Our European Adventure from Start to Finish

How it went down

Thursday and Friday morning went relatively smooth. We traveled uneventfully, watched many movies in-flight, and discussed how the clouds made it impossible to see anything. When we landed in Iceland, we were excited to discover we didn't have to go through customs there since it was a short layover, and grew more and more excited.

When we landed in Gatwick, we got in line for a stamp and filled out our "Landing card" which asked questions like "where are you staying?", "how long are you staying?", "why are you here?". Which was stupid because when we got up to the front of the line, we heard everyone being asked these questions. So we get up to the counter and the lady starts seriously interrogating us.

her: "How long are you staying?"
us: "3 months"
her? "That's a long time, how are you managing that? Don't you have to work?"
us: "We own our own business"
her: "Well you can't just take money out of the business, can you? That's not how it works" [this is where the serious breakdown happened and she started not trusting anything we said]
us: "Well that's how it works for us because the business is for tax purposes"
her: "That doesn't make any sense"

So after this, she confiscated our passports and told us to go sit in the "there's something wrong with you" area. At this point we were still feeling pretty confident. We figured they would realize we had enough money to support ourselves and let us move on.

Then we got our luggage examined.

Then they took us to the holding room, where we spent the next 20 hours of our lives. The questioned us separately, each for an hour in more detail about our financial situation and about how long we were staying and the big one "how can we know that you'll leave since you don't have return ticket?" At this point they were very stuck on this (making me think they had satisfactorily proved that we had enough money to support ourselves). My answer: we don't want to be banned from the country, and we did a lot of research on how long we're allowed to be here, etc. Jeff's answer: we're law abiding citizens who don't want to cause trouble. They also were very suspicious of our answer that after the UK, we were heading to the continent so that's why we didn't have a leaving ticket. (At this point I really wanted to ask "what if we were independently wealthy and had no obligations. What would you be saying to us then?" but I wasn't going to push it)

So they took our answers away and left us to stew for about 3 hours. At this point our bodies had been up for about 24 straight hours and we were exhausted, so we were trying to nap while being super stressed out. This wasn't really working.

By the time the guy came back and told us the answer, I didn't give a shit anymore. I just wanted something to happen. So he came back and told us we had been denied entry because "we couldn't prove that you are going to leave when you say you are." And when we asked "well what if we go to the counter and buy a ticket out of here right now for 3 months from now?" that was a no go. They had already decided and gotten us a flight back to Seattle. We couldn't even change where we were flying too (for 10 seconds Jeff really wanted to change it to New York and go watch some US Open). We had to go back to Seattle. But the flight wasn't for the next day and he said they would find us a place to stay that night.

We learned about 6 hours later that because of Jeff's disease and because we were considered a "family unit" we were ineligible for the house they have at the airport for people like us, so we stayed in the holding room for the night. We both tried to sleep but I think we only got about three hours each. At some point, I spent £5 and called and left a message with Jeff's dad telling him what happened so he knew we hadn't died and to let my mom know too.

So in the morning, they packed us into a van and drove us to Heathrow. We had to change vans three times and saw lots of the back side of airports. We even got to drive under the tarmac at Heathrow, which was kind of cool. But at this point I wanted to go home. I was tired and wanted to be alone to cry. This is also the point where I saw what we would miss out on. If we had just stayed in the airport, it wouldn't have seemed as real of a place, but driving down the M-whatever or A-whatever and just seeing in person how different their cars were (SUVs - nada. Hatchbacks - everywhere!) made it hit home just how over the trip was.

So we get to the Heathrow (you'll notice that we changed airports for seriously no apparent reason) and sat in their holding room for a couple hours and then were taken to our plane. Our passports were given to the stewardesses on the plane with the instructions that we could get them back in Iceland.

So we fly back to Iceland. At this point Jeff's body was not doing awesome. I was running on pure adrenaline and stress at this point, but Jeff was just shutting down due to the lack of both of those things. So I forced him to sleep on the plane and he got a few more hours.

So we get to Iceland, get our passports back, and figure all is fine. But as we get off the plane, we're stopped and told to come with another person. And we're really confused. We were out of the UK, what did the Iceland people care? So we walk with this lady and go over to customer services (by the way, the Iceland airport is the tiniest-most-busy airport EVAR), where we're told we owe £2500 for the return flight. Now were really confused because back in London, they told us we didn't have to pay. Luckily Jeff knows how to haggle, because where I would have just sighed and paid, he asked why and he and the lady started talking and I honestly think she took serious pity on us because she called someone, had a thirty second conversation with them, hung up, and told us to get on the plane no charge. We both broke down at this point, hugging the bewildered customer service lady in turn. It was the only good thing that had happened to us in the last 24 hours and we were incredibly grateful.

While waiting for the next flight, we quickly got on the internet (no matter what Icelandair says, they don't have wifi in all of their planes, just the brand new ones and in the 4 Icelandair flights we were on, we only had one fancy new plane) and booked a hotel in Seattle. We knew we didn't want to mess around with finding another flight to Spokane (they only got us flights back to Seattle) and we were tired. And in all honesty, we wanted to be alone to grief for what had happened.

So we get on the plane, fly, and land in Seattle. We navigate public transportation and a taxi to our hotel in Everett and the first thing we do is take a shower and brush our teeth. Next thing we do is call and check in with everyone. Then we fall asleep for 12 hours in a horizontal position, which was glorious.

Commentary on the whole thing 

What I have witnessed in this whole experience is the difference between bureaucracy and common sense. While in London we dealt with two kinds of people: the border patrol people and the security company people who are hired to do the security for this kind of thing at the airports. And each one was either super nice and knew we were getting screwed and told us that (the common sense people), or had decided we were somehow devious and were treating us with slight distain (the bureaucratic people). Most of the distain came from the first lady we talked to. Everyone with the security company that we spent long periods of time with were really nice and got us whatever we wanted and were really concerned about Jeff getting his meds. They got us many sandwiches (I ate a lot of "egg mayonnaise" sandwiches, ie egg salad) and talked and joked with us throughout the day.

That was the other area of the bureaucracy vs common sense. Like I said before, the reason we stayed in the holding room all night was because of Jeff's "disease," which all the people who interacted with us could tell was not something that Jeff was going to flop on the floor and die from at any point, but no matter how many times they told that to the people who ran the house, they wouldn't take him because of the "liability." The border patrol guy who was checking on us throughout the night had some awesome British swear words to say about the guy running the house. We also decided that if that border patrol guy had been the one running the counter when we got there, we would have been let through because he was one of the most vocal about us getting shafted.

Another area was the fact that we couldn't buy a ticket flying out of the country and be fine. Once they made the decision, we had no choice but to be put back on the plane to where we came from. There was literally no way for us to stay in the country.

What next

So that is the question of the hour. We are for sure not going back anytime soon. European Grand Adventure is pretty much canceled. Luckily the only thing we're out serious money from is the Star Trek convention tickets (this is actually a really big bummer because we were both really looking forward to it).

So we're spending a few days in Seattle to just chill and decompress and we'll move on from there. We know that we really don't want to move back to Spokane because to us that feels like going backwards, so we will probably start apartment searching soon. But for now we're going to grief and put it behind us.