Off to Bosnia

6.8.15

Despite our flight being at 10.30 am our pick up was 7.45 am, so a long but uneventful wait at Dalaman, Turkiye, and of course being a Pegasus flight we were over half an hour late taking off.

By the time we got to Sabiha Göckçen, found departures and queued for ages at passport control we didn’t have very long to wait for our Sarajevo flight. Thank goodness.

Had a bit of a strange encounter with the lady next to me on the plane. Many ladies were wearing full burkhas on the flight, but this lady actually had like a thick black net curtain across the whole of her face. I didn’t realise she was speaking to me, I could hear her voice but took a while to work out that she wasn’t side ways on to me and was In fact speaking to me. Anyway, she wanted to change places because a Sheikh had just got on the plane and was across the aisle to her and she said she couldn’t sit near a man.

She showed her boarding pass slip and in fact John was in her window seat, so we all moved places. While waiting to take off a young girl kept trampling across our feet to speak to her. After the fourth time we said enough was enough and the lady then moved to a different area of the plane. This was after almost losing our feet to several women in Burkhas at the boarding gate. We realised its because they couldn’t actually see our feet and not because our feet are abnormally large. 

The Sheikh completely ignored all the rules about switching his phone off, despite John moaning at him, and was still texting til we were too high for him to get a signal. I was surprised how high we were before the signal was lost, especially as we struggle to get any sort of decent internet signal at ground level with Turkish Internet providers.

The flight time was 1.5 hours. 30 minutes into the flight a young man in front of us made his way past the drinks trolley we assumed to go to the loo. Then we heard those dreaded words ‘ if there’s a doctor on board the plane could they make themselves known to the cabin crew’. No one came forward and a few minutes later medical equipment in a big black box was being rushed down the front. Thankfully we saw the man later as we left the flight and he seemed absolutely fine. Apart from that, it was the worlds bumpiest landing, which still earned a round of applause, it was all fine.

Pegasus trashed Johns rucksack last year, he now has a complete waist strap missing. Today they managed to dent the side of my case and break the side handle. Thank goodness I had a new handle put on the top of my case to replace the one they snapped off a couple of years ago or I would have been completely handle-less.

Sarajevo airport is a simple but efficient place, and when your luggage goes transit you’re actually just pleased to see it again, even if it has got parts missing and big dents in it.

Our pre arranged transfer was arranged via our accommodation, a blonde lady turned up to meet us, with her Opel car as planned. 

Time for our new adventures to begin!