@DJ1425
I know how you feel but trust me, after making the exam yesterday aswell I can asure you that if you study the motivational paper and practice a few SDT (and perhaps fuel calculations) you'll be fine aslong as you sleep well and have a nice breakfast in the morning
My own test hopefully went well, diagraming went really well I belive, cubes were hard (especially the last one
) but I have hope for the future anyhow
I've had a question about how my trip there went, I'll be writing that down here
For you who are intrested I'll also tell you about my trip home, that ended up with almost 12 hours delay
Anyhow, if you're not intrested in my travelling you can stop reading now
As for the trip there, I flew into EGSS wednesday morning, train into London went great. Note that if you have booked tickets beforehand (I had booked both for the Stansted express and also for trains down to Swanwick) it seems the machines at Stansted also give you the tickets from London. So in my case I had to withdraw booked tickes twice (first time gave me my swanwick tickets, second time the stansted express ones).
Train into London, no problem, it arrives at Liverpool street station. I had a few hours to spare so I took a tube into the central of London and took a walk (almost ending up in the Student demonstrations
).
I had an off peak ticket with off peak return from "london terminals" to "Swanwick". It allows you to take any train and any route down to Swanwick from any of the London stations (at least that's how I've understood it). There are trains going from Waterloo station, there might also be from the other ones (my train back came to Victoria so I guess there might be trains going to Swanwick from there aswell).
I'm not sure how big the stations are at your home towns, but let's just say that Waterloo is a "bit" bigger than the ones I'm used to. What you want though is a train service going to either: "Southampton Central" or "Havant". From there you can change to a train going to Swanwick station. There might be direct trains, I didn't find one from waterloo but if you want to go direct I'm sure it's possible. The route I took was via Southampton central and it went quite quick (not sure but less than 2 hours in total I belive). If you're confused by the 100s of service announcments and all the boards, ask the people in the helpdesk and they'll point you to the right track.
Once you get to swanwick it's a few minutes to walk to the Premier inn (I belive it took me around 20 minutes and I walk quite quickly). There were one cab hanging outside when I got there but it's not a big station, so if it rains and you want to make sure you get a cab I suggest you order one beforehand.
Walking to the premier inn isn't that bad but it requires you to cross a few roads, the left hand traffic can be quite confusing (I never seem to remember it anyhow
) so be careful.
When you exit the station, follow the road outside going past some stores (of the "industrial" kind, not supermarkets more like lawn mowers and stuff). There's a slight uphill, just keep going along it until you get to a larger road, once there turn left.
Continue on that road until it ends, then you should be at a roundabout. To your right is a petrol station. You want to follow the A27 that would be the third exit from where you're coming. There's a lot of traffic and no zebra crossings so be careful when crossing the roads. Once you get around the roundabout there will be a tiny asphalt footpath going along the road (following a hedge). Just keep on walking there, the road it goes by is quite big (4 lane I belive, 2 per direction) so if it's a small narrow street you've probably made a wrong turn.
The footpath will end up at a smaller road (not intersecting the big one, there's a bit of grass in between). Then you just follow that road straight ahead (it's a residential areas with houses on both sides). If you go around 50 meters you should see the purple sign saying "Premier inn" straight ahead. Then it's just straight on there, cross the last road and the premier inn is the house on your right.
The inn itself was nice, tea on the room, not much noise and I slept well. Breakfast is served in the morning at TGIs straight across the road (full breakfast was around £7 I belive, details on their website). If you want a cab just ask the reception and they'll book one for you. I'm not sure about the price but £5 have been mentioned quite frequently on the forums.
Time for the big day, as I said above. If you study the motivational paper and practice a bit of SDT, just get a good nights sleep and you'll be fine
OK, here's ends my story about the journey there. For those intrested, here's how it went on the way home
Got on a train direct to Victoria station, it was supposed to be a fast train but it must've gone around half of England because it took longer than the train there and that one had a change. Anyhow, I got up to London in good time. Had time to do some shopping and then it was 1 hour on the tube out to Heathrow.
EGLL was a mess, my plane was supposed to go at 1815, it was delayed to 1940 when I checked in (at around 1600). They rebooked me to an erlier flight, it was supposed to leave 1600 (ten minutes erlier) but was already delayed to 1730. It ended up going at 1830 from gate 311, the weather had caused all flights to be delayed at least one hour (many up to 2 hours and more).
Once airborne (after 25 minutes taxi) we went straight to Copenhagen. Flight was quite nice, and it felt real good to get the daily newspaper for free and be able to relax a bit in the chair (hint to ryan who makes a great "busline", but don't really get you the newspaper for free in economy class).
We arrived in copenhagen at around the time my original flight was supposed to land, I now had 1 hours 20 minutes wait before my final flight home to ESGG was due to depart. It was however delayed for one hour with new ETD at 23:45 local (one hour ahead of London time now, if you thought the flight from EGLL took long
).
How ever at around 22:30 we got a message saying the flight was cancelled (I belive it wsa due to the crew exceeding their working hours if they flew that one aswell since they had been so delayed). So we got (after some wait) taxi tickets and a stay at the hotel Scandinavia, plus a little bag with the "survival kit" for the night.
After a wait in the taxi line I got on a cab and showed him the card with the hotels name, he said he knew where it was and off we went. A problem occured though when I went into the hotel and they told me he had misread hotel Scandinavia for hotel Scandic (not really my night huh). And since I had no idea what cab I had been going and that he had apperently accepted a voucher not valid within his company (well then at least I hope he didn't get payed for the ride
) they had way to get him back and drive me to the right one.
So I ended up paying 120 DKK to get to the right hotel (around £12 pounds) where I arrived at midnight. After a bit more standing in line I finally got my room and went to bed, after being awake for 16-17 hours it was not hard to fall asleep...
Next day, up erly, no time for breakfast since they opened at the same time I needed to get a cab to the airport. This time it went right where it was supposed to, everything else worked out fine. MD80 up to Gothenburg, great climb performance out of 22R and then a nice soft landing on runway 21. Bus home was offcourse late so I waited 30 minutes in the rain, and now I'm finally home.
Conclusion: It felt good I payed the extra money to go with SAS on the way home and not RYR, at least when all went wrong SAS did pay my cab and my hotel (and also a free midnight snack from the bar). It might be a bit more expensive, but when you're exausted and all goes wrong it's nice to know that they will arrange everything for you.
Well there you go :P Sorry for writing so much, but I did warn you
Now I'm finally at home in my bed, awaiting the results. I don't want to get my hopes up to much, but at least I feel there's hope
Also once again good luck to everyone else taking the stage 1 yesterday, it was nice seeing you in real life and I wish you all the very best (and hopefully we'll meet again at stage 2
).