Day 1 - Fly till you drop, twice

The First day, Getting There

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Klaaswaal, July 24, 2000 - I still can't believe I managed to get a good night sleep last night, but I did. When I woke up I felt great, of course then I didn't quite know what it was like to fly for 14 hours... Klaaswaal doesn't have a international airport, so we needed to get to Schiphol, about 50 minutes from Klaaswaal. My parents were willing to drive, but we thought it would probably be safer to go by train. I still don't know why the railway company decided that today was a good day to do maintenance in the area of Haarlem, fact is they did, thus forcing us to leave even earlier. My mom dropped us off at Rotterdam Central Station.

We weren't troubled by any delays so we were at the airport way too early. After we got our tickets we checked in and decided this was a good time to get something to eat. We went to McDonald's, and I got a McChicken without chicken. It was not that I didn't want the chicken, but the guys behind the counter probably thought it was a good idea to leave out the chicken. Weird people...

Boarding took ages. I'd never flown in a Boeing 747-400 before so I reckoned this was normal. When we finally got seated it didn't take long, the plane was moving, accelerating, taking off! We were on our way to the other side of the world! The excitement didn't last too long as I slowly started to realize I was locked in this small seat for the next 14 hours. After a while you get in a kind of zombie state, looking at a dumb movie or the inflight information system. I actually managed to get some sleep, about 2 hours totally. When I woke the last time we were approaching Johannesburg. To land on african ground was great! The stopover took about an hour and a half and we weren't allowed to get off the plane. Then the plane took off for the last time that week, at least with us in it.

If you're interested in what happened on day 2, click here!