When I got there it turned out that you were supposed to go aboard a bit earlier than i anticipated, one hour before the ship left, and it was 19.10. This was where the real panic kicked in. I needed a ticket, which I assumed my friend would give me there, despite not answering. - What else could I think? - When he didn't reply and wasn't there i had to run to the place where they gave out extra tickets.
The woman there asked for my personal number, which I gave her. I also told her the name of my friend who had booked the tickets and tried calling him but couldn't reach him on the phone. I did get in touch with another friend who was going on the cruise with some hastily written english that was far from correct. "båten" turned to "båyrb" for example. He replied with "eating" and wouldn't pick up when I called him. Now I knew they were on the boat and eating as the dinner buffet was going to be the first thing according to my friend who booked it.
I started to feel like it was too late and was about to give up when the woman I was speaking to to get a ticket told me that she had found my personal number as well as my friends booking. The only problem was that I was 168 hours early, we were going the next saturday.
I'm not sure if the strongest feeling was relief or a big mental facepalm but they were both pretty strong. When i walked home i was actually smiling and laughing a bit. It had taken me forty minutes to get there so it wasn't the end of the world. I just saw it as a funny story and a good reason to write a blog post, worse things have happened.
So how did it happen?
Well, my friend did write 21/5 originally but back then it was a few weeks until departure and I guess I simply misscalculated. As we talked a lot about it in our chat I never really had reason to question it either. For example my friend from another city discussed when he might be taking the train to get there. When I look at it now noone stated that it was this week and the chat wasn't nearly as filled with details as it should have been if we were really leaving on saturday, i had been blind to it as I didn't have any reason to question that the boat was leaving.
When I got home my friend that had been eating called me, I had written "21 ..." in my group chat and when he read it after dinner and figured out that "missar båyrb" meant "missing the boat" he understood my blooper. He called me and we had a good laugh about it and some other stuff, like what would have happened if I had actually managed to get aboard somehow. he hadn't bothered much with what I wrote and that I called him as he had indeed been eating, and I couldn't have anything that important to say, right?
I guess it was a perfect opportunity to watch Eurovision as I had absolutely nothing to do but I ended up watching a series instead, I just checked who won, congratulations Ukraine.
How I feel about the cruise Saturday 21/5? More thrilled than ever and determined to make it worth the blooper worth it.