Bring on the Night

30th June 2007 Aalborg-Beijing

Note: the Internet on the hotel is pretty unstable. It’s there, but accessing some sites is next to impossible. Using outlook to send emails is no good, and I have to use a sluggish webmail to send we-have-arrived-safe-and-sound-mails to my relatives. This also means that posting this entry took ages and correcting grammar will probably not be done. Please bear with replies on emails and comments section until we are in Yilan where C’s family lives.

What a boring roadtrip to Copenhagen. It rained cats and dogs for more than half of the 3½-4 hours we drove. At least I was not the only one crying. Fortunately I had our chauffeur – The Stig/Kojak – to help me bitch. Arriving at the airport, we were dropped of by The Kojak. Thanks for the ride dude.

The next 1½ hour or so went through our own little hell.

At first I checked the spot to check in and joined the line forming. It’s the season for vacation, so there were plenty of people there. Some airport personnel were assigned to make everything smoother, and one of them told me to check-in at one of the automats. So far, so good. The crap didn’t work, or should I say, I didn’t work for me. It rejected our reservation number. So back to one of the airport dudes who told me to get in line at another check-in. Back in line to wait. 10 minutes later it was finally our turn. I told the nice lady about our check-in woes, and everything went fine until she asked for the tickets What tickets?

See, when I bought the tickets I only received a confirmation on email telling me to bring this to the airport. So this is what I did. At the counter I was told that this would not be enough, since the reservation was finished saying that they sent oldskool paper tickets. We were flying SAS, but the ticket was bought and paid to some random Internet company. After some feverish calls the staff told me that she could not make the tickets for us, but needed us to go and get these at the Ticket Agency down the hall. Not only would we have to wait in line again, but we also had to pay 2 x 300DKR (about 2 x 55USD) for cover their expenses. There was nothing to think about so we went there and got the tickets. When I’m back in Denmark I’ll just have to fight the company to get a refund for this money.

Back to the check-in where they meanwhile had closed the desk. The neighbour check-in helped even though this was a VIP-desk of some sort, but we weren’t arguing. She fixed the papers pretty fast and we were on our way to the gate. I had the sweat going there for a while. Sat down and relaxed a bit which was needed after that experience. After 1 hour boarding still hadn’t begun and our fellow passengers started bitching how SAS was always late. 15.50 o’clock, when the plane should have rolled down the runway, the boarding was still on hold. I was later told it was due to lack of personnel.

The Kojak started taunting me with short mobile messages, telling me that god had finally turned against me again, which was hard not to disagree too. One thing I hate is people being late or schedules not kept. Especially when I myself am never too late and always in good time.

In the queue my name was suddenly spoken out loud on the speaker: Would Peter some-cool-family-name please rapport to the desk. All horrible scenarios flew through my head: “Did something happen to my folks back home”, “Was our tickets invalid for some reason” or?

After struggling to the desk all my worries were brought to shame. Our luck had changed and due to overbooking of the Copenhagen-Amsterdam flight, we were offered a better deal. Not only could we grab a plane directly from Copenhagen to Beijing if we agreed to stay behind, but we would also get 2 free food vouchers and 150 EURO (175USD) right down the pocket. Furthermore the flight from Copenhagen-Beijing would arrive 45min earlier. Of course we agreed and right now it’s 19.25 o’clock and we’re waiting for the boarding to begin at 20.00. This turn of events almost seems too cool to be true. Way cooler to sit in the airport eating free food, than to be crammed into a plane and do the transit routine in Amsterdam.

In the flight everything went as expected. Not enough sleep, shitty air-conditioned air and lousy movies, but who cares. All was expected and we got there. 20 mins too late, but we weren’t in a hurry.

Tags: beijing, China, flying, hotel, travelling