Leaving Dover
Hellooooouuuu =)
As we reached Dover, it was late in the afternoon. On the way we had seen a lot of ruins and castles and also the landscape and the weather was great again – it seemed as if the UK wanted to make it as hard as possible for us to leave. The cliffs of Dover were amazing and of course when we saw the sea again, you can imagine, who was the first running off towards it – right, Moprü =)
With our smartphones we tried to book a ferry, but it seemed to be more difficult than expected -.- Because it wasn't possible to book more than one vehicle for the whole group, Mart and I (Lena) drove to the terminals to find out how to get a ticket. Well, all the terminals were closed, yay. But I saw someone sitting behind a closed counter and asked him what to do. He was very uncommunicative (well, he was at the end of work), but told me just to drive towards the terminals to get a ticket there. "Great", we thought "let's get the others" – well, that was easier said than done. While we were talking to the man at the counter, a road barrier was built up (the road had become a one-way street) – exactly on the only road between us and where the others were waiting for us. Yay again. We had left our luggage with them and so we really had to get back, because they could not have carried everything. We tried to find out, if there were any other streets back, but since there were none we had to drive a little one-way street (not the big one with the barrier of course) in the wrong direction. But that didn't help. We got a little frightened by the policeman that walked out of the street, we were driving in the wrong direction, but he didn't care for us^^ I like the police there – I have no idea what could make them care^^
Because of that little shock, we decided to push the scooters on the pedestrians walk. We met the others at a little petrol station and drove towards the terminals. Before we got our tickets, we had to drive through the security area. First this seemed not to be a problem, and we just told them, we had no knives or something else and drove through the gate. But only four of the six scooters drove out the gate. Mart and Alex were kept inside, because Mart had told them about his cartridge belt he had bought in Camden Town. It wasn't loaded, but since they couldn't guarantee it, they had to ask the ferry companies if they would take it on board or not. Only P&O (one of three ferry companies) agreed. – Now Mart has a cool red and bright sticker saying "SECURITY CHECKED" on his scooter =)
So we went for the check-in where they sent us to the ticket corner. There we could get the (far too expensive...) tickets and went on to the waiting line. We all were very hungry so we collected our last Pennies and Lena ran off to the Burger King close to the line – since they were still unloading the ferry from its last route it seemed as if we had enough of time left. But right when Lena was gone they told us we could start getting on the ferry... So Mart ran to get Lena and we just managed to get on the ship without the already paid Chicken Nuggets -.-
Luckily they accepted both Pounds and Euros on the ferry so getting something to eat was no problem in the end. Funny about the whole story was that they got Mart right when he had put his scooter tight with some strap to bring the cartridge belt to some staff place for they didn't want him to keep the belt the whole crossing. Of course it made sense that he had to bring it there himself so nobody needed to touch the brutal thing and he would have had enough of time to use it if he ever had had the intention to... and that he had to carry it right through the whole length of the ferry through all the people. I (Hella) don't know what exactly they understand of the term "secure" but I guess my interpretation of it is wrong somehow... Plus, after taking the belt, they didn't search him for any other possible weapons. Yes, definitely secure.
Lena and Mart went on top deck when they had handed in the belt to watch the ferry leaving the port. It was all beautiful... =)
When they came back Hella, Moprü and Nora went on deck and left the others with the luggage and enjoyed the rest of the crossing there – even though there was no time we didn't see any mainland we just watched the dark waves... Awesome! Some of the others just fell asleep and made a funny picture when the three came back.
But finally we had to wake them up to get off the ferry. In Calais the first challenge was to manage the right hand traffic... Luckily there was no traffic at all on the streets so we could get used to it. On our way to the youth hostel we had called before we found Calais a really poor place: Everywhere people going around in big groups and looking as if they had no home, the street signs sprayed with slogans about equality and the self-righteousness of the wealthy and such. So when we reached the hostel we asked whether they had some sort of backyard where we could leave our scooters but they told us we should place them in front of the doors so the man behind the counter (the counter was busy 24h a day) could see them. Still, we took all our stuff with us inside.
Some of us were that tired that they just fell asleep, the rest met in the entrance hall and drank some wine. But we all got tired very soon so we went up to our rooms not long after the others. The next morning started with a very meagre breakfast that was included in the price... Well, you couldn't really call it a breakfast, it was some coffee, some butter and some muesli. But no more. So Nora saved us all with some chocolate croissants =)
Greetings, Lena & Hella =)