Home at last!
Well I don't really want to write about what we did everyday because it will take forever to write and might be boring to read so here’s a summary:
journey to Poland, Lodz, zoo, tram adventures, sleep, train to krakow+to Myskow(no getting lost this year), salt mine, bowling, shopping, BBQs, Worship+prayer, castle ruins, climbing down mountain (scary!), annual fottie match 5-2 (to Poland), saw catholic church(and 1000s of Catholics parading towards it and had been walking for a few days, signing of tops on last day, jumping fish(ha-ha), journey home(tiring).
Well there are a few words there that will give you an idea about what happened out there. But what I will explain is the journey home. There always has to be a Poland "adventure" as we call it. Last year was the train journey, this year the adventure home.
What was meant to happen was that we left the hotel (Poland) at 8am on Saturday and drive continually with no hotel stop all the way to Birmingham (England) and stop at Auschwitz on the way back. Also we should have been on the ferry back at 8am on Sunday and arrived home about 1pm in the afternoon.
Ok, this is what actually happened. We left “Hotel Kinga” at 8:30am and safely got to Auschwitz at 10am ready for the tour. We finished at 12pm and waited for Klaudia’s Dad to arrive because he was picking up Klaudia’s brother (Mati) and Iza(translator) and Margaret and Brian (members of my church) so to take them to Krakow because they weren’t coming back with us. He arrived at 1pm but some of the guys had wandered off so we had to wait 30mins for them to get back and then the minibus driver wandered off and we then had to wait around for them ( so we were waiting around for an hour or so). Finally everyone was back and we said goodbye to them and got in the minibus ready to carry on home. The time now was about 2ish. We were already feeling yucky and we still had another day to go. I can’t remember much between leaving Auschwitz and the night time – I think I went to sleep. I remember going to McDonalds for lunch and that’s it. I don’t remember dinner. Well anyway everything was fine and between 11pm and 4am I had to be awake so I could navigate through Germany with Klaudia. I didn’t have enough sleep before it – I think I only slept an hour or 2 that day. And I had to keep eating chocolate to wake myself up – that’s all I had hehe. After my shift I went to the back again and tried to sleep it was so uncomfortable and it kept raining and the minibus had leaks everywhere. We were now wet, sweating and a mess. I woke up at about 6am and learnt that we were still in Germany and that we were about 2 hours behind because of the weather and the traffic. I went back to sleep and then was woken by a lot of people speaking and the slowing down of the minibus. We then had to pull over to the hard shoulder because the trailer had been bouncing up and down. So we stopped to check if the trailer was ok. It looked fine so we went to go and start the engine and it wouldn’t start and we kept trying but we couldn’t start it. They then told us to all get out the minibus and to wrap warm – it was 9am and luckily it wasn’t raining. We learnt that the tape thing in the engine or something had broken(don’t ask me about it lol) so we had to get it fixed. So Matt (leader) phoned the RAC (lets point out that it was a Sunday, we were in Belgium now and apparently it was a bank holiday). We waited around in the cold for an hour I think with sleeping bags wrapped around us hehe. I was really desperate for a wee but I didn’t go because there were too many stinging nettles (oh sorry there was like a wood beside the motorway). Finally and randomly a policewoman came and asked us what had happened and we told her we had phoned the RAC, amazingly the RAC then turned up (as soon as the police get involved everything speeds up hmm). At this point we had no idea what was going to happen to us, the minibus and the trailer. Luckily there was a service station 10miles up the road and told the driver of the car (that had also came to Poland with us) to fill it up and take them up to the services and everyone else would have some sort of transport to get up there and they would pull the minibus up there to and sort if out there. I was told to get in the car with Sara and some others and we ventured up to the services. But it wasn’t labelled very well so we missed the entrance and had to turn round onto the other side and go all the way down the opposite road so to find another turn round to go back up and try again. But that took us half an hour to find the turn round road – hectic! Finally we got to the service station and met the others. The minibus was parked in the lorry area and everyone was inside eating breakfast. After 3hours of waiting the truck to take the minibus to Calais arrived but we now had no transport to get to Calais. Some taxis were meant to turn up but they didn’t. So we waited again for about half an hour and then a minibus arrived to take us – it was way better than our hunk of junk lol. It took us about 2hours to get to the Ferry port. We found our minibus waiting for us there so we went to check in. We had to go on as foot passengers because the taxi wasn’t coming with us and we had to get some transport on the other side. So we went to check in and the woman we went to went mad before we said anything. What we were trying to do was to get 15 people on as foot passengers and to get the minibus on while being on top of this truck thing. But she just started shouting before Matt could even explain the situation. I can’t quite remember what she was saying but practically it was like you’re not allowed to come on until the minibus was fixed (that would have took days) and she was telling us to go away. She even told Matt that he was being rude when he wasn’t even close to it. Matt was there trying to reason with her and she was shouting like mad at him. At the end Matt just said excuse me I’m the customer and you are treating me like a piece of “poo”. And he went and found the manager. We then were told to get out the bus and this crazy French man came up and was yelling as well (what’s with arrogant French people – we had done nout wrong and were being really reasonable). He then told us to get in the bus again (ah) and we were dumped outside the deport area. One member stayed with the minibus and went on the ferry with it and we went on as foot passengers. But the ferry didn’t leave for another 2hours and so we had to wait in the waiting area. Finally we got in but unsure if the minibus got on ok. It was now 6pm as the ferry left and we found Ben (who stayed with bus) and he said it was ok. There was such a sense of relief then. We then sat down and rested as we sailed across to England we got there at 8pm (it took a while) and we had to wait at a petrol station outside the ferry port for the minibus to load onto a different trucker thing and we had to wait for the hire cars. Another hour of waiting! Finally we were in cars and heading towards home. We arrived home at 12:30am. We were physically and emotionally drained and 12 hours behind schedule! – It was worse than the train situation last year!
I’m not home and really tired and I have loads of washing to do before soul survivor next week. Good job we had God on our side – it could have been worse!
