Friday, September 12, 2014

Black labelled 10.09.2014

Yesterday was by far my worst day in 2014.
I thought about it and made a sequence of "misfortunes" I encountered on this one day alone.

First, early in the morning, I woke up with NO INTERNET ACCESS. Well, this itself had actually nothing bad in it, if the other "events" didn't turn up. Eventually it turned out to be just the telecommunication fuse deactivated itself (according to my house mate, Leon, who switched it back). And so I baked a cake, as I already planned the day before. Went to JunXiang's place at about 12:00, needed his help for passport photos.

Now this is where the exciting part begins. Sitting on the bus, on the way back from JunXiang's place, I got a call from Uncle Jeremy asking whether or not I'm stuck in the airport. FYI, I booked a flight to London on the 10th, arrival supposedly before 11am. Up until that moment I thought my flight would be on the 11th and not the 10th... I FORGOT MY FLIGHT!

So, the first thing when I got back home, I checked my booking confirmation mail, and I was like 哭笑不得.. Three things I immediately did, first calling Easyjet to re-confirm my return flight and to claim back the airport tax (ticket non-refundable), second booking a new flight on the same day with departure at 5:30pm under Germanwings, third calling Uncle Jeremy to update him so that he could pick me up later. 10x.xx EURO GONE, just like that.
Alle durcheinander...

I left home within thirty minutes, grabbed some burgers from McD in the train station and then traveled directly to Cologne-Bonn Airport. Arrived at airport at around 3:15pm, plenty of time left I thought to myself. Then I went directly to the check-in counter with my passport, only to find out that my name is not in the system. Being asked for the booking confirmation, I took out my phone and opened the mail from Germanwings airline. And guess what, I was in the WRONG AIRPORT -.- To explain this, I remembered very clearly that I entered "CGN" which I booked my flight, which stands for Cologne-Bonn-Airport, and there my actual departure was at Duesseldorf airport instead. What happened, or what have I done wrong, I didn't know.

Never mind that already, I asked the check-in officer what options do I have, at 3:30pm, two hours from actual departure time and in a different airport. Train would be difficult, so I 忍痛 TOOK A TAXI FROM AIRPORT TO AIRPORT. At first I planned to take the taxi just to another train station which is convenient for me, but that stupid traffic jam made me changed my mind. After a bit negotiation with the taxi driver, we agreed on a price of 100 EURO, without metering (so that he doesn't have to pay the 19% tax).

This time I made sure everything was done with adequate time to spare, and I made it to the waiting hall at around 4:50pm. Boarding supposed to be at 5pm, but nothing happened. At 5:20pm, announcement was made about my FLIGHT BEING DELAYD FOR TWO HOURS, until 7:20pm. Seriously wtf already, can things get any worse than that? Had I know that the flight was going to be delayed, I might as well saved that 100 Euro for taxi. Seriously 他妈的!

But wait, I wasn't in London yet. My flight arrived on time (with the two hours add-on), but I queued for passport control for more than an hour. ONLY TWO OFFICERS AT PASSPORT CONTROL, for all non-EU passengers. I got another call from Uncle Jeremy, who by then was really worried about me being stuck somewhere. And by the time I got my passport stamped and went to the luggage claim area, my luggage was very "lonely" with just two other partners on the whole belt. And the belt has already been used for four flights with mine being the first! Couldn't count anymore how many times I swore on this day up to that moment.

At the end I had my dinner only at 10pm local time, or 11pm on my watch. I was so hungry.

哎,心痛如刀割。
Today I rested the whole day, doing nothing significant.

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