Flying to Montevideo

My trip to Uruguay started on Monday very early in the morning. To be exact, my parents and I left for the airport in Munich at 4am. Needless to say I was a little late because I’m not exactly the definition of a morning person. But it didn’t matter because we were still at the airport on time and because my plane didn’t leave until 15 minutes after its scheduled time because they had to defrost the wings or something like that. 

After a short flight I arrived in sunny London. There I had to change into a bigger plane and on went the travels. The following flight to Miami was rather ordinary. The movie selection wasn’t the best so I stuck to reading “The fault in our stars” by John Green which I can highly recommend you to read. Food was also rather crappy as I guess plane food is supposed to be but at least they served shortbread. 

Upon arrival in Miami I had to go through immigration as required in the US. Then I had to pick up my luggage just to hand it back to an airport employee. And please do not ask why that is because the sense behind this procedure is a complete mystery to me. 

Now, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to my layover in Miami because it lasted  for seven very long hours. You may wonder why I didn’t use those seven hours to explore the city of Miami and to be honest I actually contemplated that option. But since I didn’t know whether the airport was far outside of Miami or more to the city center (the latter of which is the case) I figured I better stayed where I was. After all I am not the most punctual person and there was a 90% chance I’d find a very fast way to Miami Beach and then end up not making it back on time for my connecting flight. 

Luckily I met a law student named Anton from Sweden who was partly responsible for my staying at the airport. If I hadn’t had a nice conversation going with him (and I admit he was pretty cute) I might have ended up making the snap decision to leave against any good reason. 

But Anton kept me entertained until he had to catch his flight to Montego and after that it was really not a question anymore whether or not I should go. I was really thankful for this encounter, even though a specific conversation with him completely shattered my childhood. But this is a whole different story and I will write about it in my next blogpost. 

After Anton had left I still had about 5 hours of boredom in front of me. I soon finished "The fault in our stars" (again: recommend it!) and of course my laptop wasn’t much use either since the airport doesn’t have free wi-fi and I didn’t bring the right adapter with me to plug it in. Due to the weak battery I couldn’t even watch a movie. So I actually looked into my Spanish book and tried to study some past tense Spanish grammar. But I soon gave up on it and went to a corner store where I got myself a magazine to read. And somehow time went by and I got on the last plane: Miami to Montevideo.

At first I thought it would be even worse than the transatlantic flight from London to Miami because the seats didn’t have individual screens for watching movies or TV-series but there were only a few monitors in the middle (which showed very weird looking movies). Call me spoiled but I believe it isn't too much to ask for such luxury on an eight hour flight. But again I made a fortunate encounter. 

This time I met a girl named Joon who was from Korea but living in Cincinnati. She was on her way to traveling around South America with two of her friends. We had a nice conversation and the flight didn’t seem as long to me. Maybe that was also due to the fact that it was night time and I got to sleep a little.  Eventually we arrived in Montevideo. 

Upon arrival I had to go through immigration and get my tourist visa form stamped. The line in front of the passport control was maybe even longer than the one at the US immigration and even though I didn’t have a Swedish fella with me this time it seemed to move faster. And they handed out chocolate which of course menas I felt welcome!

After that I got my luggage and found me a shared taxi to my place. It took a while to find more passengers but in the end I got directly to my new place. I’ll save a description of it and an introduction of my roommates and landlord for another blogpost. This one is already pretty long....

...as was the flight. 

 Layover time.