Day Four: Visas, Traffic, Determination and a Lullaby
There was a moment when it just didn't make sense
I could start this entry off with the usual sequence of events. That I woke up, showered, davened, got accosted by someone or another (this seems to be a theme), and then headed off on the adventure of the day. Probably somewhere that requires lots of walking.
I could say that I boarded my flight from London at Luton airport at 7:25 and took off at 7:55 and I was safely tucked away in my new location before sunset.
But that would be a lie.
So, let’s rewind a little to the events that led up to this day that just kept on giving.
After the wedding, instead of sleeping like a responsible human being, I decided it was a good idea to go spiel at the casino. I was joined by my trusty sidekick with a c (or am I the sidekick, it gets confusing) and we headed downtown to where the houses get nicer and the cars on the street sleeker.
When we arrived at our gambling establishment of choice, the Grosvenor, St. Giles, our Uber driver just wouldn’t have a bar of it.
“This one is very small,” he told us in a thick Sri Lankan accent. “The one across town on Edgware is much nicer and bigger.”
Ever the suckers for “nicer and bigger” me and Big C promptly rerouted the uber and headed to the Victorian. It did indeed look bigger and better from the outside. So much so that our driver, who had told us of Sri Lanka’s history and how you could bid on a business class seat on Sri Lankan Air for a good price, even considered joining us inside. He didn’t. Or at least I didn’t see him.
The casino was quite small but weirdly quaint but had barely any slot machines, me and Big C’s preferred method of gambling. Regardless, selection or not, I lost my money quickly. Like so quickly that I almost forgot I had put money in to begin with. My partner though was in the classic ups and downs. First a win then a loss. In hindsight this was an eerie specter to what would transpire over the next several hours.
Remember, the wedding ended at about midnight and I had a flight to catch five minutes before 8:00am. At Luton Airport. So, at around 4:15am, I started to make my move, naively thinking I’d just “catch a bus.” When I attempted to catch said bus but miss it by a mere 50 feet, I naively thought “Oh, I’ll just catch the next one.” The problem was that the next one was scheduled for an hour from then and the airport was an hour away. So, it was cutting it close.
I immediately made the executive decision to forfeit my savings from booking a budget airline instead of an Israeli one and just called an Uber. When I couldn’t match with a driver, I started to get a little nervous. But then like a ray of sunshine, Kumar appeared in the form of an Uber ding of approval. I entered the car relieved to just be on my way.
The ride was smooth, we listened to the radio as some Englishman ranted on about how disgusting scalping event tickets is or as he put it “touting tickets.”
It reminded me of a friend of mine who’s famous for appearing on The Mystery Hour with James O’Brien at least twice with earth shattering questions such as “why does a clock turn clockwise as opposed to counterclockwise?” and “why do humans urinate when they’re nervous?” That was the vibe I got from this Touter Hater.
I arrived at Luton airport 90 minutes before my flight, got in line at the Wizz Air check in desk and finally got to the front. I handed my passport (Australian this time) with supreme confidence to the check in man. He accepted it, swiped it, then asked me for my ETA. I was confused, what the heck was an ETA.
“Oh,” he said kindly. “You just have to get a visa to travel to Israel (yes that’s right, Israel is the next destination!); it’s really easy to do online it’ll take you a few minutes; just stand to the side and I’ll fix you up when you finish.”
Well, that sounds easy. I scanned the QR code, filled in my details and then I clicked to pay. The screen just looked around in a lazy circle, not loading the page. Uh oh. Ok, Moshe, (Waylen) you got this. Maybe it was a problem with my phone. I pulled out my laptop and crouched on the floor furiously typing the info in again. No luck. Same issue. I went back to the counter and showed him the screen, and he just shrugged.
“I’m just a worker here. I don’t represent the Israeli government,” he told me as he explained that a boarding pass can’t be issued without the ETA.
Man, I felt like such an idiot. The Aibishter really wanted me to spend more time in London. First, He barred me from going to Berlin, now He was keeping me from the Holy Land so I could stay?!
(@JoqueNoque what color was I supposed to be looking for again?”)
Was there something I was missing?
Well, check in closing time was rapidly approaching and k still didn’t have this ETA. I tried paying for an expedited one. Fail. I tried again in more tabs than I could fathom. Fail.
And then check in closed and I was standing there forlorn with my heavy backpack and failure weighing me down.
I stepped outside, bummed a cigarette and just breathed (yeh yeh, a cigarette and breathing can coexist, don’t be a stickler)
Then at 7:49, six minutes before my scheduled departure time I got a nonchalant email from the ETA Israelis: “oh, the system was down. We fixed it now. Try again.”
It turns out I was just incredibly unlucky and very poorly prepared. As my brother always says, “fail to prepare; prepare to fail.”
