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| Bratislava airport at night |
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| Our Ryanair plane |
Aside from that, we had a fairly non-interesting flight with Ryanair. We got on the plane, the plane took off, flew for a bit, then landed. When it came time for customs, I had to line up in the peasants' (aka non-European passport holders') line, and my girlfriend, being an Austrian, went through the much faster EU line. While crawling through the extremely slow and boring line, I was trying to connect to the wifi with my phone, so I could talk to my girlfriend, or browse the internet, or literally anything even remotely interesting. I had no luck with the wifi but did manage to get to the front of the line eventually.
Now, being a non-EU citizen, I had to fill out a card on arrival, with the purpose of my visit, my intended period of stay, an address where I was staying and so on. If you've ever travelled to a foreign country, then you know the type of thing. I am not the most organised of people, and where possible, I tend to let my girlfriend organise the details of our travels, because she'll;
a) get around to it (I tend to put things off);
b) remember whatever it is that's been organised (I'll forget the date and time of a flight I've booked before I've even left the room).
And so, as a result, I actually had no idea what the address of the hostel we were staying at was. I had no idea what it was called. I did recall that it costed about £8, because that was ridiculously cheap, and that it was fairly close to the city centre. I left that blank on the card, while trying to connect to the wifi to ask my girlfriend about it.
So, I get to the front and begin my conversation with the immigration officer. Of course, she notices that I haven't got an address that I'll be staying at, so she asks me about it.
"I'm afraid I don't know the address, my girlfriend has all the details."
"Where is she now?"
"She's Austrian, so she went through the EU line...I know that it's a hostel, and it costs about £8 a night."
After convincing her that it was all good, she asked what my purpose was and whether I had an onward ticket booked. She also seemed perturbed that I had written "~2 months" under the question about my intended period of stay. I explained that I was having a short holiday with my girlfriend, and then she would fly back to Austria, and I would go to London, to apply for a working holiday visa from the Latvian embassy. If I got it, then I'd be off to Latvia, if not, then I had enough money in my New Zealand account for a flight back to New Zealand. She wasn't impressed. I then tried to persuade her that I understood the seriousness of over-staying, by telling her about the time that I was deported from Germany (which I'll write about another time). With hindsight I realise, of course, that this was a terrible approach to take, even after explaining that in the end, it was proved that the deportation was a mistake on the German bureaucrat's part, and that the decision was reversed. But in the end, she allowed me in to the UK despite my ambiguously filled out arrival card, my vague answers to her questions and my admission of being deported from another EU country (although the decision had been reversed).
What would I have done if I hadn't been allowed in? I'm not sure, to be honest. I would've desperately found a way to contact my girlfriend, as a first point of action, so she'd know what was going on. Aside from that, not sure. But I was allowed in, and so my UK adventure could begin...
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