Everwhere in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car (I).

I can't remember who it was who said it, but it popped up in a list of quotations or somewhere on one of those free CD's that you get offering you umpteen different sorts of dictionary.
September 11th was upon us, and that could only mean one thing: the day of departure for Language Assistantship (round 2) had arrived. Everything was going to be so easy. German Wings flight Gatwick to Hamburg, bus to station, train to Rendsburg. Oh. If. Only.
Sitting on the Internet one day, it was about time I got around to booking the flight. So, onto German Wings website. From: Gat... hang on... what do you mean you don't fly from Gatwick anymore. Oh well, let's try Stansted then. Stanstead to Ham.... oh... you don't fly from Stansted to Hamburg either, unless I want to change planes in Cologne, which I don't. Let's try it in reverse. From Hamburg to ... Manchester. Ah. Well, stuff that for a game of soldiers, let's go somewhere else.
A lot of surfing later, we eventually come up with the bad news. Gatwick to Hamburg flights don't exist anymore. Neither, it appears, do Stansted to Hamburg flights unless I want to change in Stuttgart, Berlin or Cologne, or fly by British Airways. As the Germans would say, Ja, toll.
And so to Easyjet. Gatwick to Berlin, then the train from there: much quicker than taking a connecting flight or the train from any of the other options.
I have no problems with arriving at the airport early. Check in early, get a decent seat on the plane. Plus there's no running through Gatwick's inordinately slow security, and plenty of time to relax a little first. We left home with plenty of time to get to the airport, in case one of the M23's mega-traffic-jam's was going to get the day off to a bad start. There wasn't one, and I arrived 15 minutes before check-in opened, although I spent the next five trying to find out exactly where you have to go. You follow the signs, through one door, only to be met by a security guard telling you to go the other way. Perhaps someone could explain to me why if they tell you do go through Door E, that you need to turn around and drag 21.2kg of suitcase, plus hand luggage back to go through door D, then through the terminal to a place directly behind the security guards? Answers on a postcard please.

Security, was, surprisingly, virtually empty. No long queue and two of the ten gates open. That's not to say that more were open, merely that there was no-one there. The usual palava, then you get around the corner to the show machine, so balancing carefully as you take your shoes off (I mean, providing a seat or two would be too obvious, wouldn't it!) through they go, then another balancing act around the other side. One newspaper and free bottle of water later, the gate gets called. Here is what I like about getting to the airport early. I'm not quite that insane that I would pay to get on the plane first (7 pounds), but it has it's advantages. Boarding Card number 19 - and that included the people who checked in online and those that paid. By virtue of actually listening to the loudspeaker announcements I still managed to be the first of the "normal" people on board, whilst those who thought they could sneak on and nobody would mind slunk their way back down the queue.
The flight was 8.40am. At 8.20 we were all still sitting in the departure lounge. By 8.31 everyone was on board, and by 8.37 we were already being pushed back. Service or what.