.
We had a great last night out with the gang, eating yakitori, and then we went to our local karaoke place. It was a lot of fun. At work we had one Christmas party with the ICYS, with the small NIMS group we had a Christmas/Annett is leaving-party. At the NIMS party I served them brown goat cheese. To my surprise, and contrary to my intentions, some people actually liked it.
My NIMS group
It was quite sad to leave Japan. We have gotten very good friends there, and really felt at home there now. But we also looked a lot forward to see our friend and family back in Norway.
The trip home was horrible...! We were at Narita airport 2.5 hours before our plane would leave, but our queue was enormous nevertheless. It turned out that all planes to and from London was either canceled or delayed. Back then we didn`t know exactly how bad it was (mum had called British Airways and it turned out that first plane to Oslo would have been on the 24th...!), but were overjoyed when they proposed that they could put us on a plane to Paris, and then catch a flight to Oslo.
In Paris (as probably all European airports that had flights to London) it was CHAOS! That in addition to the several terminals on different locations made it very difficult to find anything. You see, we had to check out and then check in again at another terminal (we didn`t know where) and travel with another airline (we didn`t know which). But we found everything in time.
To make things worse, we had to get in touch with my family. They would pick us up at Gardermoen. My phone didn`t have any battery left (I didn`t check... not used to having a phone anymore) and I didn`t remember any numbers whatsoever. Luckily Georg had written down my dad`s number in his wallet, and we were ready to call when we got to Paris. We had no euro's, so we were hoping that we could either exchange some money, have time to take out some or pay with visa. Because of the chaos, we didn`t have time to take out money, there was no place to exchange money and the visa didn't seem to work on the phones. In a desperate attempt to try all phones that had this visa thing, we found one and we got through to my dad...!
It all ended well. But we were VERY tired after about 30 hours of traveling... Georg had a small infection under his eyes that over the course of 30 hours had gone from bad to worse, making him look as a drug addict at the best... We soo didn`t want to travel for a while now. We'll just stay in one place for a while....hehe...like that is gonna happen:)
More pictures here.
We were leaving Japan the 21st of December, and we had to do as much as possible before that. This consisted of shopping a lot... in particular for Christmas presents :) , eating a lot of sushi (which I now love by the way... who would have known) and try the teriyaki burger at Mac Donalds, and have several goodbye gatherings.
We had a great last night out with the gang, eating yakitori, and then we went to our local karaoke place. It was a lot of fun. At work we had one Christmas party with the ICYS, with the small NIMS group we had a Christmas/Annett is leaving-party. At the NIMS party I served them brown goat cheese. To my surprise, and contrary to my intentions, some people actually liked it.
My NIMS groupIt was quite sad to leave Japan. We have gotten very good friends there, and really felt at home there now. But we also looked a lot forward to see our friend and family back in Norway.
The trip home was horrible...! We were at Narita airport 2.5 hours before our plane would leave, but our queue was enormous nevertheless. It turned out that all planes to and from London was either canceled or delayed. Back then we didn`t know exactly how bad it was (mum had called British Airways and it turned out that first plane to Oslo would have been on the 24th...!), but were overjoyed when they proposed that they could put us on a plane to Paris, and then catch a flight to Oslo.
In Paris (as probably all European airports that had flights to London) it was CHAOS! That in addition to the several terminals on different locations made it very difficult to find anything. You see, we had to check out and then check in again at another terminal (we didn`t know where) and travel with another airline (we didn`t know which). But we found everything in time.
To make things worse, we had to get in touch with my family. They would pick us up at Gardermoen. My phone didn`t have any battery left (I didn`t check... not used to having a phone anymore) and I didn`t remember any numbers whatsoever. Luckily Georg had written down my dad`s number in his wallet, and we were ready to call when we got to Paris. We had no euro's, so we were hoping that we could either exchange some money, have time to take out some or pay with visa. Because of the chaos, we didn`t have time to take out money, there was no place to exchange money and the visa didn't seem to work on the phones. In a desperate attempt to try all phones that had this visa thing, we found one and we got through to my dad...!
It all ended well. But we were VERY tired after about 30 hours of traveling... Georg had a small infection under his eyes that over the course of 30 hours had gone from bad to worse, making him look as a drug addict at the best... We soo didn`t want to travel for a while now. We'll just stay in one place for a while....hehe...like that is gonna happen:)
More pictures here.
posted by Annett Thogersen @ 8:29 PM
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