The simple, nice hotel with free WiFi did not offer the availability of printing boarding passes. I had downloaded them, but not printed them.
Foolish woman that I am, for some reason I did not bring long all the flight numbers or my reservation numbers. After all, it should not be that hard to pull them up on the airline computer, should it? Silly me – the machine happily spit out my reservation from Budapest through to Frankfurt complete with the plane change in München, but did not find my reservation from Frankfurt to Heathrow. Without the particular flight number, the counter person was unable to pull up my reservation. The suggestion of “do it in Frankfurt” I did not greet with great enthusiasm. After all, this meant that I was committed to claiming my luggage in Frankfurt, hauling it up to the check in and going through the lines again (to include security).
I will let you just imagine the late arrival into Frankfurt combined with my seat in almost the last row of the plane. Then there was this little man on the isle seat of my row who did not see why he should get out of the way for either me or the man next to me. Never mind we both had connecting flights, we should wait till the traffic in the isle cleared so that he could get his bag. Besides, he was getting picked up in two hours by his son, there was no hurry.
We did not knock him over, or strangle him, but it was close.
By the time I cleared passport control, claimed my luggage, skated through one terminal, checked in, slogged through the new trainee at security and reached the gate, they were checking in for my flight.
From there, things were smooth. Immigration at Heathrow wasn’t an issue, my luggage showed up on the carousel as I walked up and the 285 was puling in just as I got to the bus station. I even made the train at Feltham, but that was due to a late train secondary to “trespassers on the track” – whatever that means…..
The day ended well, the dog was extremely glad to see me. Especially since it turns out the Mole was not making it home tonight since he had additional tutoring scheduled in the morning.
Now, if the brownies would move in and clean my house, I would be ever so grateful.