Amen brother.
But it was down to business. I had time and I had hope.
“Ok,” I thought to myself. “I can work with this.”
I searched some flights. Saw another Wizz air flight to TLV for 13:55 from Gatwick and talked to the agent inside who rebooked me on that one (yes, I’m aware that’s a miracle).
Then I tried to buy a ticket for the bus from Luton to Gatwick via Heathrow (how odd, three airports on one bus ride). Sadly, I was within 5 minutes of the departure time, so it was impossible. Oh no! The next one left in 90 minutes. I had to make this bus. I found my main man Gus who ran the bus booth (we had a rushed chuckle how apropos it was for a Gus to be the bus guy.
He ordered another miracle and got me on that 8:10 bus to Gatwick and I slumped into that seat like a mehudar yid slumps into the left reclining position on Seder night. As we pulled out of the terminal, I saw my Wizz Air Flight WUK5301 taxi onto the runway and just as it was about to take flight, we turned a corner. Good riddance. I didn’t want to be on that flight anyways.
The bus was scheduled to take just under two hours. A reasonable time to take a nap, daven and catch up on YouTube Shorts. I was back in the game baby! A slight hiccup, but nothing I couldn’t handle!
I fell asleep immediately and woke up to a dead leg. I haven’t had one of those in a while; it was tough. Then I looked at my watch (which was dead) so I looked at my phone and saw it was 10:39. We must be arriving soon! I pulled out my google maps to see how long I had in case I wanted to daven and then saw that our new ETA was 12:05.
Huh. We were 4.6 miles away. In my world that doesn’t take an hour and 26 minutes to drive. And anyways we were behind schedule. And we weren’t moving. It was bumper to bumper traffic. Apparently, there was a three car crash on the exit right before I was supposed to get off. Classic. When it rains it pours.
I’m not going to lie. I don’t really get stressed. But at this point I was starting to tzitter. Not quite there yet but close, real close. But then the traffic cleared up, we were at the airport at 11:21 (still a frightful journey don’t get me wrong) and I was checking in for the second time today within a few minutes.
This time we were golden. I even had time to play hide and seek with my oversized yarmulke with a little Arab baby girl.
After a bit of time in the lounge where I met a lovely Belgian couple and overheard a guy tell his (presumed) girlfriend that there are more than 35 million Jews in the world while staring at a chasidishe couple across the room. That was a little rude in my opinion and the 35 million number was news to me.
I then charged my overworked array of headphones and battery packs and settled down for a coffee, some Shachris and a little rest.
When the gate was announced, I walked the 30 miles to the gate. Honestly Gatwick is odd. It feels more like a mall than an airport. And last I checked malls were going out of business. At the gate there were fights aplenty as people attempted to get their oversized hand luggage past the eagle-eyed gate agents. Some succeeded masterfully like the couple that spoke Spanish. The three frum women were less successful.
I boarded, took my middle seat and enjoyed my first experience on Wizz Air. The leg room was ok, but this must be the stiffest plane seat I ever sat on. Eventually the bread to my sandwich arrived, first a middle-aged Israeli woman on my left. We got to speaking and it turned out she’s a tattoo artist. She showed me some sketches on her iPad, and I must say, as someone who has occasioned across the odd Ink Masters clip on YouTube, I was impressed. Then on my right was an Indian gentleman who looked about my age and had no idea who Sachin Tendulkar was, which is baffling because every Indian I've ever met knows exactly who Sachin Tendulkar is.
All the while, there was a discernible and palpable tension between the charedim and the chilonim. For the first time in a while, I felt the Chabad dichotomy of being offended both that the chilonim saw me as just another charedi and that the charedim saw me as the lesser version of themselves. Perhaps the “Walmart version” as they say. Tzorich Iyun. At the end of the boarding, the last group to board the plane was a line of what looked like all of the Arabs on the flight. I wonder if that was on purpose.
A baby cried the whole way through takeoff, and I was starting to get a little annoyed. But then the mother started this rhythmic, soft shushing sound over and over again and within minutes I was fast asleep myself. The last thing I remember being her soft voice.
It wasn’t a great sleep. But it was sleep.
We landed in the Holy land a little after 21:00 and for a change everything went smoothly. Changed some cash, knocked off some of the rust from my Hebrew and got the train into town. Ate a wonderful falafel that puts Kingston Ave to shame and this falafel wasn’t even that good to be honest. But I did say it was wonderful so now I’m a little confused. Must be the three airports in a day delirium hitting.
My little Airbnb is perfectly situated and that’s where I leave you on this leil shishi. Will I go out and party? Will I do questionable things? I guess you’ll have to tune in tomorrow to find out. Thanks for joining me on this taxing but eventually rewarding day 4!
