Travel Misfortunes

One of the funniest days I ever had was when I visited Stonehenge. I took the tour bus from Salisbury to Stonehenge with a few other tourists (8 Italian guys). During the drive there was an automobile accident on the road and the bus had to stop. The driver told us to take a walk to Stonehenge because the police will soon arrive and the road will be closed for about 4 hours. We asked how far Stonehenge is and he told that it is 2 miles away. He showed the direction and we got started.
We walked for about an hour in the mud when we found a sign reading “Stonehenge 2 miles”. We cursed for a few minutes then continued. After another hour we met with a father and his three or four year old son walking. They appeared from the middle of nowhere. We asked them how far Stonehenge is. They answered “2 miles”. After another hour and a half we reached Stonehenge.
It was the end of November so we were all cold and really pissed off. We paid the entry fee then noticed that it is wired and we can’t touch the stones. After a few minutes of watching it one of the Italians spoke up: “Collosseum is prettier”, he said. I started to laugh and learned my lesson for the day: No matter how far you are Stonehenge is always 2 miles away.

Once i was on holidays with some of my friends at Prag. We went there by train. On our way back, unfortunately we didnt know that, we stopped right after the border in germany. That was really great! We only had czech money and no cash machinem was there. So we had to sit in the sun for 3 hours, without being able to get something to drink... .
And the best thing was, when we got finally our next train, soccer fans on the way back from the game, crowded the train, so that we had to go for hours, crowded like fishes in a can.

Back when I visited the United States with my Dad (around 2002), we met another Romanian living in New York, a sort of acquaintance of our family. She asked us if we could take back some stuff to her family here in Romania, mainly some old clothes and stuff like that. We agreed to do it and she packed a bagfull of old stuff, underwear included.

At airport check things were really strict back then, following the September 11 attacks and being foreign, they had us open everything up so they can manually check our bags. Needless to say how embarassed we were when the security guy opened one of the bags and the stuffed underwear and bras starting flying around :(

Yap, twice, at the airport. I don't know why this is always happening to me. But if I am to make an "most embarrassing" top, one of the highest position will surely be the happening from the Charleroi airport, this month. I took again my watch, my phone, and of course my belt (and i'm not exactly mister fit) and placed them in a basket, and with confidence walk through the metal detector. And what do u know, beeep-beeeep. - Excuse me sir, can I frisk you? the policeman asked, like I had a choice. - Yes of course!. He frisked me for like 5 minutes, and like that wasn't enough, a lady from the police came: -Sir, can I check your bag? -Yes, I said this like nothing can go wrong. I have to took everything out. I had a box of pizza biscuits there, opened, the lady takes it out, looks strangely at it, inside it, and asks me: -What's this? - Food, I responded, visibly embarrassed! I really like that pizza biscuits. With everything taken from the bag (and I tell you there were a lot of stuff there, including my dirty shoes and an homemade flattened sandwich which really smelled bad), she said: -Thank you sir. I said: - You're welcome, but thinking ... Why me??? I took me another 5 minutes to put everything back in and to walk somehow embarrassed to the duty free shops.

Lol Dan, they always pick on us :P

At least they were polite enough to ask if they could frisk you first :)

I just remembered another embaressing/funny moment I had during a flight to Spain. I was flying from Madrid to Valencia, a relatively short flight, yet something went wrong at check-in and I was the only one left without a seat in the plane, despite paying for my ticket days in advance!

I had to sit in the stewardess' cabin for half an hour and they delayed the flight until they could find me a seat, lol. Everyone was looking at me like I was some trouble-maker, probably thinking to themselves I'm the cause of the delay, when in fact it was a screw-up on the airline's part. Oh well, at least I saw how it's like to be a stewardess! (Minus the raunchy remarks from passangers and peanut delivery jokes).

I´ve got a similar story like Tudy.
On 2007 we flew to Dublin for the european championship soccer match against Ireland.
At London Heathrow we had an stop for houres. Then, of course too "late" we rushed to our connection flight. We had to stand half an hour in the lane for being checked. When we were checked later, we had nearly to undress ourselves, the guy told us, that we cant take liquid things in our handbagagge with us. I had to run back, to get some of these plastic bags.
When we put everything in, suddenly all was fine.
As if that could have saved the airplaine before a bomb!
Bloody hysteria!