Flying is for birds
There haven’t been any blog posts recently because I was traveling on business this week and only arrived home on Friday morning. I was lucky enough to be in Budapest, which is a beautiful city, surrounded by sociable, interesting colleagues, in generally good weather. If I could have, I would have made this blog post after having arrived at my hotel in Budapest on Tuesday night at midnight, but hopefully I can recount my story with a similar passion this long after-the-fact.
Did you know you can drive to Budapest from Aschaffenburg (where I live) in 8 hours? It took me 6.8 hours to go there by plane and, to be honest, I would have rather driven the 8 hours. This is why flying is for birds:
| 5:15pm | Left home to walk to the train station. My train should leave at 5:35pm and I have an 8:20pm flight to Budapest. I’ve never been on an ICE train that left Aschaffenburg on time, so I’ve allowed plenty of time. |
| 5:33pm | 2 minutes before my train should arrive and I just can’t believe my train will actually depart on time, Deutsche Bahn announce that my train has a 20 minute delay due to a tree that fell over onto the train tracks. You would think they would have figured that out at least 20 minutes ago? |
| 5:55pm | Deutsche Bahn announces that the train on which I have a reserved seat has an additional 20 minutes delay but that I can take a different train that arrives soon. I take the next train and arrive at the airport at 7pm |
| 7:00pm | The bus to take me from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 (where I have to check in) at the Frankfurt Airport has no real place for luggage, so I climb up a huge step into a raised seat area and put my suitcase in the seat next to me, luckily it was small enough to fit. After waiting 5 minutes we leave on the 5 minute ride to the other terminal, along a series of twisted roads and turns. We live in the 21st century, what major airport do you know that doesn’t have a quicker, more accessible mode of transport between terminals? |
| 7:15pm | I arrive just in time to check in and end up waiting 15 minutes behind 2 people before it’s even my turn. The check-in line next to me, the only other one and exclusively for business class, wasn’t any better - it took the attendant longer than I stood in line to explain to a grandma, a mom, and 2 small kids from Hungary that they had too much baggage. |
| 7:30pm | I rush out of the check-in line with my boarding pass and into the line for passport control. It seems everyone’s on break so it takes around 10 minutes before it’s my turn for the border guard to look suspiciously at my new US passport and the accompanying German residence permit. |
| 7:40pm | The border guard finally waves me onward into the line for the security check, where - when it’s my turn - I get to put my laptop in one basket, my laptop bag in another, my purse and coat in yet another |
| 7:55pm | After trolling through the entire Terminal 2 to the end, through the construction, I almost reach my gate only to be stopped by another security control, in a room that’s around 77F/23C degrees - hot. I have the luck to wait in this line for over 10 minutes before finally making it through, something set the metal detector off which hadn’t triggered the previous one so I had the pleasure to be body-scanned. |
| 8:05pm | I’m actually at the door that should lead me to the plane, which has a departure time of 8:20pm. Problem is, it’s not even open yet. |
| 8:20pm | I’m sitting in a BUS outside the door that was supposed to lead me to my plane, which was supposed to take off about now. After another 5 minutes, I see the grandma/mom/kids group that had been checking in at the same time as me come through the doors. And off we are to the plane. |
My plane arrived 30 minutes late in Budapest, which in theory is not so bad? Counting the time it then took me to get to the hotel, it was almost a 7 hour trip.
UPDATE, 11 April: I found out that a colleague of mine didn’t get back until late Friday night since his Thursday night flight had repeated delays and eventually was cancelled. I got off better than I thought!
on April 9th, 2007 at 1:01
I loved the ICE trains :)
on April 10th, 2007 at 16:18
Can’t wait to come visit! It sounds so simple! Hehe. Speaking of which, seriously, we are thinking of doing the Europe thing next year. You up for some visitors?
on April 11th, 2007 at 19:44
hahaha flying is awsome, wouldn’t it have been quicker to take a train? or lousy connection to hungary?