…and you thought the Scandinavian winter was harsh?

I’ve been home for winter break for a few weeks now, and it’s been pretty relaxing overall.  There were some moments, however, where I wasn’t sure if I’d even make it home for the holidays.

On my last morning in Copenhagen, I awoke to my phone ringing at about 6:00 a.m.  It was my mom: American Airlines had called my home phone number to say that my flight to JFK was cancelled due to weather in New York.  I was hoping to get a flight re-routed through Copenhagen, but I couldn’t get through to the airline’s reservation hotline, so I went to the airport to see what I could arrange (I had a connection to make at London Heathrow Airport and didn’t want to be stuck in another city if I could avoid it).

When I got to the airport, I spoke with a man at the British Airways counter since they were handling my flight to Heathrow.  He informed me that the flight was not cancelled, and that I should proceed with my British Airways flight.  Believing him, I boarded my plane hoping for the best.  A few other DIS students were on my plane, all of them connecting to either JFK, Newark or O’Hare.  None of them had been informed of cancelled flights, so I assumed it was going to be fine, just like the British Airways employee had told me.  Wrong.

When I got from the British Airways terminal to the American Airlines terminal, I found out that my flight was indeed cancelled.  The people from American Airlines said that ALL flights to New York were cancelled, so even if there had been available seats with other airlines, they couldn’t possibly get us to New York that evening.  This was not true: my friend’s flight to JFK with British Airways was delayed by three hours, but she still made it home that night.  American cancelled prematurely, I just know it.

After waiting in line for three hours, only to be told that there was no point to my waiting in line by a rather bitchy employee of American Airlines, I found out (by calling a number on a very generous woman’s cell phone and waiting on hold for 45 minutes) that the only flights I could get to the US were to Boston on Tuesday.  As it was Sunday, I was stuck for two more days.  I later found out that the nice (and gorgeous) Swedish guy behind me in line was able to get a flight to JFK on Tuesday, but since I was able to have Tom pick me up, it wasn’t a really big deal where I flew into as long as I was landing relatively close to Connecticut.  I did, however, miss my flight to Pittsburgh on Tuesday (I was supposed to fly home after spending Monday and Tuesday with Tom).  Since my itinerary had been changed previously, this was actually the second flight I had purchased to come home.

So anyways, being trapped in London was not the worst thing in the world.  It is by far my favorite European city (although I’m still eagerly anticipating Istanbul, Prague, Budapest, Stockholm, et cetera).  I took the Underground into the city on Monday and did my Christmas shopping on Oxford Street.  Still having all day to do whatever I wanted, I ventured over to Trafalgar Square to see the Christmas tree (I thought I’d been to Trafalgar Square before; I guess I had thought I was there but was at a different obelisk?), I went to Buckingham Palace even though I’d already seen it, and after dark – which was rather early, it being the solstice and everything – I went to Westminster to see Parliament lit up and reflected in the Thames.  Just as I arrived at Westminster, it began to snow (it had been snowing earlier in the day but had eased up for a while).  Seeing the snowfall in front of Parliament was absolutely beautiful, and it was also very pretty on Regent Street, where I did some browsing in stores to keep warm before deciding to go to Westminster.

Since getting back to my home town in Meadville after a day with Tom and an uncomfortable flight to Erie, I have been inundated with snow.  The only days on which I don’t think I saw snowfall were Christmas day and the day after.  In fact, the already enormous amounts of snow melted on Christmas – the one day on which everyone appreciates a white-out.  Tom arrived on the first, and from that point on it did not stop snowing for eight days.

I don’t mean that it snowed every day for eight days.  No, no – this is northwest Pennsylvania that we’re talking about.  I mean that snow literally did not stop falling from the sky for eight days, twenty-four hours a day.  It was impossible to say whether or not the roads were being properly plowed, because it just didn’t make much of a difference.  I haven’t experienced that much snow since my early childhood – I swear, there were at least five feet of snow on the ground in many places!

Tom and I didn’t do much during his visit, but we did catch up with some friends.  I felt bad that I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted, and most of the friends I did see, I did not hang out with more than once or twice.  I don’t keep in touch with very many people from high school, especially when I’m abroad, so it’s hard to get in ample time with everyone when I’m home.  In addition to hanging out with my friends, we also went shopping a lot (and not just at Wal-Mart)!

Well, now I’m back in DC, where I’ll be staying at Tom’s place until the 14th, when I fly back to Copenhagen overnight.  It’s so weird being back on the GW campus for the first time since May, especially since my visit is so transitory.  I forgot how much I love it here, and I love how well I still know the place.  Everything is just the same, and the same things amuse and frustrate me, and for that I’m really grateful.  It’s going to be damn near impossible to leave America when it’s not Meadville that I’m leaving this time, but my real home.  I love this District.

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