Murphy's Law?

[rimturse]

Trip back from Cyprus yesterday was a nightmare. We left at 7:00 CET and arrived home at 03:00 CET.

20 hours of travelling after just 6 hours of sleep.

It started out well enough. Left from the hotel at 7:00 CET. Arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare...and then things started going downhill from there. Waited in line for 1 1/2 hours at the check-in counter. Complete with a screaming toddler next to us (luckily after 1 hour the toddler's mom gets the brilliant idea to give her a bottle. The little tot grabs it like she's been starved for days, gulps everything down and promptly falls asleep) and a disorganized guide from some German travel agency trying to get "her" people in before everyone else.

Then when we finally reached the check-in counter, we were told that the plane we were supposed to go on was too small to take all passengers, so instead of going to Frankfurt, Germany, we had to go to Paris, France. A longer trip with a 2-3 hour wait at Charles de Gaulle airport to catch the next plane to Frankfurt.

So, we check in our luggage all the way to Frankfurt over Paris and rush to catch the plane to France. I'd just read an article that listed de Gaulle as the worst airport in Europe, so I was a bit sceptical.

There was a jet-setter girl on the plane to Paris in front of me, perfect, hair, nails, make-up, trendy sun-glasses the whole lot - extremely smell-polluting as well. Her perfume was so strong it stripped our noses, unfortunately it wasn't strong enough to cover the stench from her bare feet. During the whole flight, she was calling the flight-attendants for this and that. She suddenly had to make a VERY IMPORTANT call, which turned out was a call to her uncle, asking him to buy her a new pre-pay card for her cell-phone, because she was running out. She had to push her seat so far back that I barely had space to breathe (not that it was that important considering her smelly feet) and THEN she had to put on nail polish, again stinking up the whole plane with varnish.

At first I thought my fear of de Gaulle Airpost would prove groundless. We got off the plane, showed our passports for the first time in France and as soon as we entered the airport, there was the transfer desk so we could get our boarding passes to Germany. Perfect.

- and too good to be true. The girl at the transfer desk told us that our luggage had been checked through and would be waiting for us in Frankfurt, and we should "go straight, then left, and then take the bus to gate 22". We go straight, then left...and there's gate 22, but no bus - and no listing for any planes going to Frankfurt. We look at our boarding passes. They say gate D61. There are no airport staff around, so we ask a policeman for help. He directs us to the passport control and we go there, show our passports for the second time and ask the policeman there for help in finding the gate. He's also very friendly and directs us in the general location, telling us to head for the exit.

Off we go, take another left and a few more turns, show our passports again, show our boarding passes a few times, until we arrive in a big hall with - tadaaaa- an information desk. The lady there informs us that we're supposed to be in terminal 2 (we're currently in terminal 1) and go to gate D61 in terminal 2. She redirects us to the shuttle-tram, which we find after a bit of searching, since the elevators and the sign leading to the tram is hidden behind a rather substancial wall.

At this point, we're going "doh!". Because had we been TOLD that we were supposed to go to terminal 2, gate D61, things would have been MUCH, MUCH easier. Just a little thing like actually writing T2 or Terminal 2 on our boarding passes would have gone a LONG way in making the airport just a little more user-friendly, or even having the flight on the terminal 2 screens (which it wasn't for some reason). Of course more staff and a few extra signs here and there wouldn't have been bad either.

We show our boarding passes and passports 2-3 times, and we make it to our gate with 20 minutes to spare. Not bad at all.

Of course C and I are experienced travellers, so we kept our cool and made steady progress. Some of the other Germans having to go over Paris were not that fortunate. Especially one guy, who had been ranting and raving on Cyprus, didn't show up at the gate on time. C joked that he probably created such a fuss that the French police had to arrest him. He made it, as the last passenger to board the plane. Turns out that part of his delay WAS because he'd gotten into a discussion with the French police! He had apparently had a completely different experience with them than us, but aehmmm judging from his behaviour it probably wasn't the police's fault.

And when we finally arrived at Frankfurt Airport? Our luggage was still in Paris. Still is, matter of fact.

Anyway, we were beat, but still managed to make the 7-8 hour drive home to Denmark. It's the last time we go by this route. It was bad enough on the way out where everything went according to schedule, but 20 hours to get from Cyprus to Denmark is ridiculous. For 20 hours of travelling, I want to cover a significantly larger amount of kilometres. 20 hours, should take me to some small island in south-east Asia or at least to another continent, thank you very much.

Comments

[rabiagale.livejournal.com]

And this is why I avoid airline travel like the plague.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

*grin*

very clever of you.