The Shortest Night

I know that I’m going to be feeling it today, but I’m going to try to stay strong!  Jet lag is going start hitting me pretty soon.

When I last left y’all I was just about to board the plane to Frankfurt.  I don’t know if I mentioned Frankfurt or not, but that was the next stop on the journey.  I just finished my sandwich, chips, and coke and I was ready for the next round – bring it on!

Hello Canada!

The next flight was about 8 hours long, but it moved me ahead in time by, I believe, 5 hours more.  Leaving around 7:00 and landing at 7:50 in the morning.  All in all the flight was nice, had good food (for airplanes) and very good service.  They had these little monitors on the back of the seat ahead for you to watch movies during your flight.  That came in handy later on.

Now, I don’t exactly know why I drink ginger ale on the airplane….it might have something to do with an “Oatmeal” cartoon that I read a while back.  But anyway, turns out that they didn’t have it this time!  Bummer!  Well, I settled for Coke.  And…it is true, Coke from other places tastes different than the American version.  It’s weird, but after I tasted it I remembered how it tasted when I last went to Europe.  Main difference is that it has sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup.

After eating, I tried to get some sleep so I wouldn’t be bushed for the day ahead.  Well, that didn’t happen.  I suffer from an undiagnosed case of restless leg syndrome.  The middle four hours of the flight were the hardest.  Every time that I would slightly saunter into slumber, my leg would start shaking uncontrollably.  Not only that but it is actually painful when I’m tired.

After a while, I said forget it – I’m going to watch a movie.  Well, I didn’t say it ‘cause I didn’t want to wake up my seat mate.  So, what movie did I pick to watch?  Cool Runnings!  If you have not seen it, you should.  It is a family favorite (at least for Sam and I….Joey and Rosemary got upset with the crash of the pushcart at the beginning the first time we watched it together.  I think that they at least tolerated it the second time).  It was such a blessing to see something so familiar in such a foreign (pun intended) environment.  It made the humor and funny stuff all that much funnier.  It was chicken soup for my soul.

My ride across the pond

I did keep a careful watch of how close we were to our scheduled stop in Frankfurt.  I had heard that Frankfurt airport is a tough one to move through quickly because it is so huge and I had only a two hour layover before going to Sofia.  There was a monitor in the middle of the cabin that would display every so often the time until arrival and the current local time.  So I would add the two together to get the proposed arrival time and mentally keep track of how that changed over time.  I think that we may have shaved a minute or two, but otherwise we were right on time.

Once we landed, we got one of those stair treatments for the plane and were put in a bus to go to the terminal.  Every chance I could I pushed myself so that I wouldn’t be late.  Then, once I got through security to get to my gate, I noticed that I had over an hour before they were to board my flight!  I was quite pleasantly surprised.

So, at that point, I logged onto the Wi-Fi and started writing this post.  I also downloaded the entire Actuarial Exam 9 study manual…..I was having trouble conceptualizing Gaussian Copulas in terms of Credit Value at Risk measures.  If that meant nothing to you, you are not alone….It meant nothing to me either!

The boarding for the flight was similar to the unboarding of the flight into Frankfurt: take a bus and hop in.  This flight was only two hours but it felt much longer.  The plane was bigger than the commuter, so I was able to store my carryon in the overhead bin (but I wore my camera religiously from that point on!).

The plane ride was uneventful and rather comfortable.  I slept most of the way over trying to catch up on the sleep I lost coming from Toronto to Frankfurt.

Then I landed in Sofia safely.  One of the first things I noticed was that signs were bilingual, Bulgarian and English.  I found the Cyrillic somewhat comforting.

Alright….that is it for now.  I’m going to write next about meeting Yavor my guide, getting lost in Sofia, finding St. Joseph’s Church, Skyping with home and more….

St. Christopher, pray for us!

God bless,
Sean