Surface Tension

Continued from here.

The plane touches down in Germany. The left wheel lands and then the right and then the plane wobbles a little bit before finally slowing down to a halt. An announcement is made that the arrival terminal has been changed and that we will now disembark at gate B42. Now the Frankfurt airport is monstrously huge especially if you coming from our good ol’ Bangalore airport. We walk around for about 20 minutes during which we pass through various gates and go up and down escalators and finally after clearing the immigration we arrive at the baggage claim area. The baggage claim area is once huge room and it takes about 2 minutes to walk from one end to another. We run up and down the room twice to find where our baggage would be coming. There is a huge electronic screen in the center which displays in which track the baggage from which flight is coming. As luck would have it, we learnt that the systems were down and no one knew in which track the baggage from the Bangalore Lufthansa flight was coming.

We couldn’t have hoped for any better news. Our taxi would wait for only half hour from the time of arrival of the flight and we had just 5 minutes left to meet them. And here we are not even knowing where to wait to collect our baggage. Finally we walk to a guy in blue overalls and he digs through about 30-40 print outs and thinks that the luggage from LH755 would come on track 11 – which incidentally was clear across the room. So we run over to the other side of the room and spot a couple of other Indians waiting there and start a conversation with them. After 15 minutes of wait the baggage starts rolling in. After 5 minutes, I suddenly remember the conversation that I had with the lady at the check in counter in Bangalore. I had to start praying that my baggage doesn’t end up on some connecting flight to Mexico.

Again destiny favored me and in the next 5 minutes I got my baggage. The rest of the journey was uneventful except for some accident that had caused a huge jam on the highway and a normally 45 minutes drive from the airport to Mannheim took us about 2 hours. Read some hints about that drive here. Then there was the weekend which I will write about later.

5 days went by and it was time for me to return back. It was a Wednesday morning and I was waiting at the reception for my taxi to arrive. There were already 2 guys in the taxi and 2 of us got into it from my hotel. We reached the Airport in 40 minutes and walked into the imposing airport in search of the check in counter. We found one and stood in the queue. The 4 of us finally got to the lady at the counter and produced our passports. First she has a look at my passport and keeps it aside. Then she looks at my friends passport and says that he has to pay some extra charges as he missed his previous flight and this was a rescheduled ticket. Repeat telecast again. She starts off with someone on the phone discussing something and (mis)pronouncing our names to the person on the other line. They check the passports and give some gyaan to each other and finally she says that my friends ticket is ok, but I don’t have a ticket.

By this time I was too irritated to be shocked and I just blankly asked her on what should be done. I was asked to go to the ticketing counter and get this clarified there. So I pull all my luggage in search of that ticket counter. Finally I find it and get back into yet another queue. Its past 10:30am, my flight leaves at 12:25pm and here I am without a ticket in hand. After what seems like ages, my turn comes and I explain the problem to the gent at the counter. He punches in some numbers and says that everything is ok and prints out my boarding pass. Now I am totally pissed off. He explains that there might have been some problem with the system the first time, but cares to inform me that I am on standby as the flight is heavily overbooked and I might get a boarding pass at the boarding gate. Like I have any choice now. I queue up at the priority check-in counter and get my baggage checked in. The funny part was that they never scanned the baggage before checking in. In Bangalore you have to scan your baggage before even entering the airport. Then I start the walk to the boarding gate which, god knows, is in which part of the airport. I seriously think they should have a cap on the sizes of international airports.

I am almost at the entrance to B46 when a lady stops everyone entering through that passageway. A guy in a red coat carrying a board/placard titled “Passenger Express: Please Follow Me” start walking off in the opposite direction and we are asked to follow him(he must think he is pied piper or something). We walk all the way back through where I came and he drops us off the at the security check-in for gate A. Well, again I queue up and wait my turn. It is past 11:00am and boarding starts at 11:40am. The people at the ticketing counter asked me to be there at the boarding gate well before 11:40 so that I am able to get a seat against some cancellations. Yeah, Right. I wait and wait and wait and finally I take a look at the watch when it is almost my turn and the time is 11:45pm. There goes my flight. Since I have already come to this point, I decide to see what happens and after the real quick security check(It was so quick that I refused to move till I was scanned. The lady officer had to tell me that I am clean and I can move on.) and started jogging to the gate. Again I queue up at the boarding counter. I see some guys standing at the left waiting to get their seats confirmed. When its my turn, she takes my stand by pass and print me a brand new, confirmed, boarding pass. Coooooolll…. Finally there is a sigh of relief and a smile across my face. I spot the 3 other guys that I came with and they tell me that even they were on stand by till they came here and got themselves a seat.

Ah.. all is well that ends well as they say. My flight was uneventful again and I managed to stay awake the entire flight(to counter jet lag). I watched Ratatouille and Shootout at Lokhandwala, both of which have my rave reviews and must see recommendations. The touchdown at Bangalore was one of the smoothest that I have even witnessed and a few couldn’t even help but start clapping when we started slowing down after the landing before any of us even realized that we had landed. Reached back home after waiting 1 hours in for the baggage(at least we knew where the baggage would come – Bangalore has just one conveyor belt. ) and reached home at about 3am. Home sweet home. A little too sweet with all those chocolates that I am now beginning to hate. I never knew that I would OD on chocos.

Thats all folks and thanks for all the fish…
Some snippets of Germany in the coming posts.

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Tagged: airport, frankfurt, germany, incidents