Welcome to Copenhagen...

As a method of entering a new country, flat on your back lying on a stretcher certainly does have a dramatic flair, although I can't say I really recommend the experience. First of all, I'm fine. Second of all...oi, what a day. We're currently in Denmark getting ready to start the big leg of our vacation, which is a Baltic cruise. Copenhagen was only ever meant to be a 24 hour buffer, just in case something went wrong with flights, luggage or something else. Still, the more we read up on Copenhagen, the more I was kind of regretting not spending more time there, especially since we basically just killed a day doing nothin in Ottawa, having completed the sealift ahead of schedule. Our flight was Ottawa-Toronto-Copenhagen. The later leg is about 7.5 hours long, which is the longest stretch we've done by plane in about three years. Anything less than three hours, Cathy and I can do in our sleep. Still, I figured that since most of the flight would happen at night, we would just sleep it off, wake up the next morning and hit Copenhagen running. Yeah, not so much. The first problem was I couldn't get to sleep, which was weird. I could have slept on the Ottawa-Toronto flight, but I could not get comfortable or drift off. The second problem hit about an hour before landing when I began to feel....weird. And it was a weird I had a funny feeling I'd experienced before. Back in 1996 I flew to South Korea to teach English, including a hellish 14 hour Toronto-Seoul leg in which I quietly lost my mind wondering if this wasn't the stupidest thing I'd ever done in my life (I'd got a job offer to teach English in South Korea 10 days earlier). I ended up having a panic attack and passing out. The plane stewards, not quite knowing what to do with the white guy passed out in the bathroom, just brough me back to my seat and quietly ignore me for the next several hours. So yeah, I knew something weird was happening. I got up, tried to stetch, then went to the bathroom, but things got worse. I managed to make it out of the bathoom and sink to my knees. Someone asked if I needed help, I said yes and then it was light's out. Next thing I'm hearing is Cathy's voice, sounding frantic, and a group of people around me trying to figure out if I'm all right. Oh, and an elderly retired doctor who was travelling on the plane, trying to determine if I had a seizure or something (I didn't). What happened over the next few hours was really quite extraordinary. Air Canada's staff were fantasic. One of the stewards was also a fireman, so he had first aid training, and stayed with me until the plane landed. Even brought me a lovely tank of my very own oxygen. I kept insisting I was fine and tried to make jokes, but they made everyone on the plane wait until the paramedics came on board and took me off. Despite my protests, they carted me away to a hospital in the back of an ambulance, where they ran a bunch of tests. All came back negative. I'm pefectly fine (well, as fine as I was before all of this. Oh, and a scrape on my head from where I hit the floor). But we didn't get charged a thing. Some paperwork, but assurances there was no bill to settle up, which is amazing. We had to go back to the airport to get the bags, which was pretty straightforward. And we got reassurances that we were in the country legally, although our passport wasn't stamped. No one can figure out exactly why I passed out like that. I think the flow of blood to my brain was restricted because I was trying to get comfortable and I did something weird. Or sitting for 7.5 hours without getting up to stretch my legs or take a walk. I will be walking every 10 bloody minutes on the return flight, I can say that much. So anyway, a dramatic entrance to the country. But I'm fine. Once we got to our hotel, we actually spent several hours wandering around the city and even walked out to see the Litter Mermaid statue (it's a touch anti-climatic). So the worst seems to be over. Beautiful city, by the way. Just wished I had entered it properly....