The Long Trip Home

A few evenings ago we were sitting in our backyard in Gdansk having grilled hamburgers with our wonderful neighbors. We packed up their minivan and SUV with all of our luggage before we went to bed.

The next morning, they all (Mariusz, Basia, Karol, Karolina, Anita and Wojtek piled in three cars at 4:40 a.m. to take us to the airport. It is shockingly light at that hour in Poland in June. The sun starts rising at 3:30 a.m. As we were driving to the airport, I was surprised to see so many people out walking around. It sure did not look or seem like it was still nighttime. I guess they take advantage of all that light since they sure don't have it in the winter time!

We arrived at the airport and there was work to be done. I was so thankful to have so many willing helpers. The five of us each had two suitcases to check and we each had two carry on bags, too. I had to go to the LOT (Polish airline that we flew) business office to pay for our excess baggage. When we came over in September we were allowed to check two bags for free. Going home we were only allowed to check one for free. It ended up costing $325 to check the extra bags. Big bummer, but still less than shipping. It took a long time to get that done because the process is not streamlined. The lady entered all the information individually, having to enter my credit card number five times (once for each bag). I also received cards that I was to turn in at each airport so that they could see that we paid for the extra baggage.

While I was doing that, our friends were hanging out with the kids and all of our carry on baggage. Once I was finished getting the bags taken care of, I checked in. They gave me boarding passes for the flight to Warsaw and the flight to Chicago. The lady told me that we would have to get our boarding passes for the Kansas City flight in Chicago. When I was all checked in, we said our good byes. That was the first hard part of the day.

Our flight to Warsaw took off at 6:45. It is a 45 minute flight to Warsaw. Easy and blissfully uneventful. We arrived in Warsaw and made our way to the international flight area. It was about 7:45 when we made it to the security area and we were the only ones there! We were not rushed with anyone behind us. If there is such a thing as a pleasant security check, that was it. We then went to Passport Control. Here is where they check passports and you get a stamp as you are leaving the country.

I had been a little worried about this point. We were perfectly legal in Poland. In fact, the kids and I are still temporary residents of Poland until June 30th. We received official decision letters back in December when we were approved. We were supposed to receive photo identification cards within four months of getting that letter. We paid for them, we had our pictures taken (with the requirement of the left ear showing -- yep, seriously!), but we never received them. We were mostly certain that the decision letters would suffice, but sometimes Polish bureaucracy can be merciless.

I bravely walked up to the window and handed our five passports to the man and the woman who were checking them. They were friendly and made sure that all of our faces matched the pictures on the passports. They laughed at Trey who was making faces at himself in a two way mirror (where people were working on the other side). Then they did not even look at the stamps to indicate when we arrived. They did not question anything and stamped our passports. While I was so glad to get my "you may now leave Poland" stamp, they sure didn't do what they were supposed to do. I did not have to get my decision letters out or justify anything.

Next we had to wait. And wait. And wait. Our flight from Warsaw to Chicago was scheduled to take off at 12:10 so we had time to kill. We sat and did Mad Libs. That's always fun. After a little while a toddler (maybe 15 months or so) and his mother came to the area we were in. The mother did not speak any English, but the kids loved playing with the little boy. Now here's a cultural difference. After about 30 minutes, the mother comes over to me and says "toaleta" and points to her little boy. She wanted me to watch her baby while she went to the bathroom. I agreed, immediately thinking that there is no way in a million years that I would EVER leave my baby with a stranger who is clearly a foreigner in an airport. I know that I am no threat to that baby and would not run off with him, but how on earth would she know that? It's a different world over there. They stayed a while longer, then left for their flight to Kiev.

At 11:20, we went to our gate and I turned in my first set of cards so our luggage would get on the Warsaw to Chicago flight. We boarded the plane and found our seats in row 24. Trey was by the window and I was right next to him. Then across the aisle was Ben with an aisle seat, then Natalie in the middle, then Abbie on the other aisle seat. The flight ended up leaving 30 minutes late. It is a 9 hour, 40 minute flight. It started out fine and then was fairly bumpy for a long time. The kids were so tired and I tried to get them to sleep. But international flights are so crammed and uncomfortable, and the bumpy ride did not allow for sleep. Trey did doze off a little bit.

After about three hours, I did not think Trey looked like he felt well. He said he felt fine, but his eyes looked sick to me. He kept saying he was ok, so I believed him after a while. We switched seats around from time to time. Ben and I had switched seats so I was sitting by the girls and he was by Trey. All of a sudden, nearly six hours into the painfully slow flight, Ben says, "Mom! Trey is sick!" I look over, grab an "air discomfort" bag from the seat pocket in front of me and in a flash I am holding it to his mouth. Unfortunately, he had already thrown up all over his jacket, pants and seat.

