Friday, May 8, 2009
Accepted!
I received an acceptance letter to the University of Edinburgh for the veterinary program a few months ago. I am finishing up one more class and will be moving to Edinburgh in July. For those of you who would like to follow my 4 year experience, head over to my other blog (www.royaldick.blogspot.com). This blog will encompass the 4 years in Edinburgh and trips while there.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Return to Scotland!
Well, looks like I will be back in Scotland this August! Another road trip from Edinburgh up to the Northern tip of Scotland. While in Edinburgh, I am going to pay a visit to Edinburgh University to see the Royal Dick School of Veterinary Medicine. While we are there, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo will be active and will be AWESOME to see in person. It will be nice to travel north and get away from the city tourism though. It is so peaceful in the Highlands and away from the big city areas. Puck's Glen will definitely be on the itinerary again as well as Loch Ness. Anyway, I'll keep updating with the latest news on the trip.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Application to veterinary school...
Well, only 6 months to go and I apply to veterinary school in Edinburgh. The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Medicine to be exact. I am getting very excited. I am also applying to school in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and California. The tuition is much more reasonable than going to Scotland. Scotland is so enticing though and I would really enjoy spending my DVM studies there. I will keep updates on the news of applying to veterinary school.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Back Home!
Well, a little late on the post, but I needed to end the blog. The last day in Scotland, we took a city bus to the city centre and used up the rest of the day exploring more of Edinburgh. We arrived home 2 days ago and I was extremely happy! The flight was 10 hours long and there were good movies all the way back (for once). There was a baby that cried for the duration of the flight, but lucky me, I had earphones and volume that went very high. I did not sleep at all and once again, I was stuck in the middle seat between two people. I moved twice and the rest of flight, I was bound to my seat like a prisoner. Both persons on the left and right side of me were sleeping, so if I wanted to move, it meant waking sleeping giants. I don't know what would have become of me if I would have woken the lady next to me. Anyway, after being gone for so long, it makes me realize how great our country really is and everything that we have. I did love the transportation system though. If I worked over there, all I would have to do would be to purchase a $3 ticket every day to work and I would never have to deal with automobile traffic again. All in all, I had a great time on the trip and on my next trip, I plan on backpacking around Italy. This trip will probably take place in a few years and with a friend or two. Until next time!!
-Dan
-Dan
Monday, June 4, 2007
The Last Day in Munich With Baggage Problems...
We made it to Edinburgh safely. We did have a little trouble though. Here is how yesterday went:
So we packed our bags at the hotel. We evenly distributed the weight so that each suitcase would not exceed 20kg. After about an hour or two of re-arranging our belongings, we took our massive load (for 2 people) of suitcases down to the reception area and checked out of the hotel. We were lucky not to get the lady that had a blank expression on her face, she was standing behind the lady that was helping us. We called a taxi to take us to the airport with our heavy load.
As we were driving to the airport, the driver attempted to tell us two jokes and we failed miserably at understanding them, but we laughed anyway. We arrived to the airport and we loaded our luggage on carts. We arrived at approximately 12:20pm and check-in did not open until about 2:45pm, so we had a while before we could get anything accomplished. While we were waiting, we weighed all of our luggage to make sure it was evenly distributed. My carry-on was the heaviest, weighing in at about 32kg. The laptop is what weighed it down so much. We wanted to ask an EasyJet employee if we could add on an extra bag, so we weren't over the weight limit for one bag. In our attempt to find someone to ask this question, we did not succeed. There was no one at the EasyJet counter at all, and no one ever came in those 2 hours in between. So we patiently waited for someone to check us in. The line behind us quickly swelled into this massive crowd of people, and we were first in line!
Being first in line, we thought we would definitely get things accomplished and worked out with the baggage. Wrong!! 2:45pm came around finally and the two people walked up to the EasyJet counter, with blank looks on there faces. They were not even EasyJet employees, they were Swissport employees. They get everything set up for the check-in and finally ask us for our passports and booking number. We hand them over to the stone-faced man in front of us. We begin putting our baggage up on the scale and weighing them. Each bag was right at 20kg or was over by less than 1kg. So we were very happy and thought things were going quite well. We had succeeded in spreading the weight out amongst our suitcases. This is the mindset that we had the entire time stoneface was checking our baggage in. As the last bag went through, stoneface looked up at us and said something!! Amazing! What he said though, would ruin our day just like the first incident with the luggage back in Edinburgh.
