Jennifer Looks On The Bright Side

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. Something went WRONG ! With how great everything has been since I went to Paris, I thought I was really riding the wave.

So here’s what happened. I had planned to leave today to go back to Hamburg for about 10 days. This past week I had been feverishly preparing to take a lot of copied files with me, and making a schedule of what I would work on there. Soenke had planned a day trip to Paris on the 25th to celebrate our 6 months together. I had a booked business class seat for today. It was all looking good!

Then I arrived at the airport. Although the booking situation had looked ok last time we checked, the lines were suspiciously long at check-in (even the business class line). Even so, I was checked in on the Munich flight with a cushy seat assignment in Row 1, & the girl commented that my priority status was pretty good (although full-paying customers still take priority over me). I had arrived 3 hours before the flight, so there was time to kill. I eventually went to the gate (of course the farthest gate away at LAX) and went up to speak with the gate agent just to re-confirm my status on the flight. I was totally SHOCKED when he told me that my luggage was being offloaded and I had been bumped from the flight !!!! WHAT??!!!

This had never happened to me before. As a consolation, the flight manager told me she would list me as standby on the last flight of the day to Frankfurt (highly overbooked as well). Then she sent me off to the business class lounge to think about all this.

A few hours later I trudged back to the same gate to wait for my chances on the Frankfurt flight. After begging, pleading, & even agreeing to sit in a jump seat (kind of like sitting on a child’s folding chair), I was turned down, along with about 10 other people. Then, another hike all the way back past security to the ticket counter, to recollect my luggage and assess my options.

With no letup on flight booking status the next few days, I was realizing that I would not be going to Germany. Thus, I would not be seeing Soenke, and would not be celebrating on Wednesday in Paris. WHAT WHAT WHAT?!?! How do I curse in German?! To top all this off, I have had this stomach bug the past few days & thus cannot eat anything without feeling like throwing up. So with no food all day, my energy level (and tolerance level) was at about zero.

My first move was to do what any good girlfriend would do: call & wake up her boyfriend at 3am in Europe !! He negotiated me a reimbursement from Lufthansa for most of the $125 cab fare home. In the taxi, I did the next important thing: I cried like a girl! Then I pulled myself together & decided to find 10 good things about what happened today. I figure I could make myself miserable or I could see the bright side, so here goes my list of upsides for today:

1. I like to “people watch” in airports, especially in the international terminal where there are happy little traveling families from all over the world. I had LOTS of time to do that today.
2. I like to watch the big 747s cruise by the end of the LAX international terminal. I got many chances to do that too.
3. I got to hang out in the Lufthansa business class lounge where it was about 20 degrees cooler than the rest of the airport (it was VERY hot today!!)
4. My friend Danae kindly took me to the airport in the morning, so I didn’t have to pay for the ride up, plus we had a lot of fun chatting !
5. The weather here is HOT and beautiful, so I can spend the ENTIRE day out at the pool tomorrow !!! (YEAH !)
6. I will get a refund for 500 euro (about $615) since I was bumped & there is no hope of me getting on other flights the next 2 days straight as they are wildly overbooked too.
7. I don’t have to eat German food all week ! (mmm, my apologies to my German readers, but, I haven’t quite warmed up to most German food yet.)
8. I had an opportunity to catch up on a lot of tax technical reading (yippee?) .
9. I don’t have to deal with jet lag !
10. Soenke said he might come out & see me here instead !

And the icing on the cake:
I get to relax & watch History Channel for the rest of the evening!

So see, what I learned today is that every cloud really does have a silver lining. I just needed to be flexible & open-minded.

Better luck next time !