Sunday 19 June 2011

Home Sweet Home

Greetings all and welcome to this first post of Bernie's Blog.
Over the next couple of weeks I am going to be relating my recent trip to Berlin, but today I would like to begin at the end.
I arrived home last Thursday from my trip to Germany having been delayed by the Chilean volcanic ash cloud.
I was watching BBC World in the days leading up to my departure for news about airport closures etc, saying to myself " it couldn't possibly happen to Perth".
Well, guess what?
When we arrived in Singapore Qantas told us QF 78 had been cancelled and we were being put up in The Trades Hotel.
After a 12 hour flight from Amsterdam it wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear, but I've learnt over the years to just go with the flow so I accepted my fate with some degree of semi eager anticipation.
The Trades as it turned out was at least 4 star, maybe even 5 star so I felt rather important booking in, even though Qantas was actually paying for it, and all credit to them for looking after us so well and efficiently.
The bad news was that the flight had been rescheduled for 5am the next day and we were to leave the hotel by shuttle bus at 3am, after a 2.30 wake up call.
The wake up call wasn't required as I woke up at 1.30 as bright as a button, the body clock being somewhat confused after 2 weeks in Europe.
As I was waiting to check out of the hotel, at ten to three, a group of young Aussie men were just arriving home from a night on the town, in varying staes of inebriation.
One of them asked me when we were flying. I said the plane was due to leave at 5am that morning and the shuttle was departing in 10 minutes.
You should have seen his face. He and his mates thought we were flying at five in the afternoon and it was pure luck that they had decided to come home.
So, to coin a popular cliche and cut a long story short, the flight to Perth was vey pleasant, good food, pleasant company and SOOOOO good to hear Aussie accents again after two weeks conversing in a mix of German/English.
Gai and the two youngest grandchildren, Ellie and Katie were at the airport to meet me and it was so nice to be on familiar turf.
Trip was fantastic and as I always feel on retuning from overseas, "there really is no place like home".
Tune in next week for the start of the story.

No comments:

Post a Comment