Airport Trouble

I said goodbye to my parents and Camilla Friday morning and boarded the 7:40 A.M. flight to Denver with Mara Chapman, another exchange student on her way to Denmark. Unfortunately, when we reached Denver, we discovered that our flight to Chicago was delayed three hours, so Mara and I ate lunch and waited and waited. Then the flight board informed us that the flight was now fours hours late and coming at 4:20 P.M. Ugh! We finally boarded the flight to Chicago, but for whatever reason mother nature did not want us to meet our connection in Chicago, so it started torrentially raining on the tarmac. Yay! We had to wait another half hour to take off. Now Mara and I really started to worried that we would not make our Copenhagen flight.

After we reached Chicago, we ran to our SAS connection, but due to a train arriving late at Terminal 5 and the slow security check, Mara and I were ten minutes too late to make our 10:05 flight. The agents working at the airline gate sent us to the SAS counter to see if anyone could help us at 10:30 at night. While we were in line, Mara's dad was able to reschedule our tickets for a 3:00 P.M. flight to Frankfort, Germany. We collected our luggage from SAS, and proceeded to drag our heavy suitcases to Terminal 1. We walked around a nearly deserted airport at 11 at night searching for an United Airlines employee forever! Luckily we finally did find an employee, who gave us a voucher to the Ramada Inn, and directed us to the hotel shuttles that ran 24 hours a day. Mara and I dragged our suitcases out to the shuttles only to discover that there was no shuttle to the Ramada Inn. We lugged our suitcases back to the terminal, and asked the agent on duty what we should do now. She called the hotel, and imagine that, the shuttle had stopped running an hour ago. She put us up in the Hilton for the night, which was the best thing that had happened all day.

We flew out of Chicago at 3:00 P.M. after spending about 30 minutes at the check-in while the Lufthanse agents figured out if they were going to let us on the plane, since we only had a piece of paper with locator numbers and no boarding passes. The agent also told me that the airline could only check my bags until Copenhagen, and then I would have to figure out how to get my bags to Aalborg, Denmark, my final destination. The agents did finally get us on the flight. We arrived in Frankfort at 6:40 A.M. Mara and I parted ways since she had a direct flight to Bilund in the A terminal, her final destination. I had to fly to Copenhagen departing from the B terminal. It took me a while to get to the B Terminal to gate B12, where my Kobenhavn flight was scheduled to depart. The signs in Frankfort airport are not helpful at all. One of the signs told me that i needed to go to the right to get to gate B12. Unfortunately there was a 20 minute wait to get through the passport check where a grumpy German policemen told me that this only went to the C gates and that i was supposed to go left. I ended up at another passport check were another unhappy German employee directed me to the correct passport area. Then I had to go through security before I could get to the gate. When I finally arrived at the gate, I asked the lady working at the desk for my boarding pass. She shooed me away and told me come back later. I met up with about 10 other exchange students on their way to Denmark, and we swapped stories of our traveling woes. I did finally get my boarding pass from the snarky desk attendant, but she told me that they had overbooked the flight, so I was on standby. After the non -standby passengers plane had boarded, it was just another exchange student and I waiting for seats. Then another grumpy German supervisor told us that he had one seat left on the plane. Thankfully the other exchange student let me have the flight.

I arrived in Copenhagen around 11:00 A.M. I walked to my connecting flight leaving at 12:15 P.M for Aalborg. When I asked the nice, Danish desk attendant to print my boarding pass, she informed me that I was not on the flight list. She sent me back through to the re-ticketing area to see if someone could assist me. An employee working at the re-ticketing area informed me that when my flight was rescheduled the travel company did not book my flight all the way through to Aalborg. I did however have a reservation to fly from Aalborg to Copenhagen June 7th, 2010. What?! I ended up having to buy another ticket that cost me about $200. Luckily the next flight was at 1:05 P.M., and my luggage would be on the plane! I also met more exchange students on their way to Aalborg near the gate my flight was supposed to fly out of. However the switched the flight to another gate, and by the time I had realized it, I was too late to make my flight. I had to go back to the re-ticketing area to get another ticket for the later flight to Aalborg at 4:55 P.M. I finally made it to Aalborg 50 hours after leaving Reno and 24 hours later then expected.