Ever wonder how authentic those vacations gone bad movies really are? well, I can now attest that they are nearly documentaries for some travelers ( i.e. ME) who endured the downward spiral of Travel tribulations.
For starters, my flight from Orlando to Germany was delayed about 15 mins to board- not so bad, I thought. When it was finally time to board the Super-sized airplane from Lufthansa, I was excited and anxious to see the fully reclining chairs that I assumed would be aboard this massive two story high Cruise Ship in the air. As I walked through the aisle of First class I was mesmerized, people actually travel this luxiourous? I really hoped my seats were half as nice as those but, as I neared the ECONOMY section of the airplane I was greeted with my first experience in a sardine can. Ikea couldn’t make furniture small enough to fit in the slit that was my window seat. I took my seat and stuffed what now felt like a garageful of belongings under my seat and settled in. My neighbors smiled and gave the silent aknowledgement nod. They were an older woman and man who were either not traveling together or hated eachother’s guts because they barely looked at each other. 10 minutes went by as the 250 passengers boarded the ship, er, I mean plane and we were ready for lift off. As our plane slowly backed out into the runway, the Flight Attendant came on the air “ladies and gentlemen we must return to the gate due to a child being sick and must be taken off the flight, sorry for the delay”. It wouldn’t be another 30 minutes until we finally lifted off and en route to Germany were I had to take my connecting flight. The only problem was that my connecting flight was an hour after the flight ORIGINALLY landed.
As soon as we arrived in Germany, I shoved myself around the crowd and insisted that I get a fast track off the plane because I’d miss my connecting flight, Graciously everyone let me by and I thought I was in the clear .
WRONG, as I got to my first security checkpoint the guard instantly told me in his extremely accented German English ” You will certainly miss zee flight, zee gates closed 10 minutes ago”
So, all the running, sweating and convincing still landed me in the line to re-book. Once I got to the counter, yet another wonderfully accented man informed me that ” zee only two flights left to Madrid are in 15 minutes and at 9pm” He rebooked me on another airline to leave in 30 minutes. Grateful and hungry I went toward the security check point and paralyzed, or so it seemed. As opposed to the rushed procedures in the US, the German airport took every person going through the scans individually paying personal attention. Nice, yes but not when you are rushing to get on a flight. I anxiously waited in line literally tapping my feet in anxiety.
Finally I got past security ran to the gate and was taken to a bus which drove up to the plane- 1960’s style and we boarded the toy airplane on steroids. Talk about going from one extreme to another. As I got on the minuscule aircraft, I was both flustered and starving so I took my seat as quickly as possible. 2 hours later I was finally landing in Madrid and the longest flight of my life was over.
