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Published: August 23rd 2015
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Monday 10 August 2015
The alarm played a pleasant summery melody at 5:30 am. Time to get cracking. We had several deadlines to meet and missing any one could mean missing the flight. Our first deadline has been met.
Showered, breakfast completed, final clean up of the room, zip the bags shut, a quick farewell to our mini apartment and time to checkout. Talk about a military operation. We ambled to the railway station and arrived in time for an earlier train. All is going well. Our main concern was getting the right spot on the train that would not cause a problem to fellow travellers. What perfect luck. We find the spot we were after. We are now fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.
The RER B loads and unloads its passengers as we head for Charles de Gaulle Airport. The train started making strange noises, like too much air in the braking system. A quick look around to locate the fire extinguisher just in case. No one else was concerned so we sat back and relaxed. An hour later we had arrived at our next destination. A quick transfer to the driverless shuttle and we were ready
for check in. Driverless trains are a worry. You just hope someone has control. We can just imagine ourselves ending up miles from anywhere because of some computer malfunction.
Checking in was a pleasant experience. Our bags are well under the limit. Our thoughts went out to the poor mother with two young children and about six large suitcases. One child had a wish to follow a suitcase to the baggage area. The young gentleman dealing with us had a problem with his pen. We had a give-away pen from the travel agent so left him with a present. Corruption at the highest level. In response we got priority tags for our bags and a green sticker on our boarding pass. Still ahead of schedule.
We took a few moments to use up some euro coins at a cafe. It never works. You end up with more. Oh well, the travel fund has started for the next trip. Time for Border Control. The new word today is "queue". So far we have completed the first queue. This second one was far longer. It wound its way back and forth and after thirty minutes it was our turn to front up to the police officer. We're sure we could have been monkeys going through immigration judging by the amount of interest she took. The man flying through Istanbul to Kara chi was certainly getting agitated because of the time it was taking. We're sure he made his flight. As for the bag left behind. It wasn't there on the return zag so it must have been claimed. On to the next queue, security. One team member got the pat down again.
We sit waiting for our call in the departure lounge. The call we wait for is the one that asks for those with the green stickers to come forward for their free up grade. Unfortunately not this time. Time for more queues. First economy blue stickers then economy green stickers. Our turn to board. Approaching the aircraft another queue.
All has gone well. We have met every deadline. It is now up to the crew and traffic control to do their bit. We left 35 minutes late.
After yesterday's wonderful lunch on the Champs Elysees, today we are enjoying an airline lunch at 35,000 feet over Hungary. How exotic is that?
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