Adventures in Europe - Part 6

Still Sunday. And a bit of Monday

Of course it didn’t last. Moments after disembarking we were thrust into a maelstrom of frustrated wannabe travelers. As with Schiphol airport, lots of people were spending their weekend in London’s railway stations, wishing they were on their way somewhere else. Word was, the entire country was clogged like this and for the first time in several hours, I began to worry once more that this might be as far as I would get.

Still, nothing ventured nothing gained and as trains to Glasgow leave from Euston Station, a short-ish walk down the road, I decided to make my way over there and see if there was by any chance, a train leaving tonight. As it turned out, there was. In 45 minutes. Now if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll remember that I had a plane reservation from London City Airport the following morning. So why was I looking for a train? Because I had already established that if there were any hotel rooms available in London for tonight – and preliminary enquiries suggested there were not, they would cost more than the plane I was considering abandoning. Taking this into account, and given there was no guarantee the plane would even get off the ground in the first place, it just made more sense to take the train.

I hummed, I hawed and with fifteen minutes to spare, pulled the trigger and bought myself a train ticket. A whole five minutes before the loudspeaker announced the train was delayed and to wait for further announcements. In my brief time here at Euston station, I’d seen enough examples of “delayed” to know exactly what it meant. A precursor to “cancelled”, that’s what.

Off to do battle once more then with my nemesis awaiting me in the corner. This bank of payphones were even more evil than their Schiphol counterparts. Not only did they not like my American Express card, they no longer wanted anything to do with my debit card. It had worked 20 minutes earlier when I’d called my wife to let her know which country I was in, but not now.

So...I had to find an ATM to withdraw some cash. Then stand in line at the newsagent to buy a bar of chocolate I didn’t really want in order to get change. Then watch in horror as said change was swallowed by the payphone at an astonishing rate, barely giving me enough time to recite the payphone’s number to my wife so she could call me back. She did call me back but due to the phone’s habit of cutting us off every 20 seconds or so, it took me a while to get the message across. “Yes, I know I have a flight booked tomorrow, but I’m going to try and get there by train tonight. It’s just I don’t know when or even if it will leave, that’s all.”

Finally, we were done and I determined to find myself a quiet corner in which to sit, get my breath back and wait to see what would happen with my “delayed” train. I never made it to the corner though. No sooner had I wrestled my way through the throng and back to the notice board when I heard the announcement “This is the final boarding call for the delayed train to Glasgow Central.” Well, what are the odds? Of all the “delayed” trains I’d seen in the last hour, mine was the only one which was really just “delayed”.

The last leg was uneventful. My back was aching now, after far too long in uncomfortable seats, or standing in endless lines. And it had turned dark long ago, so there was nothing to see out of the window. And as on the earlier trains, we had to go slow because of the weather. But we got there eventually, just a little over an hour late. The weather didn’t stop me after all.

I learned later that the plane I had booked for the following day did take, but didn’t arrive in Glasgow until mid-afternoon, which would only have allowed me a few hours with my family. I also learned that another storm hit Amsterdam not long after I left on the train, and had I not done so, I might be there yet. So it was a pleasant surprise to learn I made the right call in taking the train.

But the best surprise of all came just after we rolled into Glasgow, a little after 1am. Standing at the end of the platform was my brother-in-law, who had driven an hour through the snow to come and get me. And my nephew too. And best of all, my 82-year old Mum, bundled up against the cold, with a big smile on her face.

It’s good to be home for the holidays.

Adventures in Europe - Part 5

Sunday

Banging on the door. Loud banging. And shouting. Lots of shouting. A big Russian man is in my room shouting at me. An angry Russian man.

“I CALL YOU NO ANSWER SHUTTLE IS READY TO GO PEOPLE ARE WAITING I CANNOT WAIT I GO NOW YOU CATCH NEXT SHUTTLE ONE HOUR!”

Moments later he’s gone and I’m sitting up in bed, gradually approaching consciousness and wondering if I have any chance of getting back to the world I know. Or if I’m destined to spend the rest of my life in this surreal, nether-world where everything is recognizable but nothing is familiar.

So, another hour until the shuttle swings back round, which might make things a bit tight for catching my train, but at least gives me long enough to experience the shower, which with its two settings (hot and very hot) made my ablutions more exciting than I normally prefer. I managed breakfast too; sitting all alone in a barn-like dining room, munching on what I’m going to believe was bread. A somewhat depressing experience, but nobody was shouting at me, so it’s all good.

