Last Wednesday Lütke and I had to travel to North Carolina, USA. Since it is quite a distance we obviously booked a flight to be there a bit quicker… It turned out that driving the 1400 kilometers would have been as fast!
4:30am: My alarm goes off and pulls me out of a sleepless night
A quick shower and a Coffee and off I go.
5:15am: I meet with Lütke at the car and we leave for the airport
5:45am: We arrive at the airport and park the car.
6:00am: Right on time at the check in.
6:10am: A long queue at USA border control.
(Travelling to the US is different than to any other country.
Leaving your parting country you will go through US border control!
So they don’t wait until you arrive there…they check you right there.)
6:45am: We are still lining up and the line hasn’t moved at all.
Meanwhile we hear that the system is down.
6:55am: We inform one of the ladies organizing the queues that our plane is boarding NOW!
The reply is that we must stay in the line.
7:10am: A lot of people were pulled out of the line to get a quick route…not us!
We contact the person again: “You stay in your line…the plane will wait!”
7:30am: I contact another officer: “Oh, you’re too late, you plane has left already!”
7:45am: Back at Check-In. We rebook for a later flight at 2:30pm! More than 6 hours from now!
8:00am: We go to a little coffee bar and have breakfast because the queues are still extreme.
10:00am: Finally the lines are shorter and we risk it to go through the controls again.
10:30am: With the system back it took less than half an hour to get through.
Now we are in the launch and do a little bit of work.
2:00pm: We leave for boarding.
At the gate we get told that the plane will be delayed by 30 min due to technical problems.
2:10pm: Back in the launch. We get told that our flight has been completely cancelled.
We are booked on the flight at 5:30 this evening.
2:15pm: We are back at the gate to ask about our checked in Luggage.
It was dumped onto the normal conveyers so we have to find it in arrival hall!
This means we have to go through Canadian border control and then customs!
And we never ever left the country…
3:00pm: After queing up again at Canadian border control I suggest to Lutke to apply for his visa at immigration.
We are not in a hurry so why not take a chance…
3:30pm: Lutke received his visa without any hassles! That is the first good thing that day.
3:45pm: We find our luggage and go through the same procedure again:
Check-In / US Border Control / Security
4:15pm: We are back in the launch and have 2 beers each.
5:15pm: Finally we are boarding. 15min late but we are I the plane.
5:30pm: After nearly 12 hours we finally leave the airport!
8:15pm: We arrive in Atlanta.
9:00pm: The rental car is there and we have our luggage.
11:45pm: We do arrive at our final destination after 2.5 hours of driving.
12:00am: I don’t remember if my head ever touhed the pillow…
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