Heathrow and its corridors

In my last two visits to Bratislava, prices of direct flights from Madrid to Vienna have made me take a flight with a scale in another European airport. Thanks to this, I have shortly visited Switzerland three times (Zurich twice and Geneve) and Munich one more time. In all cases, the time between the two flights was always around 1h30' and I had plenty of time to get bored while waiting for the connection.

In my last week's trip, I made the connection in London Heathrow, as I had to combine it with another ticket. This time I booked 2h between the flights, considering that, although Heathrow is a huge airport, this would give me enough time to carefully check some shops at Terminal 5. Reality told me that I was totally wrong.

My trip did not have a good start in Vienna, as we were ten minutes delayed because an Airbus A-340 to Dubai was blocking our way to the lanes. So we could not take off until the Airbus A-340 was in the air. Then, we could not get any slot to land at Heathrow and we flew in circles three times over London... I prefer to believe this and not that the pilot got lost and could not find Heathrow as my father always claims.

Once landed, with around half an hour of delay, I had to change terminal (from 3 to 5) and therefore followed the signs for flight connections. Here is where the Odyssey begins. In Terminal 3 I walked along corridors for ten minutes, upstairs and downstairs and arrived to a queue waiting for a bus to Terminal 5. There a miracle happened: time froze! At 16:54, the bus was expected to come in 2 minutes; at 16:56, the bus was still expected to come in 2 minutes; and at 16:58 there was still 1 minute to wait for the arrival of the bus...

Things did not improve much in Terminal 5. First, I had to queue to go through passport controls and then to go through security controls. In the second case, as it is my tradition, my queue was the slowest in all Europe... Once in Terminal 5 I had enough time to grab something to eat, to unsuccessfully look for a Tintin comic and to run to the boarding gate for Madrid. In total, between the landing of the plane from Vienna and the time where I arrived at the boarding gate of the flight to Madrid 1h30' had passed.