What Time Is It?

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Geo: 46.0546, 14.5044

As I mentioned earlier, Europe transitions to Daylight Savings Time later than the U.S., and this Sunday (the last of March and the last our trip) was the day to "Spring forward." This meant that our already short night would be shorter by an hour.

We originally been booked to fly from Ljubljana to Brussels, and then from there on to Washington. I called United Airlines the day of the attacks, and was told no decisions had been made about when and if the airport would reopen. By the next day, it was clear it would not open anytime soon, so I called United back to have us rerouted. At first the agent asked if we okay leaving a day later than scheduled, but luckily he was able to secure us seats on a connection through Frankfurt. The flight left a little earlier and the layover was a bit longer, but I was just happy to have seats. I had transfers already lined up for the 25-minute drive from Bled to Ljubljana based on our original itinerary through Brussels. With our now before forced to reroute through Frankfurt, our morning departure moved up an hour to 7:00am. The transfer company insisted that we had to be at the tiny airport two hours before our flight, which meant a 4:30am pick-up from our hotel. That 4:30am was actually 3:30am on the old time, and as we didn't get to bed until almost 10:00pm the night before, it felt like a very short night.

We passed the ride to the airport in silence, that is until about five minutes out, Anna exclaimed that she'd seen a shooting star in the cloudless sky. I took that as a good omen for the day of travel ahead.

The airport was all but dead when we arrived, and the check-in desks were not even open yet. We had our choice of seats anywhere in the lobby and settled in to eat the boxed breakfast provided by the hotel while we waited for the airport to come alive. Check-in was painless, as was the wait beyond security in the very small gate area.

The sun was just rising as we took a bus out to our plane, and it was not until we took off and broke through the gathering clouds that we saw the full Easter-morning sun in all its glory. The views over the alps were spectacular. The flight to Frankfurt was barely more than an hour, not even enough time for them to serve coffee, which I was seriously craving by this point.

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