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Thursday, February 25, 2010

Returning home

Monday a week ago we flew to Holland to attend the graduation of Joost as a bachelor of ICT. It was just a short trip. Landed on Tuesday the 16th and returning Sunday the 21st. But the return took a while. At Schiphol there was some fog, in Frankfurt there was some snow. Indeed that screwed our schedule. You would think Air Canada has the courtesy to wait 30 minutes or so, people on at least 2 flights from Amsterdam would be able to board AC895. But no, the fuckers decided to keep their schedule. We were only 20 minutes late. We were directed to the Lufthansa Ticket Centre to rebook our flight. Arriving there we were not the only ones, a line-up of a couple of hundred people. It turned out the Lufthansa pilots were going on strike the next day, demanding more pay (Yes they are at the bottom end of the payment scale indeed) and people were re-booking their flights. We stood in line for 2.5 hours before it was our turn. We had 2 options; one via Chicago-Edmonton and one via Montreal-Ottawa-Edmonton. We choose the latter and Lufthansa paid for the hotel and the food. Next morning, Monday, we left Frankfurt at 11:10 and arrived in Montreal 7:30 hours later, where we had to wait 5 hours for the connecting flight, onwards to Ottawa and another hour waiting. Finally we took off to Edmonton which was 3:15 hours away. The last couple of hours were not easy, restless legs, not being able to sleep, a sore butt of all the seating we did. At last on 10:30PM local we touched down in Edmonton where Emma and Johan were waiting for us. Not a pleasant return flight, but we made it. Sunday morning 09:00AM checking in at Schiphol and landing 10:30PM in Edmonton the next day; that's a 45 hour journey taking into account the time-difference.

1 comment:

dk said...

So that was the cause of the silence