A Harrowing Tale of Airporting

The aforementioned 27 hours of travel did not take into account waiting at the Oslo airport for hours, praying to the sweet baby Jesus that our flight would actually take off. Adding this in, our total travel time was closer to 30 hours. I will not include our stay at the airport hotel in our total travel time because that was a pretty sweet stay, albeit lacking a much wanted bathtub.

So the following posts make sense, our flights were:

1. Oslo to Frankfurt

2. Frankfurt to Singapore

3. Singapore to Brisbane

We awoke at 5 a.m. on Monday for our 7:40 first flight. There were ground crew strikes at the Frankfurt airport the previous Thursday and Friday, which resulted in me threatening bodily harm on anybody who dares strike and interrupt my travel plans come Monday.

There were strikes come Monday.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

We were flying SAS from Oslo to Frankfurt, and several Lufthansa flights before and after ours were already cancelled by the time we got to the airport, pre-6 a.m. Not a good sign.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

We checked in our luggage and, at that point, all was well with our flight. Bonus points for us, both our suitcases came in 2 kg under weight.

It should be mentioned that when we realized there were strikes at Frankfurt we decided to go straight to the airport and forego the hotel breakfast, which I had been really looking forward to. As I have mentioned before, hotel breakfasts in Scandinavia are a true delicacy. My belly was too filled with fear and loathing to fill it with meatballs. Sad times.

As we waited for the flight to Frankfurt (or the ball to drop) the flight time changed from 7:40 to 8:30, chopping our leisurely two hour layover in Frankfurt down to one not-so-breezy hour. And that's assuming the flight wasn't delayed even further.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

But there were no further delays! We got boarded on the plane to Frankfurt in record time and were informed that our travel time was a good half hour less than planned. Sweet! But one caveat: It would take 55 minutes before we were allowed to take off. Turning our not-so-breezy hour layover in to no-chance-in-hell-your-ass-is-stuck-in-Frankfurt-for-at-least-ten-hours wait.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

At this time I feel it's appropriate to bring up my belief in “travel karma”. Whenever I see someone running at an airport or train station, I don't giggle and say “sucks to be you, sucka” or wish them ill. I physically send out karma vibes to them, however that's possible, so they don't miss their plane or train. I root so hard for that person to make their transport, in the hopes that I am rewarded in the future when I am in need of good karma.

And rewarded I was. We only had to sit on the tarmac for about a half hour, rather than the expected hour. If the plane landed on time (it did) and we got offboard (is that a thing?) in a timely manner (we did) and the immigration control lines weren't hellacious (they weren't) we'd make our flight to Singapore (we did).

When booking our journey we had two options of routing within Europe: Frankfurt or London Heathrow. It is my goal in life (no kidding; italics warranted) to never, ever, ever fly through Heathrow, the global clusterfuck of world transport. Plus, those British bastards strike all. the. time. No way was I choosing them over practical, efficient, obedient Germans.

How wrong I was.

We are very lucky to have made that connection, but many of our travel companions were not so lucky, which resulted in both of us having 2 seats to ourselves. Hahaha, sucks to be you, suckas! More space for us.

And that, folks, is an example of bad travel karma. Next time I go anywhere I'm screwed because I relished in the misery of others. The karma gods giveth, and the karma gods taketh away. Such is life.

An entire blog post and we've barely made it 2% in to the 30 hour journey. I'll save the rest for later. This 9 hour time difference ain't fun.

*faints dramatically on to couch*