London

Sweet Mercy. I haven't posted since before I left (mostly because I don't have a computer with me) but today Matt Reeve lent me his computer and I now get to update everyone on what we have done so far this trip.
On Tuesday, September 1st we flew out to London on an overnight flight from Minneapolis. I'll be completely honest, except for the free movies, long flights suck. I spent about 5 hours trying to sleep and maybe 3 hours sleeping, although eventually I gave up and instead just annoyed Matt with Thomas. We landed in London at about noon their time and did customs and all that fun stuff before getting into the city. Now, I am sure some people are thinking, "London is so cool, I bet you had so much fun," on the contrary we had almost no fun in London, it was the beautiful London Stansted airport that supplied all our fun for the first day...if you can call 2 hour in an airport with increasingly crabby people fun.
Our flight to Munich was at 6:55 the next morning, so with tears in our eyes and no food in our stomachs we caught a ridiculously priced train to get to the London Stansted airport 45 minutes outside of the center of the city. When we got there it was about 8:00 pm and I felt like we were in the cheesy first 20 minutes of a zombie movie. We arrive at this bizarre ghost-town of an airport with 4 or 5 flights left to leave. To imagine the airport you just have to imagine a huge square building, probably close to a half mile to walk all the way around the outside and the far back wall has the entrances to all 99 gates. The walls are glass all the way up, and the whole place creaks and moans when the wind blows, and we get there and realize that we are a part of a handful of people settling down for the long wait. We found some decent sandwiches and hunkered down in a corner to wait for the plane.
This is where the crabbiness starts from my dear, dear compadre Matt Reeve. I can understand why, we were running on zero sleep and I was being increasingly annoying. Talking in a Southern accent, telling him not to worry about anything, and doing almost nothing to prepare us for Munich (I am not too productive when I am tired), I was a little annoying. Not to mention Matt Reeve hoisted our futures on his huge shoulders. He planned everything for the next two days while Thomas and I listened to loveline and laughed our tired butts off. The crabbiness is besides the point and was very justifiable.
The reason it felt like a zombie movie (other than the airport at night thing) was that hundreds of travellers started arriving at about midnight to wait for their flights, we felt like refugees. People were sleeping everywhere and it was too a point where every bench and chair was occupied. By the time the morning came, I was starting to get sick of being around so many people and was sort of excited to get on the plane.
After we got through the gate Thomas insisted that 4:30 am after no sleep was the perfect time for a beer, and that is going to be the memory I am planning to hang onto. Thomas Joyce telling me that it was the perfect time to drink, me exclaiming that it was way too early, and hime pointing out literally hundreds of people at and around the bar drinking half-liters of beer. Europe is ridiculous, but Thomas and Matt acted the part while they enjoyed their 4:30 pick-me-up.