Stranded
Friday, November 21st, 2008I’m on the edge of my wits. I’m in London Stansted airport, after flying from Casablanca to Madrid to Heathrow. I haven’t slept in 24 hours. I’m cold. I have no where to go.
Basically, I decided to make my way to Sweden a week early for various reasons, and now I can’t get a flight to Stockholm until Monday. So I’m stranded in London for 2 days and all I have is the number of one of my brother’s friends, Jacob, who I hope I can stay with. I’m all alone and stressed out. Traveling is fun. My stress level wasn’t helped when the passport control man at Heathrow was for some reason highly suspicious of me. He started questioning me vigorously once he read that my intended address in England was “Stansted Airport”. It didn’t help that when I get intimidated my face turns red and I forget vital details and basically sound like I’m lying. I couldn’t even remember the airline I was going to take to get to Stockholm- I just called it the “really cheap one”. He demanded to see proof of an onward ticket but I had no hard copy. He demanded to see proof that I could pay for a ticket and seemed skeptical when I said I lost my credit card in Egypt and I handed over my Moroccan dirhams, which he counted three times and then looked up the exchange rate so he could find out how many pounds it was. I had no idea I was such a dodgy-seeming person.
I’ll write a decent post on Morocco when I can think properly.
afretheim