Travelling on a student budget it is always of prime importance to research the cheapest travel methods, with every penny counting towards the next trip. With the emergence of wonderful airlines such as ryanair and air asia the world has suddenly become a smaller place, and in my opinion this can only be a good thing. Even if it means paying for everything on board from food to toilets, the hardy among us shall grin and bear it.
My trip to Munich was a particular achievement in my quest to travel the globe on a budget. Aer Lingus conveniently released a flight sale allowing me to fly from London Gatwick to Munich for £25, whilst for my return flight I managed to grab a 5 euro flight from Memmingen to Stansted, totalling in at under £30 flight expenditure. Not bad. Unfortunately my rather inconsiderate parents are based in the middle of nowhere, near Wetherby in Yorkshire, which inevitably rakes up the bills in actually reaching the airport. Return trains Leeds to London were £30, train from London to Gatwick £6, and the EasyBus Stansted to London £6. Add in a couple of quid worth of tube fairs, and that is one Yorkshire bumpkin and her shockingly small hand luggage all the way from northern England to the south of Germany for only £74 return. We cannot really compain.
Thus I braced myself for the epic thirteen hour journey door to door. All went fairly smoothly, despite encounters with screaming children on trains and the evident swine flu panic flooding London. The nightmarish sight of whole groups of foreign school children wearing surgical masks at Gatwick airport paled into insignificance however compared to the ordeal which Aer Lingus decided to expose us to. Having herded us to the departure gate, it rapidly became quite clear that our plane was not going to depart at 18:10. It was not until 18:30 that Aer Lingus decided to announce that there did not appear to be a crew for our plane and we could expect major delays. They kindly suggested that we return to the main departure area (an epic 25 minute walk away). Dragging my loyal hand luggage behind me I treated myself to a full makeover courtesy of the duty free shop, took a spray of Anna Sui for confidence, and bravely faced the customer services desk to demand my customer rights. After queuing for over thirty minutes I was told that the plane was now in fact boarding and that I should return to the gate.
This was not entirely true and we ended up waiting for another hour before we could board. I could only hope that German efficiency would be better and my lovely chauffeur and host for the trip Danny would be waiting at the airport at the other end. Luckily he was although British efficiency meant that no details of the delay had been passed through and he had been waiting for over two hours! At last my trusty hand luggage and I had arrived and touched German soil for the first time, and it was back to his house for a good night's sleep before the trip commenced in the morning.
