stricken on the way to Sweden
Flight to Stockholm. We got up at 5:30 in the morning to plan a little extra time for getting to the airport. You see, today transportation strikes were planned in France and the metro and busses would not be running as frequently. Well, we got to Lyon's central train station no problem, and from there you hop on the brand new train that heads out to the airport. This just opened in early August, so I was excited to see what it was like. Well, one design flaw became immediately apparent: they just had two ticket machines on the station platform and one was broken, so they had agents with wifi-based handheld ticket machines serving customers. Then when we boarded, a second design flaw became apparent: they wanted all the passengers to leave their bags in the designated space by the doors so that the aisle and seats don't get blocked, but the stupid rack that they had for the luggage could only fit three large suitcase or six carryons. Seriously, did no one think that these are people going to the airport? It's not 5% of them that are going to have luggage but 95% of them. It was so stupid. I had half a mind to tell the conductor that, especially when she bugged us 5 times to put our laptop bags with all the luggage. No way, lady. These are delicate and expensive items.
When we got to the airport, all the monitors were flashing red: "National Strike in Progress, Disturbances* Expected." Half the morning's flights had been cancelled. I didn't even think that the national transportation strike would extend beyond urban transport to national trains and airlines. Luckily for us, our flight to Düsseldorf was still scheduled to depart. Unluckily for us, it had to sit on the runway for a half hour before being cleared for take off. In the end, we arrived more than an hour late and after our connecting flight to Stockholm had already left. We spent about 20 minutes with a Lufthansa rep discussing our options but all the flights in Europe were in disarray on account of the French strike. There was a perfectly timed connection in Copenhagen, but unfortunately the flight from Dusseldorf to Copenhagen was overbooked and they wouldn't know until the last minute whether we could board and our luggage wouldn't make it. Since I'm giving my talk tomorrow, I didn't want to risk not having fresh clothes. Other options were equally uncertain and so we ended up picking a direct flight out of Dusseldorf that left at 6pm -- a full 7 hours later. At least Lufthansa gave us each a 10€ meal voucher for lunch and we got access to the lounge** through my freqflyer status. So we killed the time by both working on our respective talks for Sweden in the comfy lounge chairs, then taking an hour nap in the reclining chairs in the nap room.
The flight to Stockholm was fine, people in the airport were helpful, and people on the metro were helpful. Even when we got out of the metro, a (cute) guy saw us looking for street names and asked "Are you looking for a hotel?" "Because you can stay with me tonight". I read him the street name from my hand-drawn map to find the hotel and instead brought up a map on his iPhone/Android/Ericsson doodangle.
The hotel looks like a concrete block, with plain rooms inside and no windows. Since it's in an industrial part of town, one can only assume it used to be a building to house temporary workers, or else was a factory building itself. We're only staying here one night and we're so glad we found a better deal for the remaining four nights because this hotel was our backup.
Christian and I have been laughing at so many things so far in Sweden, from our bus driver's enthusiastically trilled r's, to the restaurant named Gooh!, to a sign that said "Shopping in Sweden: a great place for tickle and taste."
*bad translation of "perturbations" from French.
**which had pay internet service! That's utter crap.
When we got to the airport, all the monitors were flashing red: "National Strike in Progress, Disturbances* Expected." Half the morning's flights had been cancelled. I didn't even think that the national transportation strike would extend beyond urban transport to national trains and airlines. Luckily for us, our flight to Düsseldorf was still scheduled to depart. Unluckily for us, it had to sit on the runway for a half hour before being cleared for take off. In the end, we arrived more than an hour late and after our connecting flight to Stockholm had already left. We spent about 20 minutes with a Lufthansa rep discussing our options but all the flights in Europe were in disarray on account of the French strike. There was a perfectly timed connection in Copenhagen, but unfortunately the flight from Dusseldorf to Copenhagen was overbooked and they wouldn't know until the last minute whether we could board and our luggage wouldn't make it. Since I'm giving my talk tomorrow, I didn't want to risk not having fresh clothes. Other options were equally uncertain and so we ended up picking a direct flight out of Dusseldorf that left at 6pm -- a full 7 hours later. At least Lufthansa gave us each a 10€ meal voucher for lunch and we got access to the lounge** through my freqflyer status. So we killed the time by both working on our respective talks for Sweden in the comfy lounge chairs, then taking an hour nap in the reclining chairs in the nap room.
The flight to Stockholm was fine, people in the airport were helpful, and people on the metro were helpful. Even when we got out of the metro, a (cute) guy saw us looking for street names and asked "Are you looking for a hotel?" "Because you can stay with me tonight". I read him the street name from my hand-drawn map to find the hotel and instead brought up a map on his iPhone/Android/Ericsson doodangle.
The hotel looks like a concrete block, with plain rooms inside and no windows. Since it's in an industrial part of town, one can only assume it used to be a building to house temporary workers, or else was a factory building itself. We're only staying here one night and we're so glad we found a better deal for the remaining four nights because this hotel was our backup.
Christian and I have been laughing at so many things so far in Sweden, from our bus driver's enthusiastically trilled r's, to the restaurant named Gooh!, to a sign that said "Shopping in Sweden: a great place for tickle and taste."
*bad translation of "perturbations" from French.
**which had pay internet service! That's utter crap.