Dear blog community,
its been almost a year since my last entry here. Now that I'm back to the US, I decided to continue blogging occasionally about my activities. I hope you enjoy reading and viewing the pictures. Please comment to make this a more rewarding exercise for me... ;-)
So... every journey starts with travelling. However, this start was not one of the best. In fact we had a mid March "snow storm" in Germany on the very same day I should have taken the flight. Well, there were about 10cm of new snow falling over night - one might think that a developed country used to this kind of climate is able to deal with that. It's not...
First, it took me more than 2 hours to get to the airport (which is usually a 20min ride). The freeway was just covered with snow and the traffic jams skyrocketed to 40+ km... Having arrived barely one hour before departure at the airport (!) I learned that all flights are suspended. The whole airport was closed down due to the weather conditions... Well, that could be an interesting day.
About 1h after the official boarding time, we were finally ushered into buses to get to the plane. Sitting in the plane for 15min... nothing happened. Finally, the captain told us that the runway is still closed until further notice... He kept repeating this about every 20 min until after 2 hours the first aircrafts could take off again. However, we were still waiting for a number in the de-icing sequence...
To cut the long story short:
- we never got that number
- the pilot canceled the flight (he would exceed the maximum duty time)
- took a cab back to Darmstadt
- had (at least!) a good sleep in my own bed (quite a few people actually had to sleep on the terminal floor)
- more than 800 out of 1200 flights got canceled
- I came back the next day to catch the same fligh
Finally, I happily arrived in Philly an I'm staying at the same cozy place as last time. I'm looking forward to an interesting and fruitful stay. I'll keep you updated.
Enjoy the picture series "flier and ice" ;-)
its been almost a year since my last entry here. Now that I'm back to the US, I decided to continue blogging occasionally about my activities. I hope you enjoy reading and viewing the pictures. Please comment to make this a more rewarding exercise for me... ;-)
So... every journey starts with travelling. However, this start was not one of the best. In fact we had a mid March "snow storm" in Germany on the very same day I should have taken the flight. Well, there were about 10cm of new snow falling over night - one might think that a developed country used to this kind of climate is able to deal with that. It's not...
First, it took me more than 2 hours to get to the airport (which is usually a 20min ride). The freeway was just covered with snow and the traffic jams skyrocketed to 40+ km... Having arrived barely one hour before departure at the airport (!) I learned that all flights are suspended. The whole airport was closed down due to the weather conditions... Well, that could be an interesting day.
About 1h after the official boarding time, we were finally ushered into buses to get to the plane. Sitting in the plane for 15min... nothing happened. Finally, the captain told us that the runway is still closed until further notice... He kept repeating this about every 20 min until after 2 hours the first aircrafts could take off again. However, we were still waiting for a number in the de-icing sequence...
To cut the long story short:
- we never got that number
- the pilot canceled the flight (he would exceed the maximum duty time)
- took a cab back to Darmstadt
- had (at least!) a good sleep in my own bed (quite a few people actually had to sleep on the terminal floor)
- more than 800 out of 1200 flights got canceled
- I came back the next day to catch the same fligh
Finally, I happily arrived in Philly an I'm staying at the same cozy place as last time. I'm looking forward to an interesting and fruitful stay. I'll keep you updated.
Enjoy the picture series "flier and ice" ;-)
2 comments:
Wow... das sieht mal echt übel aus! Erinnert mich etwas an meinen Aufenthalt in Paris, wo bei strahlendem Sonnenschein für 1,5h keine Infos (oder Getränke) gegeben wurden, warum wir nicht losfliegen ;)
Aber in deinem Fall.. besser so, ich glaub das ist echt nicht ohne bei so nem Wetter! Hast du das Taxi bezahlt bekommen?!?
huhu, haha, voll lustig deinen eintrag zu lesen :)
ja, eig. hat michael auch die ganze zeit (danke o2 für die flatrate!) am telefon geklebt und mich auf dem laufenden gehalten, haha, was ein bizarrer tag!
Grüße
Yvonne :)
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