Making My Way Home, Part 2 - The 43 Hour/Five-Flight Journey (written at various stages)

At some point, you start hoping more things will go wrong, just to make the story better....

Itinerary 1:

Ljubljana – Zurich

Zurich – Newark

Newark – LA

LA - SB

I left my hotel at 2:30 pm GMT on Sunday December 15^th. I made it to the airport shortly thereafter. Upon arriving I was told my flight had been “merged” with another flight. This was their nice way of saying, we need to make another stop first. My SO anticipated dinner plans in Zurich with Louis and Pia (mentioned in my prior blog) were no longer possible as I was going to be making a stop in Frankfurt delaying my arrival some 2.5 hours and making a lovely Swiss fondue dinner, impossible.

Itinerary 2:

Ljubljana – Frankfort

Frankfort – Zurich

Zurich – Newark

Newark – LA

LA - SB

I promptly complained about this on Facebook as I was now taking five flights to get home. FIVE FLIGHTS! I was quickly informed by my friend on the ship that I debarked six days earlier, that had I stayed onboard for the Atlantic crossing, it not only would have taken more time to get home but I would have been seasick most of the way too. (Perspective achieved, suddenly five flights home didn’t seem so bad.)

I arrived and checked into the Day Rooms at Zurich Airport, at 9:45 pm GMT. (I love the Day Rooms in Zurich, a short walk within the airport to a place with all the necessary amenities of a hotel room, place to sleep, shower, at a reasonable price.)

At 4am GMT, my phone alerts me, my flight to Newark has been canceled. This baffled me 

because I had been telling people for a week, erroneously, I was scheduled to fly through Washington DC. I even had a conversation with my friend Kathy to see if we would be at Dulles at the same time as she too was scheduled to fly through DC. But United seemed to think I was scheduled to fly to Newark. So I get on the phone with United. Forty-five minutes later, I am flying through Washington DC.  It’s like I knew all along. If only United would have gotten with the program.

Itinerary 3

Ljubljana – Frankfort

Frankfort – Zurich

Zurich – DC

DC – LA

LA - SB

My new flight was an hour later, making my layover at Zurich, 13 hours, and my layovers in the US dangerously short but hopefully it would work out OK. (Of course you know it won't....)

I spent the morning working at the Swiss Lounge. The Swiss Lounge (frequent flyer lounge for Star Alliance members) has a cappuccino machine and Swiss chocolate, which really was all I felt was necessary. But being that the rest of the clientele was entirely men around 50, they also had food and beer. 

(Some noticed gender numbers during my travels: my flight from Istanbul to Ljubljana was 65 men and two other women. The Swiss Lounge was all men except one wife, and myself. )

Hour 20, I get on the plane in Zurich for a 10:30 am (GMT) departure.

And proceed to sit on the tarmac for two hours, ground stop due to fog.

I complain via email to my coworker that I don’t think I am ever going to get home. He mentions he hates Mondays and nothing is working. I agree as my entertainment system for my nine hour flight plus two hours on the tarmac is dead. This by the way was followed promptly by discovering the book I downloaded for the flight corrupt beyond use. Eleven hours on a plane with nothing to do. (How on earth did people take road trips with kids in the 1960's?)

Hour 32, I arrive in DC at 4:05 pm EST (10:05 pm GMT) which by the way, is exactly the same time as my flight to LA starts to board. I turn on my phone to an email from United. It says, “If you do not make your connection, you have been rebooked on the following flights. Please simply proceed to the new gates.”

Itinerary 4:

Ljubljana – Frankfort

Frankfort – Zurich

Zurich – DC

DC – Denver

Denver - SB

I cannot tell you how awesome I think that is. I open the United App and I have new boarding passes.  No hassle, no talking to people or waiting in the enormous customer service line I eventually passed, no discussion. Just done.

And it was a good thing as it took me another 90 minutes to make it through passport control where it was 95 degrees F, there were about 225 people in front of me, and by strange confluence, only five people behind me for all ninety minutes.

Due to the extreme wait in passport control, I would have missed the new flight too had the new flight, now to Denver, not also been delayed. (Yes really.)

So, I can’t tell you much more about the trip home as I slept the rest of the way, including from the gate where I landed in Denver to the connecting flight gate to SB. I am sure I made it from one gate to the other, since I woke up in Santa Barbara, so it must have happened….

Hour 43, December 17th, 9 am GMT, I arrive in SB.

And no big surprise here, my luggage did not.

I go to report my missing luggage. There is a line of five people. I decide I am too tired. I am really too tired to care.

It has been 43 hours since I left my hotel in Slovenia. I want a shower to wash off the sweaty 90 minute wait in passport control.  I take a cab home ignoring my lost luggage entirely.

The next morning, I drive to the airport to pick up my luggage which I am 95% convinced will simply miraculously be there. (This comes from years of travel experience. If your luggage doesn’t make it with you, you can go report it missing and sometimes it has made it in on a flight before you did. Most of the time though if you just show up 12 hours later, it will be there waiting.)

The beach is adjacent to the Santa Barbara Airport.
So I stopped to enjoy on my way to pick up my luggage.

Santa Barbara airport being the tiny little stop that it is, there was me and the woman behind the United counter and we were pretty much it. (I am sure someone else was at the airport, but I did not see them.) I wait two minutes at the counter, while the woman looks baffled at my luggage tags from Adria airlines (because really, how often do people start the day on the national carrier of Slovenia and end in Santa Barbara). Deciding not to even try to decipher it, she just walks back and looks. 

My luggage is there waiting.

Stupid: 43 hours to get home

Cool: Work that takes me a world away, and the fabulous perspective provided by my friend Alex Tan who reminded me the alternative to 43 hours and five flights, was 11 days of being seasick.