Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

The last day of my Krakow trip was the trip back. We all had early flights, so we met in the hotel lobby at 4:30 am, checked out and piled in a van to the airport. The roads in Krakow, especially to the airport, are pretty poorly maintained. This was made worse, by the incredibly dense fog that reduced visibility to about 100 feet. It was a beautiful drive through the fog to the airport, but a little nerve-racking not seeing where you are going.

The airport was a little interesting since my passport recently stopped swiping properly, causing delays and funny looks from passport control. And the security guards at the airport didn’t speak English so we had to pantomime things like, “Where are your liquids and gels?” and “Is solid deodorant a gel?” I’m sure it was pretty funny to watch.

Once the snack bar opened up (at 6 am sharp) we all got breakfast; I had hot chocolate (of course), orange juice, a horrible tasting spinach, cheese, and sun-dried tomato sandwich, and some pretzels. I bought the pretzels mostly because they said, “Incredible Smak!”; who am I to turn down a “Smak”?

Then our “plane” boarded. Rather, we all got on a bus that would take us to the plane. The Krakow airport is really small, so the bus drove us about 25 feet from the door to the airplane. Fairly inefficient, but it’s probably better than having a bunch of passengers loaded up on “Smak” wandering around the tarmac.

Once we were on the plane, we found out that the Munich airport had dense fog and we couldn’t leave for at least 30 minutes. I originally was to fly to Munich on Lufthansa, then to Amsterdam on KLM, and then on Northwest to Seattle. I was already nervous about the connection in Munich since I just had one hour (which would be just enough time), but any delay would make things interesting.

The previous night I did some research on alternate flights once I got to Munich. I could take SAS via Copenhagen or BA via London, though both routes would have me arrive hours later than planned.

So, I called my travel agent and had him book me from Munich to Copenhagen and then to Seattle. Since I had paper tickets, I would need to have the issuing airline agree to move me to SAS. Once we landed in Munich (about an hour and a half late), I hurried to a Lufthansa desk to find a 30 minute line due to all the delays and people missing connections.

I finally got through and found out that we needed Northwest to validate the tickets (even though they weren’t the issuer). We tried to get them on the phone for about 20 minutes, then find someone with the authority, and then finally make them agree to validate it. The Lufthansa agent then needed to do the paperwork to transfer the vouchers from Northwest to them so that they could re-issue the tickets. That took another 20 minutes. The airline ticketing system is really old and complicated and could use a major overhaul.

Finally, we decided that since the layover in Copenhagen was only an hour, it was risky to go there, so I got routed through London. I was put on the next flight to London (which was boarding at the time), so I rushed over there to find out that it was delayed another 15 minutes. That gave me just enough time to get a Munich magnet for my mom. :-)

The Munich airport is really nice; it’s like a modern shopping mall that happens to have gates for airplanes. It’s too bad that I didn’t have the chance to explore it a bit more.

Once I got in London, there was a small chance of catching an earlier flight to Seattle. But London-Heathrow is a huge airport and it took about 45 minutes to get to my gate (including passport control, security rescreening, and ticket counters). I had about 3 hours to kill before my flight so I found another magnet for my mom and had dinner (pizza and Fanta).

Finally, the plane boarded and I was on my way back. The British Airways plane was pretty nice, I flew in Coach Premium (or something like that) so the seat was a little bigger than usual. The next class up had these weird pods that faced each other in clusters of 4, they were supposed to be better than normal seating, but it look really strange to me. I was so exhausted, I slept almost all of this flight.

Immigration in Seattle was annoying. The TSA guy asked me where I was (”Poland”) and did I buy anything (”Lots of little souvenirs that say ‘Krakow’”). He looked at me annoyed and confused, and then said, “Why Krakow?” I replied, “That’s where I was; Krakow is a city is Poland.” He looked at me suspiciously and finally let me through.

I learned two important things from this trip home:

1. Paper tickets are good. They are like currency, so you have a lot more flexibility in changing flights as needed. If I had e-tickets, I don’t think that I could transfer my tickets from Northwest to Lufthansa, so I would have stay on NWA and likely fly to AMS on the next flight and then fly to Detroit or Minneapolis and then eventually to Seattle. That would have cost me at least 12 more hours of travel time.
2. When connecting on flights, make sure your outbound carrier is leaving from their hub. For example, flying out of Munich on Lufthansa gives more flexibility than flying with KLM, since Lufthansa has more flights, agents, and more options at a hub than at a spoke.