I had Abbie flag down a flight attendant. The flight attendant brought a trash bag. I took Trey's jacket off him and threw it right into the trash. I sent Ben to take Trey to the bathroom to help him get cleaned up, and I worked on cleaning up the seat. The flight attendant brought me hot rags to clean up the seat and then I headed back to the bathroom to see how the boys were doing. Ben did a great job cleaning Trey up, but the damage was more than I had hoped. I knew we had few clothing options in our carry on bags. I quickly looked through what we had and found a German soccer goalie shirt of Natalie's and a pair of her red, shiny, long basketball shorts. I changed him out of his clothes and tossed them into the trash. He looked like a little gangster in the way too big and odd looking outfit. There would be a picture to document this, but the batteries were dead in my camera, so the image is left to the imagination.

I asked the flight attendant for an extra blanket and put that down on the still wet seat. Poor Trey did finally sleep for a couple of hours, but had a fever. I was really worried and wondered how I was going to pull off the rest of the trip. I just told myself that I would make a decision in Chicago as to what to do. If he was too sick to continue, at least we would be in the US. He seemed better when he woke up and there was only 30 minutes left in the flight.

We had a very bumpy landing. There was a thunderstorm approaching Chicago and we bounced all over the place before we ended up safely on the ground. The plane was about 15 minutes late. So this meant we had one hour and 45 minutes before our flight to KC. We got off the plane and walked and walked and walked to the customs area. The line was very long. They have lots of Passport control people working, but the line was still slow. Trey was lying on the floor when the line was not moving. It was so sad. When we finally reached the front of the line, about 35 minutes later, a very nice customs agent asked me a bunch of questions about the time we spent in Poland and what we were bringing into the country. As he stamped our passports, he cheerfully said, "Welcome home to the United States." Music to my ears!

The next step was to get all of our checked luggage from the baggage area. In Chicago, on international flights you have to get your checked luggage yourself and take it to be rescreened in an area about 100 feet away. Well, we rounded up four luggage carts and waited for our baggage. When we collected all 10 pieces, we rolled our carts to the rescreening area. At that point I had to stop at the ticket counter and get our boarding passes for our flight to Kansas City. They lady printed them and told me that we were going to have to take a train to terminal 1 (international is in terminal 5) and we were going to be lucky to make our flight.

Poor Trey was still not feeling great, but was holding his own, so off we went, hurrying to the train. I noticed while waiting for the train that it was pouring rain, and there was lightning everywhere. The flags were blowing like crazy. I was actually relieved because I knew no flights could be taking off in that weather so we had some time. We reached our gate (C-29) at about 5:10 p.m., and the board said that our flight had been delayed until 6:43 p.m. (from 5:15 originally). Ok, so I get the kids situated on the floor by a big pillar and get some sandwiches for dinner. Trey just wanted to drink some root beer, but he did perk up a little bit. At 5:30, I went to check the board to see if our flight had been delayed any further and saw that it had been changed. It had been moved UP to 6:00 and the gate had changed to C-28. I hurried back to where the kids were and we loaded up all of our carry ons and went to the other gate.

They started boarding right when we got there and we made it on the plane and found our seats. I was still questioning whether or not I should push Trey but he seemed ok and the flight was only scheduled to be 90 minutes. We pushed back from the gate a little after six. Then we sat for a long time. Then after about 40 minutes we finally started moving. I thought, "Ok, here we go." Wrong!

We taxied to the runway and got in line behind a whole bunch of planes waiting to take off. The captain came on and announced that they were getting all the planes that had been flying down on the ground because many had been circling due to the thunderstorm and were low on fuel. So we sat. And we sat. And we sat. But they were not letting people get up because every few minutes we would inch forward. Finally, after another hour, we took off. And a little over an hour later, we were on the ground in Kansas City!

At this point we had been awake for more than 24 hours straight. We went to baggage claim and nine out of our 10 bags showed up. I knew that we had all of them in Chicago, but somehow one did not make it on our flight. The lost luggage lady told me that I could call United the next day to make a claim if I didn't want to do it right then. I had decided back in March when we bought our tickets that we would stay at the Embassy Suites by the airport upon our arrival. I knew back then that we would be tired from our trip. I was so glad that I opted for that because we were beyond exhausted and it took only a few minutes to reach the hotel. The hotel stored all of our bags for us so we would not have to take them all to our room. We went right to bed. And when we woke up at about 4 a.m. (that's 11 a.m. by our clocks), we waited for the breakfast buffet to open at 7:00 and enjoyed the fabulous breakfast they have!

It's a long, long way from Gdansk, Poland to Olathe, Kansas.