Stoneface said, "You are 63kg over the weight", and we said, "What!!!". We looked back on our paperwork for EasyJet and no where did it say that there was a limit of the amount of weight you could bring on. What our paper work had said was:
Your hold baggage weight allowance is 20kg, and you may check in one hold bag per person free of charge. Additional hold bags may be carried subject to a charge of 5.00GBP per bag per flight wehn paying in advance and 10.00GBP when at the airport.
Nowhere in that sentence does it say that even if you pay in advance for the extra baggage fee, when you get to the airport, each kg of the excess baggage that you paid for in advance will be charged. So we basically paid the fee for extra bags for nothing!
Stoneface said that there was a limit of 20kg per person (which is what it said on our paper) and one carry-on, that is it, all else is excess baggage and is subject to charge (was not on the paper, it was supposed to be a fee of 5GBP when payin in advance). Each kg was 9 euros, that is a lot of money when converted to US dollars!!!!! So we argued with him and told him that he was wrong and the airliner is wrong. Stoneface looked up at us, and without saying a word he glanced back down and began writing. He handed us a piece of paper and said, "Bring this to the information desk and when you pay for this, I will give you your boarding passes." So we argued no more, because words were not getting through to thick-headed stoneface.
We walked on over to the information counter and told the woman in front of us what had happened. "We were never told of this excess baggage fee, and nowhere on our paperwork does it say there will be a charge per kg. It simply states that you can pay for excess baggage in advance at 5GBP." So we proceeded to argue with her that EasyJet was in the wrong. We desperately tried to pull our way out of this one and our argument was not succeeding. We were slowly losing this battle. We told her that there are no numbers to contact EasyJet or email, so it is impossible to contact ANYONE with questions, the only number is a hotline number that costs about 60pence per minute (about $1.20 US dollars per minute). "EasyJet is definitely not EASY to deal with", she replied with, "I know, they are not." The SwissPort lady pulled out a long document and showed us where it said about the excess baggage. What the paper said, was NOT on the paperwork that we had.
We did not have a plan A or plan B, we were just angry and wanted to get on our flight and go back to Scotland. She decreased the amount of kg from 63kg to 40kg, so that saved us some, but was still a hefty amount to pay. We paid the amount, I walked back to stoneface and took the boarding passes. Onward we went to our gate. We ate lunch and boarded our flight and thanked god that we were that much closer to home. We our in Edinburgh now and this is our final day before we arrive home. When I get home, I am going to get down on my hands and knees and kiss US soil! We miss home and cannot wait to get back to it. Miss everyone!
-Dan and Andrea
So we packed our bags at the hotel. We evenly distributed the weight so that each suitcase would not exceed 20kg. After about an hour or two of re-arranging our belongings, we took our massive load (for 2 people) of suitcases down to the reception area and checked out of the hotel. We were lucky not to get the lady that had a blank expression on her face, she was standing behind the lady that was helping us. We called a taxi to take us to the airport with our heavy load.
As we were driving to the airport, the driver attempted to tell us two jokes and we failed miserably at understanding them, but we laughed anyway. We arrived to the airport and we loaded our luggage on carts. We arrived at approximately 12:20pm and check-in did not open until about 2:45pm, so we had a while before we could get anything accomplished. While we were waiting, we weighed all of our luggage to make sure it was evenly distributed. My carry-on was the heaviest, weighing in at about 32kg. The laptop is what weighed it down so much. We wanted to ask an EasyJet employee if we could add on an extra bag, so we weren't over the weight limit for one bag. In our attempt to find someone to ask this question, we did not succeed. There was no one at the EasyJet counter at all, and no one ever came in those 2 hours in between. So we patiently waited for someone to check us in. The line behind us quickly swelled into this massive crowd of people, and we were first in line!
Being first in line, we thought we would definitely get things accomplished and worked out with the baggage. Wrong!! 2:45pm came around finally and the two people walked up to the EasyJet counter, with blank looks on there faces. They were not even EasyJet employees, they were Swissport employees. They get everything set up for the check-in and finally ask us for our passports and booking number. We hand them over to the stone-faced man in front of us. We begin putting our baggage up on the scale and weighing them. Each bag was right at 20kg or was over by less than 1kg. So we were very happy and thought things were going quite well. We had succeeded in spreading the weight out amongst our suitcases. This is the mindset that we had the entire time stoneface was checking our baggage in. As the last bag went through, stoneface looked up at us and said something!! Amazing! What he said though, would ruin our day just like the first incident with the luggage back in Edinburgh.
Stoneface said, "You are 63kg over the weight", and we said, "What!!!". We looked back on our paperwork for EasyJet and no where did it say that there was a limit of the amount of weight you could bring on. What our paper work had said was:
Your hold baggage weight allowance is 20kg, and you may check in one hold bag per person free of charge. Additional hold bags may be carried subject to a charge of 5.00GBP per bag per flight wehn paying in advance and 10.00GBP when at the airport.
