My friend Elaine from Dublin was getting married to her Kenneth back in February 2007. I had booked flights to come over to Dublin for this big event and I was so looking forward to it. As you know, it can be quite snowy at this time of the year and this was the case when I was flying this day as well. I was flying from Stockholm to Copenhagen first, it was just a quick stop before I was going to jump on the next plane. Well, that is what I thought anyway..
Our flight from Stockholm in the morning was delayed for about 2 hours because of the snow so I started getting worried about catching the connecting flight in Copenhagen. Finally arriving in Copenhagen I ran across to the gate just to see my plane head out at the very second I got there :( I knew I wasn't gonna get my luggage if I had been able to get on that flight, but that didn't bother me so much. Oh well, now I didn't have to worry about that. Instead I had to go over to the service desk to have myself booked on the next flight to Dublin.
The weather was slowly getting worse and worse but I didn't think about it that much at this stage. Now I was just pissed off with the fact that I had to queue up together with hundreds of other people to get some help. It took about 2 hours before it was my turn, when the guy who served me told me that I had to wait until about 5pm that day for the next flight to Dublin it didn't exactly get me in a better mood. I had to kill some time so I bought a book to read and had some lunch.
Later on in the afternoon it was time to look at the screens for my flight to check which gate I was heading to. It felt like I had waited around forever. As soon as I saw my flight number I discovered that this flight was also delayed by half an hour. Oh well, half an hour is only half an hour. If I had waited all day for this flight, I could wait for another half hour. When it was time for boarding, they kindly informed us that the flight had been delayed for yet another half hour :( I started to completely lose my temper at this stage, but could do nothing else but wait. Finally we got to board the plane and I was so happy that we were on our way!
I made myself as comfortable as I could in my seat and was eager to take off. However, nothing happened for a good while and time was ticking away. After an hour on the plane, they informed us from cockpit that we just had to wait for another while since they were shovelling snow from the runway. About 30 minutes later there was a message from cockpit again but this time I could hear from the sound of the voice that they were not gonna have good news. They informed us that the whole airport was closing down, that the flight was cancelled and that we had to get off the plane :(
Frustrated as I was, I walked down to the arrivals section since we were told that they were gonna put us up for the night in a hotel. Since the whole airport was closing down and all flights were cancelled, you can imagine the amount of people that they had to take care of. I took a queue ticket and sat down to wait. I was getting really hungry at that stage and after a while I realised that it was gonna take a good while before I was gonna be taken care of. It was getting later and later and I figured that I would need to get something to eat.
The only place where they served food was a hot dog stand. I queued up and found myself placed in a looooong queue once again. I knew it was gonna take some time too, but reckoned it was gonna be worth it since I would finally get some food into me. After about 40 minutes I was getting closer and closer to the hot dogs but what do you think happens? The woman in front of me buys the last two hot dogs!!! I started crying like a baby, I'm not joking.. I was hungry, tired and fed up! Big time.
Anyway since I don't want to go on forever, I finally got put up in a hotel in the city centre of Copenhagen. After queuing in a taxi queue in the snow storm and sliding around in a taxi to the hotel, I finally got to the hotel and I was so starving I could only think about the food that they told us we'd be served upon arrival. I was soon informed that they had stopped serving food since it was so late but then I screamed to the hotel staff that I was demanding food! Got some soup and sandwiches in the end before I tried to get some sleep for a few hours before it was time to get up again to get a taxi to the airport for a flight the next morning. Since there were not enough taxis in town the next day there was almost a physical fight to get into a taxi. Of course this flight was also delayed for about an hour but I finally got to Dublin about 28 hours later than planned. When I went to get my luggage in Dublin airport there were no bags to be seen.. How stupid am I, did I really think I was gonna get so lucky to actually find my luggage!? ;) This was a Thursday and the wedding was on the Saturday. It turned out I had to wait for my luggage for another 2 days before it arrived - one hour before the wedding! Since I couldn't rely on getting my luggage in time I had to shop for a new wedding outfit and loads of other stuff too, luckily I had the wedding present with me as hand luggage!
I will never forget this trip, what an adventure!! The wedding was beautiful though and we all had such a good time. Besides, all of the shopping I did was paid for by SAS ;)
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