An arduous journey

I’m writing now from a wonderful little hostel in Sydney now a couple of days after my travel here. But you’ll hear more about that another time, today I’ll be telling you of my 42 hour flight to get here:

Things started off very nice and calmly on the 29th of January, having mostly finished packing two days before I was actually setting out. Getting together the last things, making sure everything is charged and prepping sandwiches for the flight. Then a final lunch with dad and mom, and then dad drove me to the airport to see me off.

At Arlanda everything went mostly smoothly, small spat with my name missing the last letter but didn’t change anything. Then followed quite a long wait as I had 3 hours margin, just to be safe. The Istanbul flight went of with out any hitches and I even got dinner which I hadn’t expected, and I arrived at the new airport there around midnight. I did some quick scouting of how I would get out to the complementary tour of Istanbul, and then sought out a NapZone to try and get some sleep. Which I unfortunately didn’t manage, think I might have sleep maybe an hour.

But not to be deterred a quite sleepy Jonatan gobbled up his last sandwiches which aren’t allowed through customs and then out into Turkey. I just made it in time to get on my tour which turned out to be mostly a buss sightseeing tour. But we started out strongly by going down to the Bosporus were we got some breakfast right next to the Ottoman imperial palace from the 19th century. And on top of that the ground around it was patrolled by a clowder of very cute stray cats.

Which was followed by quite a hectic buss tour through this huge city being guided by a Bengalese man resulting in an interesting combo of social commentary, history and very specific banter. But on the whole this was a fun way to spend another couple of hours of my 15 hour layover.

Then back to the airport, through security once again and then a few hours at the gate. This next leg of the journey would be a long one, a 20 hour flight to Sydney, with a short stopover to refuel in Kuala Lumpur. But it actually went quite all right, I had a few other Swedes sitting with me and a nice French couple in my seat trio. So just trying to pass the time for 10 hours with okay food, movies and a few hours of sleep which were cut short by our stopover. But the stop in Malaysia was actually kind of nice, stretching my legs and brushing my teeth before another 10 hour leg of the journey. This one a bit tougher as I was starting to get extremely tired and really would have preferred not to sleep to help with jetlag when I arrived in the evening. But I finally had to give in, and was asleep almost before deciding it was okay.

But those extra two hours would be really nice to have under my belt when I landed in Sydney, two hours late. Because when we left the plane we were greeted by two airport officials handing out papers detailing that everyone’s bags was left in Kuala Lumpur. Which was not the best way of finishing this arduous journey, but at least it made customs easy. Finally I was met on the airport by Olle, a friend of mine from gymnasiet that has been i Australia for almost a year, and he drove me to the hostel in Coogee I had booked (where he was also living).

PS: It seems like I was somewhat prophetic in my first post here, because now it’s gone another week and some more and I’m in New Zeeland. But I think I’ll be more consistent with posts, at least in the coming weeks as I am not in anywhere near as much of a hurry here.

PPS: My bag turned up Tuesday morning (I landed Friday night), so no real catastrophe. And I got some really nice sandals and outdoor trousers out of the travel insurance.