Rome Sweet Home
Trip Start
Aug 19, 2011
1
13
Trip End
Aug 31, 2011
Rome, Lazio, Italy
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
I think I waited about 10 minutes before the guy came, and that was fine. There was no freeway to the airport and so we wove between the streets, zig zagging around potholes and stopped cars until we arrived at a building that looked like a large warehouse with taxis parked all around it and people with suitcases waiting around and looking confused. Oh my GOD!! The airport is a joke, but it sure was a good thing I came early!!
Inside the airport, was a large room with 2 rows of benches, an old fashioned TV. type monitors with flight numbers that said "Check-In" and a little bar. Then there were the many money change windows and a dude running around saying “Change money, change money?) I had my doubts that I would make it to Budapest for my connection!!
I, among many others, was completely dumbfounded and had no idea what to do. So there I am, dragging my heavy suitcase around…I changed my money, (I wasn't even sure if it was counterfeit,) and looked for some indication of... ANYTHING. Finally, a guy came up to me and told me to go upstairs to the airline office. I said “Do they speak English?” and he said they did. I carried my luggage up the seemingly endless stairs the “Hungarian Air” office where I was directed to 2 large doors (downstairs) marked "Customs, red door, and Customs green door." It was all very ominous but I waited in the nearly 2-hour line that had formed behind the giant doors, until I got through the door… Oh my GOD! First was the customs, I put my bag on a conveyer belt and walked through a standard metal detector…no taking off shoes, no taking off belt etc. The next “window” was the check-in…1 window for four flights!! Then the passport control... and out to the 1 and only gate in which there was a bar and a duty free shop with potato chips, m&m’s and booze. There were 4 flights that day (To various locations) and everyone was in the same room. The only way I knew my flight was the time it boarded, and that I followed some people who spoke Ukrainian that I had overheard were going to Budapest.
The flight itself was normal (you know, a real airplane with seats!!) but only half full and there was a nice guy 2 seats away who made sure I got my cookie and Pepsi even while I slept. Then there were lots of very uncomfortable babies screaming the entire (luckily short) trip.
Then after about an hour, we landed in Budapest, Hungary and disembarked from the plane into another confusion.
First we were not allowed to enter the airport until we had been re-screened, taking off shoes and belts and removing watches etc. I was a bit amused by this and knew the reason was because of Ukraine, but to satisfy my irritation at authority, I politely asked the screener what they thought happened between getting on the plane at Odessa and getting off here. He was amused also and simply said that non-EU countries don’t use a standard procedure and it was the last screening for a transfer flight anyway. So the security and the passport control (which always makes me nervous) then the difficult part was finding the gate. The Hungarians seemed a bit rude but I also thought it could just be the way they speak English which I have encountered before in Europe,) and it was hard to get information in this huge airport.
Finally I was sent to A10 where I waited with other Italian passengers. You can always tell Italians, They have a certain sort of ...well, a way of being that is uniquely Italian, by now, very endearing to me, and I was so happy to see clean, well-dressed people that I could understand!! Even if my Italian isn’t great, I do understand it on a basic level and it was a relief to use it, especially since English was getting me NOWHERE.
After waiting at Gate A10, there was the next wait at A4 Gate, where we all ran to catch the flight, after someone figured out that it ha moved, then it was at Gate A1 in the end...but we all got on the Alitalia jet, which seemed like a luxury, first class airline after the last few flights I’d taken lately and I was really happy to be in familiar territory with English and Italian being spoken. No matter how badly, at least there was communication!!
It was a short, pleasant flight into Fiumicino airport where I went straight to the baggage claim, praying that my suitcase had made it out of Ukraine. Big relief!! It was all here and I was safe. I took the first taxi that I saw and came home, listening to the taxi driver tell me about how lucky I was that the weather had cooled down!!! Oh my God...I forgot about this awful heat!!! No matter, though, I was home now....and even if the weather sucks, there’s no place like Rome!
