So today we progressed from “yay we can take the prints on the plane” through “oh god, there are too many uncertainties about the rest of the trip and we should just bite the bullet and pay the money to ship them” through “why is this form so complicated, let’s just go to the DHL office directly” to [insert situations and language not suitable for polite company] all the way back to “well that was a wasted day and we’re going to take the prints on the plane.” Of course including several international phone calls along the way.
We’re currently researching all the options we (and anyone else) can think of for moving us and the prints around the country, so that we don’t end up stranded on a London street corner while the art show is being set up fifty miles south in Brighton.
If I had known! I’m a writer; I’ve never gone to a convention with anything unwieldy. Mark has, of course; but he’s never gone to an overseas convention. We had a perfect blind spot about the logistics involved here: I’m the much more experienced traveler, but not like this. If I was planning this trip knowing what I know now, we would do any number of things differently: get to Brighton a lot earlier (not just London); have the prints made there, or at least matted and framed; have them shipped way earlier (though we’d be talking six months or more, to avoid the “express” rates); I don’t know what else. My brain feels broken.
{and I’m really, REALLY trying to avoid the inevitable jokes about “Mark’s big package, that no one can handle…” Oh stop me, just stop me…}