Showing posts with label won't you all just love me please. Show all posts
Showing posts with label won't you all just love me please. Show all posts

Saturday, July 04, 2009

It is not the journey that counts. Right?

First of all, welcome to all of the new readers and thank you for all of your lovely comments my old and new bleeps, which I will most certainly get around to answering. Maybe. In the comments. I'll try, I promise. I really do appreciate them.

But enough with sweet and thankful and onto the task at hand: I have been wronged. Again. (Yes again.  What do you mean by forgive and forget? Turn the other what? Where did you get that stuff from?)

This all might be a tad sketchy, since during the past 36 hours I have managed to catch about 4 hours of fitful sleep. And most definitely not consecutively, not more than 20 minutes on one go, nor laden with any kind of quality whatsoever, unless you count dreaming about the huge amount of dandruff the guy next to me on the longest flight had (and was shedding on me). But it shouldn't probably count, or even be mentioned. But to be fair, there was a lot of it, and it might have been multiplying before my eyes. Quite an experience.

But I digress and to dandruff of all possible things. Not good.

Look at me. Way to woo the new readers. Yes, why don't I just go ahead and write about dandruff. An excellent idea. Who is not interested in the wonder that is dandruff?

Anyhoods. Nuff with dandruff. Ha!

Some of you might remember mine and hubby's flight to Europe back in May and how Swissair completely and utterly blew and sucked - simultaneously. Yesterday as I arrived to Copenhagen ready to continue via Zurich home to South Africa they unfortunately decided to continue on that path, if not outdo themselves. Although, I might have already been in bit of a state, what with the two plane malfunctions and a thunderstorm in Stockholm resulting in a mere four hour delay of a flight that normally takes an hour. Uhhuh, two (count them TWO) planes we had been herded onto had to turn back from the runway because of problems, only to leave the third one, with all of us passengers packed in, waiting by the runway for the thunderstorm to pass.

Yup, yup. This will surely win them over. A rant. You got it girl!


But the best was yet to come. As I was trying to maniacally claim my tickets on from Copenhagen so that I could still catch up with my bud, Ph.D Mommy (why would she not wait for me for four hours in a downtown cafe?) I was soon told that there were no tickets for me. I was not in their 'system'. Not even under any sort of weird mutation of my name I had the lady try. Normally, having escaped the all seeing eye of Big Brother would have brought enormous joy to me (writes the woman who lives behind a gate you need to have your fingerprint read to enter), but instead I started to cry. What else would a normal grown up do? Of course I cried.

Turns out, sometimes it's good to cry. Even if you feel that as you are in your thirties you could have perhaps come up with something better than breaking out that inner 6 year old. Turns out crying will make people call Zurich for you until someone, somewhere in the world finds out that your tickets have been canceled, and that regardless of this there just might be a way to get you on a plane at least headed South of Copenhagen and perhaps even eventually for Johannesburg. So go ahead, have a good cry. At the airport. In public. Just don't stomp your foot, that will just stink of overboard.

Sometimes a few tears do the trick.

Good, because most of my credit cards had expired at the end of June and the new ones were waiting for me in SA.

Good, because my cell phone didn't work in Denmark and was almost out of battery anyways.

Good, because I was getting ready to cry some serious.

I really should get my Siamese Sister, the always wonderful and riotously cool Vancouver's Enviro Girl to come do my organizing for me. She has offered... Just to, you know, to be able to go easy on the tears and have some phone numbers elsewhere than on a phone that cannot be turned on. You know, in order to be, like, a normal, grown-up person.

In the end I missed meeting up with my bud, but at least I had a couple of Zeus-honest boarding passes in my sweaty little hands, and some internet time. And there's always that Starbucks at the airport - the only one in Scandinavia. And we all know how much I love a good latte. (Don't worry my new bleeps, you'll soon find out.)

And acrabadabra, thanks to the wonder of the internets, twitter and gmail, I got to meet with my fairyblogmother™ julochka from moments of perfect clarity, who picked up her daughter, Sabin, and rode the train and the metro for a whole hour just to turn my day around. Awesome!

Lucky she did. Because the rest of my journey involved yet another hour and a half delay followed by the oh-so-feared "they're holding the plane, but you have to run, ma'am." And run I did to find out that the seat waiting for me could only accommodate one of my cheeks. My posterior. My behind. My poor, unappreciated derriere.

Then 11 hours of flying.

And an imprint (possibly a permanent one, in which case I'm so suing Swissair) on the side of my right thigh of the remote conveniently located on the inside of the side of the seat. Such a great design.

Now.

There is one mother of a complaint letter brewing, just waiting to spew out on paper.

But first, I need sleep. and possibly wine.

And I promise to be back, as soon as I come out of this haze to clue you in on me, and this here blog. So there's that to look forward to. Yes.