I guess it could be worse. It could be raining. Actually, it is raining here in the Netherlands. And hailing, and occasionally snowing. But there’s no earthly reason I could possibly be here. Let’s back up a bit.
Imagine you got up at 5:45AM in order to catch a flight. Actually, you woke up at five and were unable to go back to sleep so that’s when your day really started. Imagine arriving at the airport well in time for your flight because the airporter was late but arrived early, and like a fleck of dust on your should you carry around this feeling that there is something wrong with this trip, but you can’t figure out what. In fact, the day before you called the travel agency, the airline they booked you on and the codeshare partner you’ll actually be traveling with, and everyone told you yes, you are in the system, we can see your reservation, you’ll be fine. You are subsequently told that you cannot check in because you don’t have a ticket.
So, that’s what’s wrong. OK, no problem, you made all the checks yesterday, some disconnect for sure, couple phone calls should sort that out. Plenty of time, it’s a small airport and you only have a carry-on. “Didn’t you receive a paper ticket???? ask the ground staff and no, of course you don’t, you only use E-tickets. Then, the Ely hits you. Please do a text search here for ELY (n.). This is what’s weird about this reservation: there is a paper ticket, it arrived days after you made the reservation and you didn’t give it much thought. It’s probably in your bedside table. Your bedside table is an hour away, each way, and the flight leaves in forty-five minutes. There will be two connections.
Welcome to my day last Thursday. I did eventually make it to Amsterdam, and will blog later on how this came to pass, but suffice to say that there is no earthly reason this should have happened and a bunch of friendly airline people were really helpful when they really didn’t have to be.
