Tillykke med fødselsdagen

Today is Jan's 36th birthday. I had saved flags, candles and birthday garlands in the bottom of the suitcase, which I decorated the room with before Jan woke up. Of course, there were also presents for him :o) Last chance to enjoy the hotel's lovely breakfast buffet, then we packed our bags and headed out to the airport. The other charter tourists had booked and paid for transportation to and from the airport with Falk Lauritsen or Apollo. Hilton has a free airport shuttle, so we got a free ride out there :o) It was quite a chaotic sight that we were greeted by at the terminal. Normally the airport is quite uncrowded with only a few departures a day. Today, 6 buses were parked. One bus was allowed to unload at a time. Russians, Eastern Europeans, luggage, food and cans of water poured out. The Muslim holiday has attracted Muslims from Russia and Eastern Europe in large numbers, all visiting Mecca. Now they were going back home, and they had a lot of luggage and food. We wondered why they were carrying so many cans of water. They certainly didn't look rich. They looked like people who lived in the countryside and had a hard life on a daily basis. But water... they should have access to it... Later we found out that the cans contained holy water from Mecca. The airport is small, so we were not allowed to enter until all the buses had been unloaded. The airport was struggling to cope with the confusion, the many people and all their luggage. There is free wifi, so the wait was quick. We sat outside the airport and waited. Every time a new bus pulled up, we almost got lost in all the luggage being unloaded. It was incredibly large quantities. When you have booked a charter flight, you don't have to pay airport tax on the return flight. We were given a "voucher" that gave us a free outbound flight. When we landed in Kastrup, we drove to Copenhagen, where we had rented a hotel. Jan's birthday must be celebrated in the capital :o)