Soon the hour was up and my scary Russian friend and I were heading back to the airport. He deposited me at the curb with a grunt of farewell and it was on to the next adventure. Finding the platform at which my train should be arriving any minute. I found the platform easily enough but given the events of the last 24-hours, I really wasn’t all that surprised to hear a loudspeaker announcement informing me that my train had been cancelled. Resignedly, I hauled my weary carcass back up the escalator and into the line for information. “No, your train isn’t cancelled!” exclaimed the clerk, “That was a different train. Hurry, it leaves soon.”

And leave soon it did. With me aboard. Out of breath and sweaty, but aboard. Maybe I’ll be home for Christmas after all.

The next few hours saw me take one of the smoothest and least stressful journeys of my life. I’ve always been a train geek. Not to the point of standing on windswept station platforms with a notebook, an anorak and a thermos, but I’ve always enjoyed reading about them, looking at photos of them and watching them as they go by. And traveling on them. Oh, I love traveling on them. Spending as I do, way too much of my life cramped in airplanes alongside, beefy businessmen, screaming children and grumpy flight-attendants, it’s a treat to travel in a comfortable seat, with a proper table in front of me and things to look at out the window. Ah, bliss.

Not that there was too much to see of course. The winter storm had hit Belgium and France just as hard as it had Holland and Britain, so visibility was reduced to a couple of hundred yards before the world disappeared behind a wall of white. Still, I had my book, I had my iPod and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps from the buffet. Travel doesn’t get much better.

The weather meant we couldn’t utilize the advertised “high-speed” aspect of the train and we were late into Brussels. But not late enough to matter. I had time for a very pleasant lunch before boarding another train for the next leg, through the Channel Tunnel and on to St. Pancras, London. Not only that, but we were only 1 hour late arriving there. I could get used to this.

Adventures in Europe - Part 4

Saturday Night

There are many hotels close to Schiphol airport, ranging from the budget to the luxury. It made no difference to me though, because they were all full. It was starting to look as though I would need to head back to the city center when to my delight; I found one that did have room. Not only that, it had a free shuttle “Leaving in three minutes! You go to gate NOW!” barked the eastern-European sounding woman on the other end of the line.

Go to gate now, I did and in less time than it takes to tell, was sitting in the passenger seat of a mini-van, bowling my way through the snow covered fields to dinner and a warm bed. At least that’s what I thought. Oh, how the gods must laugh.

On and on we drove, me and the driver in almost total silence. I learned he was from Moscow but as his English was on a par with my Russian, the conversation didn’t exactly sparkle. After a while I began to wonder if he was driving me all the way to Moscow. Holland isn’t this big is it?

Finally, we pulled into a courtyard of a small hotel, on a residential street, in what appeared to be a hamlet consisting only of residential streets, and I learned that this was where I was to be spending the night. In the proper light, my driver turned out to be a large muscular guy, with a black leather jacket over a black wool polo-neck. Yeah, I’ve seen enough crappy movies to recognize a mobster when I see one. What was a Russian Mafioso doing working for an obscure hotel in the Dutch countryside? My imagination was working overtime. Then it jumped way past union scale when I met his business partner at the front desk. Seriously, if I’d been looking for actors to play two stereotypical Russian gangsters, this pair would have been the ones I’d pick. Mobster # 2 had an angry looking scar running from his close-cropped hairline to his chin and if that bulge under his armpit wasn’t a gun, then...OK, there was no bulge under his armpit, but dammit, it wouldn’t have seemed out of place if there was one.

After checking me into the room, he handed me the key and a TV remote. “You return in morning” he ordered, as if I would dare to forget. I suspect the TV remote had some purpose, but I never figured out what it was. It had nothing to do with the TV, I’m sure because that wasn’t working. Neither was the clock. One thing that was working was the toilet. In fact, I had to turn off the valve at the wall to get it to stop working.

So…no TV, no dinner (the cheerless restaurant had closed hours ago, and there was nowhere else in town), still no Internet access, despite the apparent “good” connection and nothing much about which to be chirpy. Although I had a seat booked on the train for tomorrow, I had heard that the weather had forced many trains to be cancelled too, so this was no guarantee of anything. Not only that, I still had nothing concrete as far as getting from London to Glasgow. And if the British transport network was as paralyzed as everyone was saying it was, well, completing that last leg might be a challenge too.

One of my room’s few working amenities was the telephone, and with this I was able to rouse a co-worker, fortuitously at home on his Saturday afternoon and he was able to look up a number by which the Corporate Travel Agency could be reached from Europe. In no time I was chatting to a delightful Texan lady (“delightful” and “Texan”, now there are two words I don’t often use in the same sentence) who set me up with a flight from London City Airport to Glasgow for Monday morning. If that arrived on time, it would allow me a whole afternoon with my family before heading home. If it arrived on time. And if someone was able to meet me there. And if I even made it to London by Monday. And if my American Express card is working. And if, and if, and if.

