Merry Christmas--Vesele Vánoce! I hope that it is blessed for everyone. :-) And some nice gifts too. ;-) I am enjoying the Colorado Christmas with friends and family... ever since getting back most of what me and Kosťa are doing is visiting friends and hanging out with my parents! It's great:-) Its interesting now to think of the differences between Christmas in the US as opposed to the Czech Republic. Perhaps I will post those differences later, if people are interested in the comparison.
So, I have to tell the crazy story of our journey back to the US... I have never experienced travel problems with flying before and I hoped I never would! But we got our fair share (or more) this time, even though it turned out fine. :-) So here goes...
We got up nice and early to leave for the airport and it was nice and clear, I could see stars outside and even though the bags were heavy the travel was fine. Well, we missed the first bus from the metro to the airport but it wasnt a big deal as we had plenty of time, it was just cold but it started a nice trend of "late" for the journey...
By the time we got to our gate at the airport, the sky was cloudy and it was snowing lightly! Which turned to rain more and more as the announcement came that our plane from Frankfurt was arriving late... so we left Prague about 20-30 minutes late. Fortunately, (sort of), many other fligh
ts in Frankfurt were delayed due to rainy weather even though it was mostly clear when we arrived... so we had an easy time transferring to that flight, which was boarding when we arrived to the gate. We didnt have to deal with security since we had arrived from a Schengen Zone country, which was fortunate. Also fortunate, was that we had separate seats on the airplane--but if anyone was supposed to sit by me, they never showed up so Kosťa was able to sit by me. :-) And it was nice because our 2 seats were by themselves, by the window. :-) So OH MAN we had great views of Iceland and Greenland going home... see the picture. :-) But our plane was, of course, 20 minutes late leaving, and I saw one of my bags was the VERY LAST to get on the plane before we left the gate! And we arrived 30 minutes late to Chicago, leaving us only enough time to make our next flight if everything went REALLY smoothly.
ts in Frankfurt were delayed due to rainy weather even though it was mostly clear when we arrived... so we had an easy time transferring to that flight, which was boarding when we arrived to the gate. We didnt have to deal with security since we had arrived from a Schengen Zone country, which was fortunate. Also fortunate, was that we had separate seats on the airplane--but if anyone was supposed to sit by me, they never showed up so Kosťa was able to sit by me. :-) And it was nice because our 2 seats were by themselves, by the window. :-) So OH MAN we had great views of Iceland and Greenland going home... see the picture. :-) But our plane was, of course, 20 minutes late leaving, and I saw one of my bags was the VERY LAST to get on the plane before we left the gate! And we arrived 30 minutes late to Chicago, leaving us only enough time to make our next flight if everything went REALLY smoothly.Which it didnt.
I got through customs just fine, being a US citizen, but Kosťa took twice as long to get through even though the line was no longer, and possibly shorter, than ours. I was meanwhile waiting at baggage claim, and even though many, many bags arrived while I waited, none of our bags arrived until Kosťa met me at the baggage claim carousel. Then 3 of them arrived very quickly... and we waited... and waited... for the fourth. It never came! Grrrr... the man called that he had pulled off the last bags from our flight; I had him scan the bar code thingy I had and he said the bag probably never left Frankfurt... so our plane had already begun boarding all the way across the airport while we were waiting for this bag. So we busted our butts to get through the second part of customs, and re-check our bags which didnt take long, then we got a bit turned around finding the airport train to take us to the right terminal, and when we arrived there we ran to security, had a lot of nice people let us cut and we skipped 95% of the waiting for security and then ran as fast as we could a LONG way to the gate... only to find out that our flight had left the gate about 3 minutes earlier... still on the ground but not at the gate. :-(
So we waited in the customer service line, praying we could get on a flight. The man who helped us said all flights were on standby because the bad, snowy icy weather had caused so many delays and flight cancellations. He sat there typing for quite a long while... we were trying to be patient despite being nervous and knowing that the next flight was boarding really soon. At one point he asked us if we were members of the United Mileage Plus program... politely we said no and inside I was shouting, "WHY does that matter right now?! We have a flight to catch, stop advertising!" And after some more typing and getting us a couple brochures for the seemingly ridiculous mileage program, he told us the gate number for the next flight and that it was boarding and ran again there.
When we arrived to the gate, the flight was in the last 5 minutes of boarding. We got in a line, not sure who to talk to or how to get from "standby" status to being on the airplane. Both of us figured we weren't making this flight and possibly staying overnight in the airport. We saw the standby list on the screen and saw that, although there seemed to be many names on the list, we were in the top 5.... then we read the criteria which were listed as giving you greater priority on the list--and one of them was being a mileage plus member! So the nice man at customer service has signed us up for the program to get us home sooner! This still warms my heart and I pray that this man had a blessed holiday despite having to deal with so many delayed airline customers.... And the story continues. We finally got in the right line, and the man had our names and said he had been calling them for about 5 minutes! And we had basically just arrived so we REALLY were up there on the list... we received the LAST TWO tickets onto that flight to Denver! And it gets crazier. We were getting our seats, and somehow THREE people (including me) had a ticket for seat 34A!!!! I still am not sure how it all worked out, but the second person got a seat... I felt a bit bad inside because the man behind me, an older gentleman, had to get off the plane. :-( He was one of the 34A people. I was also praying he made the next flight...
God blessed us SO much that we got home that night, safe and still on Friday! Especially considering that the weather in Chicago has worsened considerably since we arrived. We were praying a lot through the day and everything turned out good....
OH I completely forgot about my bag! :-D That was an adventure... we made the report with United in Denver so they put it in the computer and thus began the search. :-) I checked online multiple times a day... on Sunday the message said that they had probably located the bag and were confirming the match so I was excited! but on Monday and into Tuesday morning I was pretty down, because it said instead that they were sending the information to the main headquarters and I should fill out this (long) claims form and mail it ASAP, in which I had to list the contents of my bag (my memory is pretty good... I cant believe how much I remembered!) and details of the flight and my bag, etc. So I filled out that form which took forever, and spent the time making a thing on the computer which had a picture of the bag and some other information. I went Tues afternoon to mail it... and realized I forgot the envelope! so this meant standing in a ridiculously long, not moving line at the post office... and then I noticed a message on my cell phone. I listened to it and it was a guy saying he was delivering a luggage for me and should arrive in a few hours...! I couldnt believe my ears because nothing indicated that my bag should be arriving! I almost stole the envelopes I was holding to purchase, because I was so excited that I ran out the door. Thankfully Kosta noticed that I was holding them and we took them back inside... :-P :-) I did a lil dance outside the post office... haha, I was SO happy. Especially since 90% of my clothes and a few Christmas gifts were in that bag. That was a great day. :-)
So that is the crazy story... I will update more on being bac in the US etc later but for now I want to end this thing and enjoy my Christmas away from the computer. :-) tak ČAU. :-p :-)
...that's what I have to keep telling people here. And its weird.
