Boring Long Haul

Flying to Victoria is a real killer. We got up at 5 am to take a taxi to the train station and the the train to the airport. The check-in area was one endless line and we barely had time to get some breakfast before boarding. Then a two hour flight to London Heathrow and new lines. That airport is crummy and claustrophobic and should be replaced (I do not dare to say wiped off the face of the earth these days). We had something to eat and Esbjörn bought a Manchester United shirt. London-Vancouver is a long haul of almost 10 hours. And before we could take off we had to spend an hour waiting for our turn on the runway. The flight passed over Scotland and Greenland and continued southwest across Canada. Migration at Vancouver was like a socccer field filled with a long, snaking line. In comparison, the domestic terminal was like paradise, airy, and finnaly a small turbo-prop took us across to Vancouver Island and Victoria. Well, we had to take a 25 km taxi ride to the hotel too. These flights are just too boring and painful. It's not like old time travel when the journey itself was a pleasure. This is just economic mass-transport. We are flying between continents but time does not fly with us. It moves agonizingly slow. That in intself will limit human exchange between this place and the rest of the world until Scotty beams us across. The children were sort of drifting in and out of sleep pecking at food now and then. Alice started vomitting even before we got on the first flight so for her it was the real pits. As we were flying back in time, so to speak, it was only around 7 pm or so when we arrived at the hotel. The time difference to Sweden is 9 hours. Since we are staying in an apartment hotel I had to venture out in the evening to find a grocery store, slugging around the store, trying to identify unfamilliar brands of basic food items. When I got back they were all asleep. I went to bed too. When I woke up this morning I could see that they had been up eating during the night. Nevertheless, we are here.