Tired, hungry and thoroughly fed up, I climbed between the icy sheets and wondered if I would get any sleep at all.

Adventures in Europe - Part 3

Saturday Evening

Schiphol airport is wired for the Intranet and a lot of people were logged in via their laptops, exploring the travel sites and looking for alternatives. I wasn’t though. For reasons I still haven’t determined, my normally trusty Dell refused to let me play. Apparently I was connected, and with excellent signal strength, but no matter which site I tried (and boy, did I try plenty), I couldn’t get the page to display.

So, in order to rearrange my travel plans, and coordinate them with my family who had expected to pick me up at Glasgow airport some 5 hours ago, I had to resort to 20th Century technology, namely, the telephone. My cell phone is somewhat primitive, barely one step above 2 tin cans and a string and one of my new year's resolutions is to upgrade to a real one. Or at least one that can operate outside the USA. To the payphones then. Oh, I knew this was going to be fun.

Remember what I said about how calm I’d been all day? It didn’t last.

Me and payphones have never got on and these ones seemed to have been sent from hell for the sole purpose of vexing me. If something could go wrong, it did. First there’s the problem that all our business travel has to be booked via the Corporate Travel web site. Kind of a challenge when you can’t access the Internet. Not only that, but the contact phone numbers I had only worked from the USA. My wife and I had several conversations over the next couple of hours, while she tried to help remotely, but not being able to access the company’s network, there wasn’t too much she could do.

She did her best though and the last conversation we had was when I asked her to contact American Express to see why the phone operator was telling me there was a block on the card. There hadn’t been when I began making these calls, but there was now – I could no longer use it on the payphone, and if the phone operator was correct, the next few days were going to be very uncomfortable. I had my personal debit card with me, and while it was gamely racking up transatlantic charges on the payphones, my bank account wasn’t going to hold up for long if it had to cover all my expenses ‘till I got home.

At around 8pm, I came to the reluctant conclusion that I’d achieved all I could via the telephone. “all I could” being of course “absolutely nothing.”

What next? Well, Schiphol Airport is also home to a railway station. And while planes may not be leaving for the next few days, there was a chance that trains might be. I decided to go and ask.

Of course, I couldn’t just “go and ask”. That would have been too easy. Instead I had to stand in yet another line, for yet another 2 hours just to pose the question. Although technically, I did abscond from the line for about 10 minutes, leaving my bags in the care of a very nice Australian lady whom I had befriended. This was to answer a page from my wife so she could tell me she’d been able to speak to American Express who had confirmed that my card was in order, and there was no reason for it not to work in the payphones. So that was one bit of positive news. Even better, when I was finally able to pose my question as to the availability of a train, I received an answer in the affirmative. Yes, there was a train, leaving tomorrow and it would take me all the way to London. But uh no, sorry they didn’t take American Express. My poor debit card hasn’t worked so hard in its life.

So there we are. After being at the airport for 15 hours, I now had a plan to leave. By train.

Adventures in Europe - Part 2

Saturday Afternoon

I’d only been back at the gate for a few minutes when we learned that yes, our flight was officially cancelled. We were to collect our previously-checked bags and head back to the main terminal to see about re-booking our flights. Carousel 2 was where they were supposed to come off. At least, that’s what the man said. And for pretty much everyone on the flight, that was the case. Not me though. My bag had apparently made it further than I had and wherever it was now, it wasn’t on carousel 2.

“Lost luggage, over there” said the harried looking airport official pointing to a heart-sinkingly long line snaking around the baggage claim hall. In the 45-minutes I stood in it before having to leave for the bathroom the line moved no further forward. Not...one...step. I might still be standing in it now, but as I re-joined it (significantly further back than where I left it) I happened to glance over at carousel 2 and was overjoyed to spot my suitcase, wending its lonely way round and around the conveyor belt. It took a while, but it finally got back to me.

If I thought the line at lost luggage was long though, it was nothing compared to the one at the British Airways counter where every man and his dog was attempting to find a seat on any upcoming flights. At least I wasn’t flying KLM. They had 6 lines open and I would estimate they were each about 400 yards long. At least. And they were moving even slower than our breathtaking pace, which I measured as 20 feet in 4 hours.

Now as you know, I have many fine qualities but patience has never been one of them. To my credit though, I remained remarkably calm despite the claustrophobia and the molasses-like movement of the line, as did most of my fellow queue-ees. We chatted, swapped travel stories, bitched and moaned cheerfully and at least one couple became so friendly, I suspect they’d be able to save the cost of one hotel room tonight. Over in the KLM line though, things weren’t quite so Zen. Children screamed, old folks threatened to keel over in the stifling heat, tempers and voices were raised and the poor airport staff, who of course could do nothing, must have wished they’d thought to call in sick today.

