Anything to declare? The nightmares of travel.

Yes, I declare Belfast to be unworthy of visiting.

I have held off on talking about this for a few days, in order to calm down, and try to paint a more objective picture of the situation. So here we go. I was in Belfast from the 27th of July until the 3rd of August for the 2011 ICPEAC conference. I am not very keen on conferences, I just find that five days of mostly abstract foreign presentations and posters a little too much, Summer or Winter schools are usually much more informative than conferences ever will be.

Problem is, this was not just 5 days, but 5 workdays and 2 weekend days. This is really unusual for a conference, but I guess a rundown city like Belfast could have used the extra cash the conference delegates coughed up over the extra 2 days. Anyhow, here is how it all began. I left Heidelberg for Frankfurt airport on the 26th via the train. It was pretty hot on the day so I took my jacket off in the train, and left it there, with my British passport in the pocket. I have never done anything so dumb before, but even the best have their pitfalls.

Anyway, I realised this only 10 minutes after getting out of the train, but by then it was already too late to recover the lost jacket and passport. So I continued to the airport to begin the now much longer booking process. Although it took longer to check in, British Airways organised everything for me with immigration in Great Britain, and I got through without any troubles. I will add at this point that British Airways knew that my schedule was to Northern Ireland, and back to Germany, no one-way flight. I will also add at this point that I took no checked baggage, just my cross country bike as my checked baggage... remember these points.

Right, so on the plane without delays, not bad for forgetting one's passport I thought! We arrived in London and had about 4:30 between flights, so my counterpart Anton thought it would be a good idea to hop in the tube and check out London. He wouldn't have much time, but it can be done, the tube ride into London takes about 1 hour or so. Unfortunately Anton wanted to be certain that we would find each other easily when he returned, this did not need to be the case, but he didn't want to lose me I guess.

Anyway, suffice it to say, Anton did not get back in time for our flight, and it wasn't like I could just hop on the plane without him, because I was guarding his belongings. So we missed our connecting flight to Belfast... and spent the night in Heathrow, what a joy this was all turning out to be.

We were able to change our tickets without any problem though and catch the first flight the next morning to Belfast. We arrived in Belfast and I immediately went to the Youth Hostel, showered, unpacked my bike, screwed everything together and rode up to the university to take in the afternoon lectures. Later I went shopping, did the normal mundane things of life and went to bed.

Next day I noticed that my front brake pads were dangerously low, so I went to seek out a bicycle shop. It was at this time that I should have noticed, that I should have started taking more care in this town. It is actually extremely difficult to find a bicycle shop in Belfast, because there are perhaps three in total, all of which are somewhat out of town. I went into all three and only got my brake pads in the last one. I went back to the first shop to fit them because the guy there seemed nice and was willing to let me use his workshop. Austin was his name, and he was one of the nicer sides of Belfast I got to encounter.

So, pads fitted, off to the uni for day two of the conference. I locked the bike up in a very public place, on a bike rack, and after the afternoon session was finished, I returned to collect it. It was gone of course. Suddenly it made sense, there are so few bike shops in Belfast, and so few cyclists because everybody gets their bike stolen there. I went to the police, but they said that if they could find no CCTV footage, they would not pursue the matter any further, naturally they found none.

So that was that, my cross country bike, my most used of all my bikes, the bike that I train most often on, was gone. What's more, it had SPD pedals, what kind of crazy thief thinks he is going to look even moderately coordinated scarpering away on a bike with clip in pedals? He got away with it though I guess.

This pretty much ruined my mood for the remainder of the week. But things were about to get worse. The weekend was boring as shit, I wanted to go cycling but, yeah, no chance of that. I hung around the Hostel for a while but could not get any quiet to mope because outside the protestants were... protesting? marching? acting like idiots? All day Saturday and Sunday there was some kind of march going on were I was. Furthermore, it was pathetic, some people dress up fancier than the Queen, march down the street playing uncoordinated music, drinking themselves to death, and then when it's all over, piss all the grog out onto nearby buildings, the same applies of course to the onlookers as well. It's like it's a full on family activity as well, as there were literally all sorts there. Naturally, after not very long the streets were littered with rubbish, glass and cans. Belfast on a summer weekend is just not the place to be.

Anyway, that was about the last of the crappy things that happened to me in northern Ireland. On Wednesday morning we were due to leave, remember, my passport is at this time, sitting in Frankfurt station. I got on the plane successfully from Belfast to London, but the when I tried to get out of London back home, no way sir, you need a passport. Of course, nobody told me I would need a passport in order to get back to Germany, British Airways knew of my travel plans but never told me to bother about getting my passport sent to me while I was in Belfast.

So, I had to let my travel partner catch the plane without me, while I went in to the centre of London, to get an emergency passport. It is cool that it only took 4 hours after my passport application to get a new one, but on the other hand it is not cool to have to pay 125GBP for the privelige. Luckily, I got the new passport in time to get back to Heathrow, get another flight, at no cost (also decent of BA, although, they were the ones who screwed me over in the first place), and get back home.

I arrived back in my bed at 3am on Thursday morning and slept until 2pm. That was absolutely the worst week of my professional life. Hopefully I can avoid any sort of further disruptions next time I go to a conference.