Last Saturday, I departed from the United States going through Wilmington, NC and Logan International Airport in Boston before taking an overnight flight into Heathrow. For the weeks leading up to the trip, I was worried about the whole deal, concerned about the customs procedures and whatnot. What exactly about the procedures I was worried about I could not tell you, anxiety is not rational, nor does it want to share its thought processes with me. The prospect of the plane falling into the Atlantic Ocean was also on my mind.
As it turns out though, Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts was what I should have been concerned about. To make a dumb story short: the directory lied to me, but that’s not relevant.
When I finally bumbled my way to my stupid connection flight as people were already boarding the plane, I was surprised to find that I didn’t even need to take out my passport to get on the plane. There was a camera that would take your picture, compare it to your passport, and decide if you fit well enough to go through. I have mixed emotions about this and the robots are taking over, but the line to get on was so long that there was a second line created with traditional passport checking, and this was also very simple.
Heathrow’s concrete interior is imposing even without the added stress of three hours of sleep, and finding where I was supposed to go was difficult. Perhaps due to the three hours of sleep. In any case, I’m very grateful in hindsight that I didn’t really have a time limit. Still though, the actual international arrivals and customs procedures were very straightforward. Members of the EU and select other countries, including the United States, only need to pass through one gate, which is again the automated passport checker. After that, there’s an ATM to withdraw cash, and then you’re free to roam the whole country (unless you need to announce some items at customs)!
Unfortunately, I had decided to take the group shuttle to Oxford. This left at one in the afternoon, roughly. My plane landed at seven. I could have taken the normal shuttle, which drops off at Glouster Green, but I did not know this, and for some reason chose to wait the full six hours in the most crowded and uncomfortable part of the airport. The moral: Don’t be afraid of international travel, but also don’t put yourself in a position where you wait five hours for a shuttle in an uncomfortable airport on three hours of sleep.