A Comedy of Errors

Well, I did promise a detailed version of my travel travails, so here goes:

Saturday, 08 June 2013 - a day of new beginnings, the day I was supposed to be moving to the small city of Wroclaw, Poland for 6 months on a work related short term assignment. Everything was in place, bags were packed, cab was on its way, house was shut and locked down, and I was extremely nervous. Don't know why, but I had a funny feeling all morning, I just put it down to the gigantic butterflies in my stomach that had made a home for themselves in there for a few days now! I had a 2.55pm RyanAir flight from Stanstead, and for those of you who don't know, RyanAir is a low cost airline that charges a small price for the ticket, but make up their revenue by charging pretty high amounts for any other facility.

My cab was called for 11.45am, and just as the cab pulled in, I updated FB with this post:

Goodbye London for a little while...a little excited and mightily nervous about this new stint...what was I thinking signing up for this?!

By 12.45pm I was at the airport - you would think 2 hours is sufficient to get a flight, but alas! At the check-in, the lady said my bags were over weight by quite a bit. I was prepared to pay extra, but this would have been quite a lot extra. So instead, she suggested I buy myself a new bag that the airline would let through for an additional £60 only. Now they charge £20/kg for excess baggage, so this was a pretty good deal. Anyway, she made it sound like it would be a cabin bag, so I bought a small additional cabin bag and repacked my bags and moved a few things (being mindful of cabin baggage restrictions) to the new bag. My two existing bags were still a bit over, but I figured I could pay a bit extra on excess baggage by weight, and then take the additional bag too. At that point I really couldn't be bothered repacking all my stuff, it was a little late in the day to do that.

So I made my way back to the counter, and a guy had taken that lady's place. I explained the whole story to him and he asked me to go to the kiosk and pay for the excess baggage and the extra bag. Now the kiosk accepted the excess baggage but did not let me add on another bag, so I paid for the excess baggage, went back to the counter to let the guy know that I couldn't add another bag on. He directed me to the billing section and asked me to speak to someone there. I got to the lady there and explained the whole deal to her, she was perplexed and asked a senior member of staff (who was somewhere close) to help with the situation. That lady said that I could have any more bags, and that the staff at the counter should have just charged me excess baggage on the whole weight.

At that point the time was 2.25pm, so the lady said that check-in closes 40 minutes before the flight and that I'd already missed check-in so they couldn't let me through anymore and that I'd have to miss my flight and take the next one which was at 6.55am on Sunday morning. I argued with her that it wasn't my fault that any of this happened, and I was perfectly willing to pay for all the excess baggage, but her staff messed up the whole thing. Well, as expected, she refused to acknowledge their mistake and did not let me check-in. I had to pay a £110 charge to be put on to the next flight. I asked that my excess baggage charge be refunded to me, since I would now repack my bags and ensure that I don't go overboard on the weight, and get rid of all the extra stuff. The staff said that the excess baggage charge that I had already paid could not be refunded back to me right away since it was made at a kiosk, and that all I could do was write to the airline and explain the situation to me and hope that they would give me a refund.

Anyway, I planned on having someone come and pick up my excess baggage and spend the night at the airport - an absolutely nerve wracking thought, but it had to be done. The whole time I was afraid that I would fall asleep and someone would rob me of all my stuff!! While all this was happening, I had missed a lot of calls from concerned family and friends wanting to hear from me if I got into the airport fine. So I called back my parents and told them that I had to miss my flight for all of these reasons. I messaged a few friends about my situation as well. Then I went back to the repacking area and moved all the things that I could discard into my new bag to hand over before boarding the flight in the morning.

I had placed a totally panicked call to my landlord (someone who's known me since I moved into London 3.5 years ago) and requested him to collect my bag from the airport and just courier over those things to me. He suggested that I make my way back home instead and he'd just drop me back the next morning instead. So I managed to have my bag weighed at the check-in by the same guy and I was still over by the extent of the excess baggage I had already paid. considering that I might not even get my money back, I figured I could just go ahead and utilize that money in excess baggage! Anyway, I went to the lost baggage desk and left my two check-in bags there overnight, and made my way back home with my cabin bag and the bag of extras.

Just before I sorted out my luggage for the umpteenth time that day, I updated my FB with this new post:

How to screw up ur travel:
Step 1: Pack too much luggage
Step 2: Pay half ur salary to have things sorted
Step 3: Despite that, still miss ur flight
Step 4: Pay even more to get the next flight
Step 5: Start all over again

Just lived thru steps 1 to 4, next flight is tomorrow morning, I'll let u know how execution of Step 5 goes!!

The next morning, my landlord dropped me off at the airport at 5.25am, an hour and half before the flight. I managed to check-in and complete security check without a hitch and realized I still had a good 45 minutes to my flight. I checked the departure gate and saw the 6.55am flight was scheduled to depart from Gate 42. Now the screen was right next to where the sign said Gate 39, so I figured I wasn't too far and headed to the Starbucks in front of me to grab a coffee and a croissant for breakfast. I spent the next few minutes sipping my coffee and on the phone to my worried mother and updating my FB status:

Onward ho...after a 18 hour ordeal finally off to Wroclaw! See you on the other side

I also posted a comment on my prior post:

Step 5: Give 'em the middle finger and take that next flight!!

Before I knew it, 15 minutes had passed and it was 6.25am. I looked over to the screen and it said 'Final Call', I might've sworn out loud because I have missed a train due to the early morning coffee and did not want a repeat telecast with my flight especially after all that had gone down the day before. Even more so, after I'd just posted that comment on FB, it would be pretty ironic if I managed to bungle things up all over again.

Trashing my coffee I ran to the sign marked Gates 40-something and only then realized how far I had to go to get to Gate 42. After running for 5 minutes I reached there only to be told that I was at the wrong gate, and the flight for Warsaw was boarding from that gate. At this point I realized that when I looked at the screen for the information on departure gates I wasn't wearing my specs. My sight is not very bad, but clearly I misread Warsaw as Wroclaw and ended up at the wrong gate (just my luck that they had a flight to Warsaw at the exact same time as a flight to Wroclaw!). I ran to the nearby information desk where the lady informed me that the flight to Wroclaw was boarding at Gate 84, which she told me was at the other building pointing behind her and that I'd have to rush to get there. Well, rush I did especially because Gate 42 was practically empty, i.e., all passengers were already on board. Anyway, after another mad dash through the airport I made it to Gate 84, where thankfully there was still a queue of people getting into the flight!

Queueing up at the correct gate at last, and sweating buckets, I posted another new FB status:

Ended up at the wrong departure gate, almost missed my flight...AGAIN!! No worries, ran like hell and just made it to the queue...a flight to remember! 

After a saga that lasted about 18 hours, this was my final post once I was on the flight before switching off my phone:

In flight, safe and sound...point of no return :x

All in all, it was a journey to remember,and hopefully a once in a lifetime incident...I doubt I'd be able to survive round #2!!