I cried, I cheered, I adopted a 24 year old son....

I woke up at 8 am on Wednesday morning and spent our final day at home getting ready for our trip. Tom and I went to bed at 12:30 in the morning and were up 2.5 hours later to get ready to go to the airport. (thanks for the 4 :15 airport trip Tim!) the reason I am telling you this will become apparent later in the story. (and you know there is ALWAYS a story!!)

We flew to Newark with no problem beside a bit of a bumpy landing. We went straight to our gate for the flight to Frankfurt and arrived there just in time to board the plane (Tom was skeptical that flights would be on time and that we would make our close connections). This flight was no where near as smooth as the first, as a matter of fact I think I would rate it third on my list of worst flights ever ( behind #1 The time I wore a life vest on a military hop because we were expected to crash land into the ocean and #2 the time we ran out of gas in a small private plane over the Sierras... If you haven't heard these stories, remind me to tell you sometime) So, back to #3 on the list... WORST TURBULENCE EVER!!! We had turbulence steadily throughout the flight however for over two hours near the end it was nonstop. I expended an extreme amount of mental energy telling myself 1.this will be over soon 2. I'm not going to puke and occasionally 3. we aren't going to crash. After two hours of this I just suddenly started sobbing (remember the "I cried" part?) I just couldn't take anymore of the plane feeling like it was going to drop out of the sky. Fortunately it was finally over; the turbulence and the flight (and I managed not to puke).

We made our way through the Frankfurt airport (past the tiny, crowded smoking cubicles and sausage/pretzel stands) to our departure gate. Hmn... Strange, there is no sign saying "flight to Budapest".. We asked another passenger and we were told we were in the right place. A woman said to me "they took the sign down that said Budapest." Hmn.. Why would they do that??

At this point I was approached by a young man looking to borrow a power adaptor. I loaned him one and while he went to charge his phone an airline attendant showed up at the gate.
Unfortunately she showed up to tell us that our flight had been cancelled. Apparently the ground crew had gone on strike at 6 am and we arrived at 7:30. With a departure time of 8:30 we were out of luck. We were told to go to Hall B to be rebooked. I informed the man borrowing my adaptor that our flight has been cancelled (and that he could keep my adaptor because Apparently he was going to need it) We introduced ourselves and when we found our it was his first time abroad and he was alone, welcomed him to come along with us to work out our mutual dilemma.(remember the adoption of a 24 year old son?) Brian is from Northern California, going to school in San Diego, with a study abroad program in Hungary.

By the time we reached Hall B, the line was five+ hours long. When we finally reached a Lufthanza rep the three of us were given boarding passes and a gate number. It wasn't until we walked away that we realized the tickets didn't have seat numbers due to the fact that they were standby tickets. We discussed the possible solutions to our problem if we didn't get on this 5 pm flight. 10 hour train trip? Split up if necessary? Frankfurt hotel? As the gate filled with 97 other standby passengers the rumors and speculation began to fly. We waited nervously to find out if we would make the flight and Tom figured our chance to be one of the few to win the flight lottery was pretty slim. I encouraged positive thoughts as we endured an extra hour of waiting while the airline replaced a noshow flight attendant. At 6 pm, with the plane almost completely full, they called my and Tom's names!!! I reassured Brian that they WOULD call his name and suddenly they did!! We wouldn't have to leave him behind to fend alone!! The three of us high fived and whooped it up (cheering part) as we boarded the flight. We were greeted by several of our brand new best friends/ partners in suffering ( fellow passengers who had also had the good fortune to have their names called before us.)

Now, at this point, it's important to tell you that I worked HARD to get an early arrival into Budapest so we wouldn't have the issue of looking for our lodging after dark. Well the strike changed our Budapest arrival from 10am to 8:30pm... Dark.

Tom, Brian and I sat at three far ends of the plane but met after the plane landed to exchange emails and hugs goodbye. We joked about sending our adopted son out onto the world, and then Tom and I were off to find our bus.

We found our bus and attempted to once again try to call our Budapest apartment, without success. We had tried all afternoon but kept getting a number not in service message. I approached a young woman on the bus for assistance regarding directions and she volunteered to place the call for me from her phone. People really will go to great lengths to assist you if you allow them to. (remember this when you see someone looking confused, map in hand)

We took a bus and then the metro to get to our destination, finally arriving 12 hours after we had expected to arrive. We were so grateful to have made that flight, to have finally arrived at our apartment, and to have a bed waiting for us. Remember the 2.5 hours sleep? That had occurred something like 36 hours before and was all the sleep we had in about 44 hours. After a quick trip to buy drinking water, a short but very welcome shower and a through teeth brushing (ah, sometimes it really IS the simplest things) Tom and I laid our heads on our pillows and were asleep before we even said goodnight.