Either way, it was really something of a relief when around 6pm, a British Airways employee came along the line to advise us that not only did we have no hope of reaching the front of the queue before the desk closed at 9pm, there were no available flights anyway. Not today, not tomorrow, not Monday. Nothing until Tuesday. Which was no use to me because my flight home from Glasgow was early on Tuesday morning. And of course, there was no guarantee I would get a seat on any of Tuesday’s flights either. 3 days before Christmas there weren’t going to be that many seats available and 60,000 other people were hoping to bag one in addition to me. I was starting to wonder if I was going to be spending the holidays in Amsterdam after all.

Adventures in Europe - Part 1

Saturday morning:

Sleeping in is rarely a good way to start the day. Especially when you need to be up way earlier than your body wishes you to be. In my defense though, it wasn’t my fault this time. The hotel receptionist had taken my request for a wake-up call in person the night before, but for some reason it hadn’t made it to the clerk responsible for handling them in the morning. Which was a problem because I had an early flight scheduled out of Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and the shuttle was supposed to have picked me up 10 minutes ago.

So as I threw my stuff into my bag and pulled on the clothes I was wearing yesterday, I wondered how come, even if the reception desk had neglected to wake me as promised, they hadn’t at least called my room to let me know the shuttle had arrived. I soon learned the answer to that one. The shuttle hadn’t arrived. The winter storm which had brought Amsterdam to an almost complete standstill had been enough to cause the cancellation of the shuttle service. Something which would have been nice to know a little earlier than 30 minutes after I needed to leave for the airport.

Fortunately, at least some of the city’s taxis were still running and we were soon on our way through the near deserted streets. The snow and ice blanketing the city leant an air of peace and tranquility to the scene. With the absence of motorized traffic and Amsterdam’s picturesque architecture serving as a backdrop for this winter wonderland, one could be forgiven for thinking that we’d been transported back to a simpler, gentler time.

But then we arrived at the airport.

Apparently the entire population of Europe was attempting to leave from Schiphol Airport this morning and few were succeeding. The press of bodies was claustrophobic and knowing that I was by now, disturbingly short of time, I tried not to panic as I elbowed my way through the throng. I haven’t yet made it to Calcutta but I’ve seen footage of the melees which occur at the railway station and I suspect the experience is something like this. It was very frustrating to be able to see where I wanted to be but be physically unable to get there.

I needn’t have worried. When I eventually reached the gate, it was to learn that like many others, my flight wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Unlike some of the others though, our problem wasn’t getting out of Amsterdam, but landing in London, which was dealing with the same winter storm, apparently with even less success than Amsterdam. I didn’t even want to go to London; I just happened to be connecting through there on my way to Glasgow, where I planned to spend a couple of days with me dear ol’ Ma before heading home to the States.

“What I’m going to do is take you off this flight.” Said the jug-eared child in the uniform of an airline employee. “You can book a new flight at the British Airways desk.”
“But wait,” I responded “What if there isn’t another flight? I’ll just be stuck here then, won’t I?”
“No flights are leaving Gatwick, so you’d be no better off even if you got there, you’d still be stuck.”

Now I knew that if the entire airport was anything like the rugby scrum I’d just fought my way through, and I suspected it was, then the odds of me getting a seat on another flight were slim to anorexic. And I most certainly wasn’t going to willingly give up my confirmed seat on an existing flight, however unlikely it might be to get off the ground.

“I’ll take my chances, thanks.” I told him, and settled down with my book.

After a little while, the captain came and stood on a chair to address us. He seemed like a kindly soul but even he had no idea whether or not we’d be leaving today. Not the first time he came up. Or the second. Or even the third, although by now, even the slowest among us had figured out that we wouldn’t be dining on airline pretzels today.

For a while, it looked as though we might not be dining on anything, but finally the airline admitted that we could leave the gate for a while and I headed for one of Schiphol airport’s dining establishments to ease my rumbling tum. You know what really goes down a treat when you’ve been up for way too long and are expecting your flight to be cancelled? A nice, frosty mug of beer, that’s what. Not that I was going to be enjoying any though.

“They just made an announcement 30 minutes ago.” The waitress told me. “No alcohol sales within the airport for the rest of the day.”
“What?” I bleated, “This is exactly when we need it!”
“No, some people have been here since Wednesday and apparently some of them are getting violent. So, no alcohol, sorry.”

Oh, the humanity.