Travelling Blues

So I went to Vienna for a meeting last week. No sooner had I arrived, I was stricken - literally stricken - with a raging toothache. I have had a root canal performed on this particular tooth no fewer than three times - the latest one having been done a mere three days prior to my trip to Austria. Aside from dragging myself to the convention center to give my talk, I spent the rest of my three days in Vienna in bed trying to think of something other than blinding pain. It turns out, though, that one can purchase antibiotics over the counter in Austria - a useful bit of information to file away...

Then it was Wednesday - the day for me to return to England, and the pain had diminished markedly overnight, only to be replaced by pumpkinesque swelling on the left half of my face. So I ambled my one-man circus sideshow to the airport, waited for my flight and arrived, uneventfully, in Amsterdam. Now, Amsterdam Schiphol airport was converted from a shopping mall, and as such there are no gates or jetways, as one typically envisions an airport to have. Instead there is a vast parking lot full of KLM planes, which are accessed from the terminal by means of busses. The lady takes your boarding pass and herds you onto a bus which wends its way through the acres of jets, arriving twenty minutes later at the one bound for your particular destination - and its these busses that have a total of about six seats. Everyone else has to stand holding onto one of the poles going from the floor to the ceiling. The bus emptied out, the crowd flowed into the plane and we sat...and sat...and sat. An hour later the pilot announced that they couldn't get the door to shut properly, and so the flight was cancelled. Don't worry, though, the bus will be here shortly to take you back to the terminal for rerouting.

Alright, back onto the bus. At least I was in no real hurry to get home. No one is waiting for me to return, and I can sit around at the airport just as easily as I can sit around the house, right? So the bus begins its scenic trip back to the terminal. We're getting close, I know, because I can see the door I just came the other way through an hour ago. Then with no warning, I am on the floor of the bus! I am on top of some poor guy's luggage, and some other schmoe is on top of mine! Everyone around me is struggling back to their feet because the bus has crashed into a forklift thirty yards from the terminal entrance! So they send another bus to take us the long way around to the terminal.

To compensate the planeload of irate passengers, here's what KLM gave us: a telephone calling card good for three minutes in the Netherlands (I don't know any Dutch people, but even if I did, it would take me longer than three minutes to tell this story); Ten euros worth of food and drinks in the airport, the equivalent of about fifteen US dollars or, apparently, a slice of pizza, large Coke, and a chocolate bar. No kidding - that menu came to 9.40 Euros! And I didn't even get the sixty cents change back; and finally a voucher for fifty euros off any regular KLM fare. Like I'll be flying with KLM again any time soon...good luck with that..

Anyway, I was on the next flight from Amsterdam to Newcastle, which went off without any trouble. After a Metro ride and a train trip, I was back in Durham safe and, if not quite sound (remember the facial gigantism?) at least glad to be done travelling for a couple of weeks...