A sunday night trip from Delhi to Milan.
From the last time experience, I went all prepared to stand in the long queues in the airport, sticking to the rules and hence 3 hrs in advance! ohk ..ohk .. may be not 3.. but almost 2 ! and then that very day.. ppl decided to stay home and leave me to dispair ! :( .. I was through with all the baggage, security and immigration check .. in .. 15 mins ! ... and now i wait ! .. it lasted for 5 mins before i got bored and started calling ppl ! .. as usual dasa did not pick up! .. and the last call was to zutty ! and hence the entry !
And then the waitress called out the rows who are supposed to board and i was in, in no time.. waiting on my seat eagerly for my seatmates :P .. after 20 mins a bangaldeshi family showed up to thoos my hopes into dispair :( .. so the journey began ! .. around 30 mins after the flight tookoff the airhostess came offering strictly vegetarian food which was, u can say, the best part of my whole journey.
By the time i woke up, we were preparing to land in amsterdam and was offered a coffee. Late by 10 mins, was all that the pilot said! so far so good ! Suddenly i realised i had to catch the connecting flight in another 40 mins. Thought that was enuf !
Ran to reach the furthermost terminal in the amsterdam airport to catch my flight to milan (too many to's) .. there was also a special short connecting time security check for ppl like us in the Aport. Some stupid drunk bum talked rashly to the airport staff, after which within no time 10+ cops totally surrounded that poor passenger. Lucky that no one understood what language he spoke, so they let him go with a warning. Well as soon as the security check, ran ..ran hard .. ran hardest .. reached in time .. as in ... 5 mins to takeoff :P .. The staff politely told me that, ur luggage is still in the Delhi flight, so u have to take a rerouted flight.
So, there i was sweatin and all at 4:30 Eu time ... (with local temp. of 10 deg), but i guess the airport had its own temp control :P .. anywaz, got my rerouted flight via paris which was after 5 hrs! ... btw, these curtius staff ppl, gave me a calling card to inform ppl that im running late! .. so did that.. and then began to watch Jaane tu Jaane na ! (lappy mein ...:P )
Took the flight and reached Paris, only to notice that ..i again have only 1 hr time to change flights and this time no short connection security check ! :( .. and i was soo lucky that the flight arrived in the peak hrs (10 am), so had an infi long queue! But this time somehow managed to reach the terminal 15 mins in advance! Relieved i felt ..
So, fastforward .. and then im in Milan .. waiting for my bags ..waiting ..waiting .. and then i realised the name of the airline was no longer listed in the baggage claim screen ! :( :(.. So, after 40 mins of waiting, got to the window of lost and found and the moment i said "I am coming from Delhi, India" the woman in the cabin asked me wether my name was "Mr. Lanka ?" :( ! again, politely mentioned that baggage was left behind in Paris, and it might reach tommorow! .. So after roughly wasting 7 hours, i reached milan .. without the
baggage, which was the reason in the first place why i was late ! :( ..
And then i come out of the airport to find out that the assigned pickup also left (as i was waiting for my baggage, and then in lost and found queue) just 5 mins back! .. With no active mobile connection, with no coins to call (had only currency notes) I was standing in the waiting area, thinking what to do :) ..
In 5 mins, the pickup was back, mentioned that his boss told him to wait for min. 2 hrs, so had to come back ! :) .. So in the entire journey, the only good thing after that vegetarian dinner was this ! Ek dum lamba umar do bhagwaan to his boss :) ..