Nowhere in that sentence does it say that even if you pay in advance for the extra baggage fee, when you get to the airport, each kg of the excess baggage that you paid for in advance will be charged. So we basically paid the fee for extra bags for nothing!
Stoneface said that there was a limit of 20kg per person (which is what it said on our paper) and one carry-on, that is it, all else is excess baggage and is subject to charge (was not on the paper, it was supposed to be a fee of 5GBP when payin in advance). Each kg was 9 euros, that is a lot of money when converted to US dollars!!!!! So we argued with him and told him that he was wrong and the airliner is wrong. Stoneface looked up at us, and without saying a word he glanced back down and began writing. He handed us a piece of paper and said, "Bring this to the information desk and when you pay for this, I will give you your boarding passes." So we argued no more, because words were not getting through to thick-headed stoneface.
We walked on over to the information counter and told the woman in front of us what had happened. "We were never told of this excess baggage fee, and nowhere on our paperwork does it say there will be a charge per kg. It simply states that you can pay for excess baggage in advance at 5GBP." So we proceeded to argue with her that EasyJet was in the wrong. We desperately tried to pull our way out of this one and our argument was not succeeding. We were slowly losing this battle. We told her that there are no numbers to contact EasyJet or email, so it is impossible to contact ANYONE with questions, the only number is a hotline number that costs about 60pence per minute (about $1.20 US dollars per minute). "EasyJet is definitely not EASY to deal with", she replied with, "I know, they are not." The SwissPort lady pulled out a long document and showed us where it said about the excess baggage. What the paper said, was NOT on the paperwork that we had.
We did not have a plan A or plan B, we were just angry and wanted to get on our flight and go back to Scotland. She decreased the amount of kg from 63kg to 40kg, so that saved us some, but was still a hefty amount to pay. We paid the amount, I walked back to stoneface and took the boarding passes. Onward we went to our gate. We ate lunch and boarded our flight and thanked god that we were that much closer to home. We our in Edinburgh now and this is our final day before we arrive home. When I get home, I am going to get down on my hands and knees and kiss US soil! We miss home and cannot wait to get back to it. Miss everyone!
-Dan and Andrea
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Lausanne...
So we made it to our last stop, Montreaux. First we headed to Basel because I thought it looked interesting, but after stopping at the train station we decided not to. From the station, the city looked very modern and industrialized so we bothered not to go. Basel is in the Northern part of Switzerland and borders Germany and France. France was actually just beyond the doorway at the train station! We took the train down South towards Lausanne and Montreaux. We had to stop at Lausanne and take a bus to Montreaux. We needed someone that spoke French though. Where were you Dr. Bill??? The Chateau de Chillon was in Montreaux and it was awesome!! We spent most of the day there. Hey Bill, quiz time! What does Chateau de Chillon mean in English? No cheating and looking it up on the internet either! Anyway, after we were finished we took the train back to Zurich, which took about 4 hours. We went back to our hotel and crashed for the evening. All that train travelling really exhausts you! Enjoy the pictures. We did all of this yesterday, I was too tired to post last night. Tomorrow we fly into Edinburgh and will be there for 2 more days and then we fly home on the 5th. We can't wait to get back and see everyone! We are definitely home sick, BIG time! Talk to everyone later!
-Dan and Andrea
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Bern, Thun, and Interlaken...
So yesterday we checked into our new hotel in Horgen, Zurich. We then caught the next train to Zurich Hauptbahnhof and then to Bern. Bern was OK, way too many people and a lot of construction going on. We left Bern after about an hour of walking around. I did find some local dry salami though and it is the BEST! I would never buy cheese here though. We have already purchased 2 wedges of swiss cheese and it smells like something had died in the room when we opened it. It is like that everywhere, and at the farmer's market it smells like that ten-fold. After Bern, we headed to Thun so we could see Schloss Thune (a castle). After climbing 5 flights of stairs and going up hill for about 20 minutes we had finally reached the castle. Unfortunately the time was 4:45pm and the castle closed at 5:00pm, and just like everywhere else, they stop taking guests at around 4:30pm. All that hard work for nothing!! Oh well. Thune did have a very cool river running through that had white rapids everywhere, I wonder if you could take a raft down it? We went to Interlaken after that and it was extremely beautiful! The mountains surround the town! We headed back into Zurich and to our hotel in Horgen. Today we are heading to Basel and some other places that we are not sure of yet. Talk to you all later!!
-Dan and Andrea
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