So, as I shared earlier this month, we travel home every fall and usually spend the month of November living abroad in Hungary. And every year I plan to write about our travels. And every year I totally fail at follow through ’cause jet lag and life or whatever.
But this year, I was telling The Husband, just feels different. I don’t know. I can’t quite put my finger on it. This is our 5th trip over and I had none of that crazy packer’s panic with all the list making and worrying that begins months before the actual packing! None! I went into some sort of hypno-mama thing where my world just went zen or something and packing became just tossing things in suitcases a few days before we left. I had no worries about the flights. Our health was good and we had all recovered from that nasty cold that we passed around the 2 weeks before. I just felt really good about this trip. Like, everything was just too good, too easy, too…..OMG what in the world was going to be hitting us down the road kinda good. Boy, when you have a 6th sense about something, it really pours!
(We pray over each other before every take-off and landing, asking for God’s protection and mercy.)
We had very little sleep (thanks to my last-minute packing!) and the trip to LAX had us all up in the wee hours of the morning on Friday. We left at 5 a.m. and planned for 4 hours of Los Angeles morning commute traffic. Yes, 4 hours. And we needed almost all of that time! Driving L.A. freeways every morning is nuts I tell ya, nuts!
Security was not too bad, and our first flight to Denver was on time. We were not seated together, so The Husband lucked out and had a nice quiet flight! The turbulence was horrible (as most flights to Denver usually are), but we made it through with lots of Dramamine and headed to our connecting flight to Frankfurt via Lufthansa. And that’s where the poop hit the fan.
And it was about this time The Husband said again, “I sure hope we can make our flight!” and, again I thought, “Why does he keep saying that?!” and then he tells me about the labor strike with Lufthansa. BOOM. That was the other too-good-to-be-true shoe waiting to drop. Lufthansa flight attendants had staged a labor strike to begin that day. All flights flying out of Germany to other European countries were being cancelled right and left. The flight boards were flashing with all of the red cancelled flights and we were all herded towards the Lufthansa service desk to see what exactly our options were in getting through to Budapest.
The queue at the Lufthansa customer service counter was at least 150 people deep and staffed with 3 agents. Yes, you read that right. Three agents. Good grief. Our bodies were definitely still on PST time (it was the middle of the night for us!) and we were feeling the jet lag, hunger, and general travel crankiness starting to weigh us down. I don’t know how many times The Husband and I both mentioned how thankful we were to at least have brought our trusted travel stroller along on this trip for The Boy (and yes, we still travel with an umbrella stroller for him as it makes airport life much more manageable!) so he could catch up on sleep.
We met another American gentleman in line behind us that was also headed to Budapest to play professional hockey. We chatted with him a bit and debated whether a train would be a faster route or if we would all be sleeping on the floors in the terminal until a flight could be arranged. After standing in that ridiculous line for about 30 minutes, an agent called us over and told us to head to another service desk. And why were we selected?! Because we had a STROLLER! Sweet Jesus we were going to finally be catching a break! We were thrilled to be leaving that horribly long line and hopefully getting some faster service! And then, as our luck would have it, the agents over at the other desk could offer us no help at all. We had to head back to that other line where, wait, what? Thirty other passengers just joined. *sigh* The Husband went back to find the agent that pulled us from line and ask him for assistance, or at least to let us get back our original spot in line!
Lufthansa must have been dealing with a few upset passengers and brought out a massive snack cart with bottles of water and apple juice, pretzel snack mix, German KitKat bars, snack cakes (similar to Ho-Ho’s) and hazelnut chocolate bars. ‘Cause hopping people up on sugar would make disgruntled travelers more calm? Well, it may have worked until all that sugar wore off! It took an average of 45 minutes per traveler to get the line moving at all.
We left the line again while the agent said he would get our travel problems figured out and promised it would be “soon”. A new flight on a new airline? Train tickets? Sleeping bags? It at least gave us something to hope for while we waited! And waited! And waited! And 47 pounds of junk food and 3 hours later…..
…..we had a new travel itinerary. We were scheduled on a new flight (via Lufthansa) the next morning at 11:45, a one-night stay at a Best Western on the other side of Frankfurt, 20 EUR in food credits, and a taxi voucher to and from the hotel. We were thankful to have anything for the night (and to not be in that line anymore!) and to be on our way in the morning.
The room was very nice, but frankly all we really wanted to do was to take a shower and get the “plane” washed off of us, find some real food to eat, and sleep…and in that order! The hotel food credits were good for a buffet dinner and breakfast the next morning, so we ate ’till we could eat no more!
The next morning we were up early (we were all feeling a ton better after having a fantastic night’s sleep and getting a head start on beating that dreaded jet lag.), had our free breakfast in the hotel dining room, and took the taxi back to the airport. Of course the plane was late, so we had time to learn to play Uno!
We herded with the rest of the passengers at the gate to wait for our seating group to be called, only to discover that it was “first come, first served” boarding! Airlines have become a lot more strict on the size and amount of luggage allowed on board, so it is not uncommon for gate attendants to start requiring the last group of passengers boarding to gate check larger carry-on bags. This happened to us last year when we left America and all I could say to the attendant was, “You’re about to see a grown woman cry real tears!” The thought of having my carry-on bag checked through to our final destination scares the pants off me, and this year’s trip was a perfect example of why I will never give up my carry-on bag! This red case is like that suitcase the Secret Service agents carry around with the President! LOL
Finally on our way to Budapest, a couple of days behind schedule, but on our way!
The Boy wrapped his beverage in brown paper napkins. No, I checked. It was not a beer. But after what we had just been through, we all could have used a drink!
Landing over Budapest…..
And then…….remember those real tears? We landed in Budapest and headed towards the baggage claim area and, y’all know where this is going, right? Not a single piece of luggage to be found. None of our bags ever left Frankfurt and the service agents had no trace of them at all in their “system”. UGH. It was late Sunday afternoon and we were already late to arrive at our friend’s home (dear friends that had agreed to host us for the weekend) and now we had no luggage. The Boy’s car seat (the brand new seat I bought specifically for this trip)? Gone.
Luckily the owner of the rental car place we always use had a spare booster seat, and it was better than having no seat at all. But I learned several years ago, here in Europe it is actually illegal to have a car seat with a chest clip attached. This offers a lot less safety in a crash, and with the way the drivers are here I was not happy about not having our “American” car seat!
After filling out a ton of forms and trying to identify our luggage, Lufthansa did promise that if the luggage was found, it would all be delivered to our friend’s home outside of Budapest. When? They couldn’t say. *sigh* Should we stick around and wait for it to show up? Should we just continue on to my mother-in-law’s home 6 hours away and then return when it was delivered? Should we head out and start restocking our clothing and other items?
Finally, our luggage was found (piece by stinking piece) and was sent on a direct flight from Frankfurt late Monday and we were on our way once again.
I actually loathe having my photo taken, but The Boy caught me in this moment and I think it really captures how I was feeling. Mama at her ‘crazy’ limit. Like, how much more can we go through on this trip?! Well, at least we are not sick! I totally just jinxed us by saying that, didn’t I?
Leave a Reply