The universality of Vogons, and other travel mishaps

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Grüße von Hamburg! Finally!

The flight from Seattle to Copenhagen was half-full at best, so I got an aisle-window pair to myself. Pretty sweet. Individual headrest-mounted movie screens are fab except you give up precious footroom for the box of hardware that controls them... so the extra seat was even nicer. All in all an uneventful flight, all 9.5 hours of it. The SAS live forward- and downward-view cameras are cool, and it was interesting how the crew engineered our sleep time to minimize jet lag (made us all close our windows for some artificial night during our all-daylight polar flight).

I discovered Danish (and American) Vogons at Copenhagen's Kastrup Airport. It turns out my connecting flight had been cancelled, but it took more than an hour (10 minutes after scheduled departure) for anyone at SAS to tell me so. They cheerfully scheduled me on the next flight, 3 hours later. I picked up a bottle of water and a postcard at the gift shop, after which my credit card quit working. I dutifully called the "for international customer service, call collect" number printed on the back of my card and, I am not kidding, the bank refused the charges.

So, to summarize: no Danish money, no credit card. Couldn't send the postcard because no one would sell me a stamp, which was OK because, no Danish money. Couldn't reach Drea to tell her of the new flight. Couldn't get the public internet terminals to work with any of my credit cards. Tried to take Bones' first photo abroad, but the camera's batteries were dead. At least I had all my luggage with me!

Fortunately, Drea is smart and was, indeed, waiting for my later flight. And now it's breakfast time. Das Leben ist gut!

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Photos

Bones gets stranded
Bones and I waited several hours for our flight out of Copenhagen airport.

Comments

[anonymous]

The wonderful flow of travel.
I can't help but think that these are the kinds of experiences that make travelling a wonderful thing. I recall a few of these situations when we went to the UK, and depending on how you mentally handle it it can be overwhelmingly stressful or quite fantastic. I hope you're choosing the latter. - cjm