it all comes down to statistics
Oct. 4th, 2008 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyOver the last 6-8 months or so I've noticed that not all of my travel experiences have been hassle free. At first this bothered me, but then I realized that with the significant increase in the amount of traveling that both of us do, something's bound to go wrong, it's just statistics.
Today's travel plan fiasco involved getting to the airport 1.25 hours before our flight to Prague (which is normally WAY more than enough for an in-Europe flight from Schiphol), only to find a line like neither of us have EVER seen before; it took us half an hour to get to the self-service check-in booths, only for it not to work, so we had to get in another line, and of course by the time we finally made it to check-in, it was 10 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave. No way we were going to make it. So we got sent over to the KLM ticket desk...where the lady who was helping us make alternate arrangements was unable to find our reservation in her system. (This being somewhat strange given that I'd gone to the Czech Airlines website yesterday afternoon, plugged in my booking code and last name, and got back a confirmation of reservation page.) She called a Czech Airlines office and they told her "oh, the payment never came through so we cancelled the reservation." Gee, thanks. You know, if you had TOLD me that the payment hadn't worked, I would've tried again! And if the payment didn't go through and you cancelled our reservation, then it shouldn't show up in your database as "reservation confirmed."
The upshot of it is, I got rebooked on a flight later in the day (at roughly the same price that I'd originally gotten for the two of us), and Joel is currently en route via train; he left around 10:15 this morning and will get into Prague around 10:45 this evening. Yikes. It sort of screwed up our plans for doing sight-seeing today, but at least we still have most of tomorrow before my conference starts. And the cost of his round-trip train ticket was less than his original flight was, and the cost of my flight is being covered by the ESF. It would've been more frustrating this morning missing the flight if it hadn't turned out that we hadn't paid for those tickets anyway, so all in all, it's just a missed day and 24 hours on the train for Joel.
I met up with one of the post docs from the ILLC who was on the same flight as I; he's standing in for one of the senior staff who can't come himself to represent his part of the project at the conference. We're going to meet up in about an hour to go find dinner. I wonder what Czech food will be like.
Today's travel plan fiasco involved getting to the airport 1.25 hours before our flight to Prague (which is normally WAY more than enough for an in-Europe flight from Schiphol), only to find a line like neither of us have EVER seen before; it took us half an hour to get to the self-service check-in booths, only for it not to work, so we had to get in another line, and of course by the time we finally made it to check-in, it was 10 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave. No way we were going to make it. So we got sent over to the KLM ticket desk...where the lady who was helping us make alternate arrangements was unable to find our reservation in her system. (This being somewhat strange given that I'd gone to the Czech Airlines website yesterday afternoon, plugged in my booking code and last name, and got back a confirmation of reservation page.) She called a Czech Airlines office and they told her "oh, the payment never came through so we cancelled the reservation." Gee, thanks. You know, if you had TOLD me that the payment hadn't worked, I would've tried again! And if the payment didn't go through and you cancelled our reservation, then it shouldn't show up in your database as "reservation confirmed."
The upshot of it is, I got rebooked on a flight later in the day (at roughly the same price that I'd originally gotten for the two of us), and Joel is currently en route via train; he left around 10:15 this morning and will get into Prague around 10:45 this evening. Yikes. It sort of screwed up our plans for doing sight-seeing today, but at least we still have most of tomorrow before my conference starts. And the cost of his round-trip train ticket was less than his original flight was, and the cost of my flight is being covered by the ESF. It would've been more frustrating this morning missing the flight if it hadn't turned out that we hadn't paid for those tickets anyway, so all in all, it's just a missed day and 24 hours on the train for Joel.
I met up with one of the post docs from the ILLC who was on the same flight as I; he's standing in for one of the senior staff who can't come himself to represent his part of the project at the conference. We're going to meet up in about an hour to go find dinner. I wonder what Czech food will be like.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 07:16 pm (UTC)Lots of little regularly repeating squares all over it?
no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 09:52 pm (UTC)Of course, Czech's have thing about filled donuts. The only two-story donut shop I've ever been to is at the foot of Wenceslas Square (across from Bata Shoes).
no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 09:49 pm (UTC)Yeah ... my favourite pizza in Prague. I can see in my mind's eye exactly how to get there, but since I can't remember any of the street names, I can't tell you.