Flying Can Be Trying
Perhaps it would be more accurate for me to say: not flying can be trying. We did make it home from Rome in some comfort this weekend, but our itinerary held a few surprises.
Our original plan was simple: we were scheduled to leave Rome/Fiumicino last Friday morning about 9:30. Consequently we hired a taxi to fetch us at our hotel (Hotel Maryelen, which we wholeheartedly recommend) at 6:30 am. A pleasant, if brisk, ride later were were at the airport with ample time to do security and prepare for our flight.
Now, the essential element in this story is to remember that we were flying with a friend, a former airline employee, who took us with him on "buddy passes", thus making the entire vacation affordable for us. A moment's reflection should make clear to you, dear reader, that we were therefore flying on standby status.
Flying standby, of course, requires that there be seats wanting passengers on one's flight of choice. On that flight, on that morning, however, there were none for us. From Rome, only one flight a day (on planes of our friends former employer) departed, and the flight for Saturday already looked amply booked with paying passengers.
Thus, quick thinking on our buddy's part found a flight we could get on to go to Frankfurt, a city with four flights a day to the US, a fact that we felt would significantly increase our chances of getting home. And so we departed Rome in the afternoon for Frankfurt.
The detour was unexpected and I admit to being, at times, a bit tense about the arrangements. However, our (as it turned out) brief stay in Frankfurt turned out to be restful and rather pleasant, I'm happy to say.
Arriving at the Frankfurt airport around 5pm, our group's fourth, who works in the hotel industry, was put in charge of selecting accommodation. He found what sounded very agreeable in terms of price, accessibility, and amenities. We took a short shuttle ride some few minutes later to the Holiday Inn, Frankfurt Airport-North.
One virtue of this side trip is that we arrived early in the evening. Thus, we could freshen up a bit, have a leisurely dinner, and still go to bed so early in the evening that returning to the airport at 8am the next morning was not a hardship. Phew.
The hotel had a very nice restaurant, featuring an alluring buffet and an adventurous, nouveau-ish menu. The only drawback was that prices were rather high — the buffet was 39 euros — but this may be common in Germany. At any rate, our companions had buffet and Isaac and I ordered from the menu. He had a mixed grill of meat, I had a mixed grill of fish. It was all quite tasty.
We retired early, about 9:30pm, after turning on the TV and watching a few fleeting minutes of "The Simpsons" in German. Very droll. The beds were comfy, the duvets were extremely snuggly, and our room was so quiet that I fell asleep to the whisper of the ventilation in the bathroom.
In the morning we enjoyed the lavish, and free, breakfast buffet in the dining room. At 8am we were shuttled back to the airport to take our chances for the day.
Let's keep the story short. There were four flights that day. As time came and went we discovered, in turn, that none had a seat to spare. We went to the gate to await our last chance for the day, a 777 that left about 4pm. We saw there several standby passengers who had similar problems to ours–we'd seen them all day long. Remarkably, none of us tried to bump the others off for their spaces.
Let's keep this story short and with reduced anxiety, too. At the very, very last minute our party's name was called and we were given, at last, the elusive boarding passes. We were on the plane! We were the very, very last ones taken, too.
Our relief was extreme, of course. As an added bonus, our buddy had manage to upgrade me and Isaac to business class. Hey! Those seats would have been empty otherwise.
Now there was a treat that seemed like the consolation for our long detour from Rome to Frankfurt. Being a midwestern, very middle-class, democratic liberal (and cheap!) person, I had never flown business class before. I don't want to gloat, but the service was better, the food was better, the roominess was incomparable–the entire experience almost made trans-Atlantic flying bearable. Whether I would ever actually pay for the accommodation is another matter, but it's easy to imagine at this point that I would.
And thus, we made it back to the airport in Washington, DC (Dulles) at about 9pm. It only took an hour or two to make our way back to Bjornslottet, here in Bowie, ready to tell other stories.
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on Thursday, 5 November 2009 at 22.14
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Glad to know you're back safely, and that your stand-by detour was good (not a universal experience, I presume). Your postcard arrived here on Tuesday.
on Monday, 9 November 2009 at 02.59
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our party's name was called
Fess up: somebody was praying.