Monday, August 24, 2009

Im Here!!

So after a very very long flight i have finally made it to berlin. My family ist sehr nett which is very good. I have two host brothers and a hostsister who is in New Zealand for a year.

My flight from JFK to Amsterdam was supposed to leave at around 3:40 pm on saturday, so we got to the airport around One o'clock ish. I met caitlin the exchange student going to neuruppin (a town about an hour outside of berlin) in the airport and we boarded the flight at around 3:50 or 4. The captain came on the PA system and said that because there had been a flight to amsterdam the day before that had been cancelled, that Northwest (worst airline ever) had rescheduled the flight for the same time as ours. Unfortuently i guess they forget to tell the catering company that there were two flights because they had only made food for one of them, and of course they had given it to the other plane. So the captain said that it would only be 30 minutes or so before we would get food for the plane. I don't even know why we needed food on the plane, but apparently we did. So after waiting for about 2-2.5 hours, the captain came back on the announcement system saying that it would take another 90 minutes before we could get food for the plane, and that we were going to be able to deplane and then reboard in an hour or so. So northwest gave us 10$ worth of food vouchers to get in the airport, but there were only two restaurants in the entire terminal, so the lines were like 20 minutes long. So we took the bus back out to the plane at like 7 or 730, so were all sitting on the plane assuming that we have food, and about 20 minutes later they ask us to clear the aisles to make it easier for the caterers to do their job. So it takes them 15 or 20 minutes to cater the airplane, so were finally ready to go at about 820-830 ish. By this time almost everybody on the plane (there were tons of people who spoke spanish, i guess amsterdam is one of the most popular ways to get back to spain because the amount of people who spoke spanish was about the same as the people who spoke english) knew that they were going to miss their connecting flight. The flight attendants said that the agents automatically rebooked the flights and that all we had to do was print out new boarding passes once we landed in amsterdam. So finally after waiting for pushback and everything we taxied around for like 20-30 minutes for some reason, we finally took off at 9:50, 6 hours late. We should have been almost to Amsterdam at this time, the flight was ok after that, the food we waited so long for really was terrible, i wouldve have rather left on time without the food, but we couldnt. So by the time we pull into the gate in amsterdam its almost 10:30 amsterdam time. I should have landed in berlin by now, but because of the delay we had to get on the next flight. So there is a transfer station right outside the gate that we went to, they had a bunch of computer terminals there, but everybody was using them so we had to wait yet again. When i finally get to the computer i swiped my passport then entered in which airport i was going to, and it came up as no flights booked. I just figured that maybe it had accidentally booked it into the other berlin airport (Templehof instead of Tegel, the one i was supposed to go too) but i got the same error message. So i tried again and it printed out this ticket that said i had to go to the agent, so i asked the KLM representative about it and he gave me a number and told me to wait in line. So after about 20-30 minutes (the transfer station was a zoo) I finally got to see an agent for KLM. Caitlin had automatically been booked on a flight that boarded at 11:55. KLM was great, they were really nice and they gave 10 Euro food voucher a 5 minute phone card and a 50 euro discount on the next flight on klm. I tried to use the phone card to call my host family but unfortunetly i could'nt get the phone card to work, so i had too run through the airport and after waiting in line at passport control for a little bit (and making a complete fool of myself, the passport agent asked me if i was travelling alone, and i thought he said turn around so i turned at hes just there laughing and im like ohhh) I had to go to like the other side of the airport to catch the flight, and i used caitlins phone to call my parents to tell them to call my host parents, we boarded the flight and in about 55 minutes we had landed in berlin. Surprisingly the Berlin airport is very, very tiny. Probably about as big as islip, if not smaller, which is surprising for the third 2nd biggest city in europe (4th if you count russia). I got my bags (they lost caitlins bags) and "went through passport control" (the guy working there just waved me through, he didnt even look at my passport) and i met my host brother benedict and my host mother. We went to a brunch at their friends house, where i met my other host brother julius, and my host father. After staying there for a couple of hours we went back to the house where i was showed my room and the rest of the house. I took a shower and started to unpack, we had a simple meal of bread meat and cheese (i can't remember the german word for it). and then at about 9 i went to sleep and slept in til about 230 this afternoon.

Ill say more about what i did today later on, but its 11:15 here so I am going to sleep.

Tschüss!

3 comments:

  1. Heey where is your host sister in NZ staying? :)

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  2. I had flight problems too! Getting to Sao Paulo, Brazil, was fine, but I was alone for the next leg of the trip. My flight kept getting delayed and I couldn't find anyone who spoke English to get information. Eventually I found someone who helped me out and even called my host family (they didn't speak Enlgish nor I Portuguese.) You seemed to handle the situation much more competently than I would have, haha.

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  3. Ohhh man..
    I'm sydneytodenmark from CS. :)

    Reading this has made me SO MUCH MORE NERVOUS for my flight in less than a month!

    I just know something's going to go wrong..

    But anyway, nice blog! :D

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