{"id":1108,"date":"2014-12-02T13:37:47","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T11:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/?p=1108"},"modified":"2014-12-03T11:43:26","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T09:43:26","slug":"flight-story-again-3-to-luck-until-next-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/?p=1108","title":{"rendered":"Flight Story Again. -3 to Luck until next battle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is again a story with Lufthansa, but not only. Praised be the \u00a0right of the Germans to go on strike whenever they feel like. That’s sure a \u00a0country to work in and to be part of an Union! \u00a0Only few weeks ago there were \u00a0some \u00a0days of \u00a0strike \u00a0on the national railway company. I think it’s not yet a full month since I \u00a0slept in Munich \u00a0because of another mild strike that delayed a flight leading to me loosing my connection, which took off early. Because \u00a0it’s absolutely normal , when \u00a0you \u00a0come back from the strike, you’re in a hurry to \u00a0catch up with your work volume and do things faster than scheduled.<\/p>\n

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Well , this time they made it big. \u00a0THAT BIG<\/a>. Shortly , there were no Lufthansa flights taking off from Romania today . Well, I did receive an SMS on Sunday evening around 22:30 \u00a0stating that my flight is cancelled due to an irregularity. \u00a0Meaning , employees don’t feel like working , \u00a0but more like protesting. I am not going to comment upon the reasons for protesting . I \u00a0am, normally, distant from any arguments that would allow any group \u00a0of employees stop working \u00a0at their \u00a0will , protest, cause losses and then expect that they continue to will work normally as if nothing happened , perhaps\u00a0get their yearly bonuses as well. But \u00a0not with the protesting employees I have a problem. \u00a0I am not a German , not living in that country and I suppose they know better how to do these things since I am coming from Romania to work in their country. There’s a part of the problem with my flight being cancelled. \u00a0Well , as I found out , shit happens , very often with Lufthansa . But also 90% of my flights are with them , so it’s likely that I am prone to \u00a0 their flaws , more than to others.<\/p>\n

Now , in the \u00a0next very morning , I have called their service center for a re-book. \u00a0After 37 minutes of waiting on the line , they offered \u00a0me an option for a\u00a0German Wings \u00a0flight \u00a0landing around\u00a015:30\u00a0Dusseldorf . \u00a0I opted \u00a0 better for an \u00a0connection with Austrian – German Wings , landing at 11:00 in Dusseldorf in exchange for my flight landing at 9:00 (9:30 in \u00a0practice). They were nice enough to book me at that flight, that was basically way more convenient than my initial flight ( from the laving time POV) , but also way more expansive, reason why I didn’t book that in \u00a0the first place. As it’s hard to tell a customer \u00a0that he \u00a0has to pay more for your flight , so that you can arrive later.<\/p>\n

In Bucharest , the winter started right on time this year \u00a0and \u00a0it’s shitty, \u00a0as it should be in December. I was early at the airport \u00a0checked in and boarded on time , but when about to leave , there was an issue with some smoke sensor \u00a0that kept us on land for 1 extra hour , plus some 20 minutes to \u00a0remove the ice from the plane. There it gone my connection flight from Vienna , boarding at 9:00. I landed at 9:30. \u00a0Noticed there’s \u00a0a \u00a0flight at 10:30 to DUS, so I ran my brains out looking for a service center. Police couldn’t have caught me if they wanted. I have posted myself in front of the service desk at 10:00. There was \u00a0one person ahead of me, also going at DUS. Wow, that guy was really fast getting there, or he took a shortcut. \u00a0Or he didn’t loop like me twice same places because nobody could tell me where’s a bloody service center in that airport.<\/p>\n

And now \u00a0you really have to see the movie Interstellar , that I watched last night, to understand \u00a0how time \u00a0 passes differently depending on where you are and , basically, how fast are you moving. \u00a0In a limit situation I \u00a0was \u00a0literally aging , in front of the \u00a0service desk , \u00a0while the lady there , \u00a0spinning \u00a0near the horizon limit of a black hole was sloooooowly pressing one key \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0and \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 then \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0the \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0other.<\/p>\n

It took five bloody minutes \u00a0( in my world) , to book the guy \u00a0before me to \u00a0another flight. And who knows since when was he there. He did look kind of old. Don’t know if he aged there , or landed that way in Vienna. \u00a0He went away and then it was my turn. She asked me for my ID and \u00a0I \u00a0quickly shove it into her face so she can “do the needful \u00a0” ( \u00a0needs quotation due to Indian copyright on the expression ) . The \u00a0whole world had to spin once more \u00a0till she took that ID from my hand . \u00a0I was actually afraid to touch the ID in the same time with \u00a0her , as I was afraid that being that close to her \u00a0 world, \u00a0the time would pass differently inside different parts of my body and I may scramble myself. So I dropped the ID on the desk. Accelerated \u00a0by \u00a0the gravity excess it fell down immediately with a sharp noise on the table. Wrong move on me , cause it took her about a minute to pick it up , look at it , then\u00a0look at me and then say: “Ok , let’s see if I can book you for the flight leaving at 14:50… a reverberation of \u00a0“IF I can book you” and \u00a0“14:50″ passed through my head 20 times in the millisecond before I reacted with : ” How about the flight leaving at 10:30? “.<\/p>\n

-That is already gone, she said. “Goooooone” reflected through the drums of my both ears…<\/p>\n

-But is 10 minutes past 10, ONLY!<\/p>\n

-As I said , already gone ! And the silence \u00a0fell \u00a0hard on me .<\/p>\n

Holly shit! Ok , I accepted the \u00a0curse of time and I \u00a0took the ticket. She insisted in giving me a 6 EUR voucher to compensate for my delay , of 1 fucking work day (<\/strong>Thank You, Lufthansa! Me, nonstop me<\/a>,… being delayed on your flights, motherfuckers! )<\/em>\u00a0. \u00a0That took another 5 minutes and I wanted to strangle her right there and put an end to the time speed variance in that airport. Then I walked for 1 half hour , 1 passport control and 1 security check to get to terminal C. Where I found out that there’s no “Star Alliance” lounge and should I want to \u00a0get a free whatever things that you get in these lounges , I have to \u00a0loose another \u00a0hour and pass twice through security check . Meaning , back to the gates F and afterwards returning to gates C . I am not that fuckin’ cheap, you know ? I rather write this shit and pay \u00a0for \u00a0my lunch. Somewhere deep \u00a0in my pockets , I have forgotten the talisman of misfortune. \u00a0Need to dig it out.<\/p>\n

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Still in the airport , hoping that I get on time to DUS.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is again a story with Lufthansa, but not only. Praised be the \u00a0right of the Germans to go on strike whenever they feel like.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lufthansa","category-uncategorized"],"views":2319,"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Eq23-hS","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1108"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions\/1117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalinx.ro\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}