Friday, January 6, 2012

26 Hours Of Shame

Abby's home! She was supposed to get in last night around 5pm but she didn't show up until midnight. I was, maybe, a tiny bit worried about her but when she told me her tale, there was only laughter and gentle head shaking. First, this charge form:



Her story went like this:

Abby flew from Iowa to Denver and then from Denver to Frankfurt where she was supposed to catch her flight to Istanbul. Well, she missed her flight in Frankfurt. When she landed, on time, in Frankfurt, she looked at the board to find out which gate to head to next. She saw "Istanbul" and headed to the corresponding gate, where she waited for about a half-hour until boarding began. When she finally got to the front of the line, the ticket agent pointed out that she was trying to board a Turkish Airlines flight and she had a Lufthansa ticket. Then he told her the Lufthansa gate number.

She says now that she should have gotten food and gone straight to the gate but she didn't. She was tired and grumpy and decided to sit down to eat. Then came her fatal flaw: she started reading.

When she finished, she walked to the gate but didn't see "Istanbul" posted on the board. She encountered an angry German or two who first interrogated her concerning her whereabouts and then informed her that her flight had left 20 minutes before and she would need to go to a help counter to get a new flight. And we all know how this part goes: that counter sent her to another counter, which sent her to another counter that was conveniently located in Germany.


Yes, Abby had to go through passport control and enter Germany in order to get out of Germany. That's ironic, right? Her new ticket sent her to Munich and then on to Istanbul. In Munich, she landed in the domestic terminal and had to transfer terminals. When she got to the passport control agent in the international terminal he asked what she had seen during her visit to Germany, and she was forced to admit she had only been in the country for a few hours and was just trying to leave.

She finally got back to Istanbul late last night with two huge suitcases and a tragicomic story. It's good to have her back. 

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