Romanian Adventure

This past weekend I had the privelege of going to Romania to celebrate the wedding of Doini Maftei and Oliver Crispin, two dear friends from my K-group on the ship. I will share about the weekend itself but later. First I will share about our adventure on the way home.
We left Zarnesti (The bride, Doini's home town) at 1200h on Monday to get a bus to Brasov (45 mins), and then another bus to Bucharest (2 1/2 hrs) in order to catch our 1845h flight to Vienna. There were 5 of us from the ship travelling together: Rahel and I live here in Mosbach, Sarah lives just north of Frankfurt, and then Sam and Liz live in Switzerland. We all check in and after waiting in the airport a bit,  we get our seats all together.

All ready to head to Vienna!

We get settled and take off for the 1hr flight to Vienna. We get a bit of a snack and some drinks with some turbulence...yup. It started to get quite bumpy and it was probably the first time ( barring little SIM Air flights) that I almost felt sick. About 20 mins before we're suppsoed to arrive in Vienna the turbulence gets worse; there is a storm outside.

I was looking over at the others and out of the window we see a bright flash. We're sitting in the row just behind the wing and the flash was on the wing. We continue on for a few minutes and then the captian comes on saying that there is a big storm in Vienna, (really??) the airport is backed up because they closed for a little bit, and so we need to divert to Linz in order to "refuel".

Right before that announcement, I saw on the screens with the map that we were overshooting Vienna quite a ways and Rahel was like, "what? we had 44kms left to do, and that was a little while ago, it doesnt take that long!" Well, having an airport closed and diverting to "refuel" would do that. My thoughts were more along the lines of "thats a bit strange that we cant even wait 20 minutes to get on the ground in a holding pattern".

We get on the ground in Linz and the ground crew come on board. We arent allowed to get off the plane just yet, some of the passengers were a bit stressed out about thier connecting flights and all that.

 The pilot comes back on saying "well, we got hit by lightening and the technitian needs to come to check the plane but he is coming from Vienna which is 2 hours drive away. For now, we will get you off thep lane and then get you to Vienna."

So we all pile out and get our luggage, not really sure what is going to happen, what flights we'll be on or whatever. We're waiting around, its pouring in Linz, and Sam goes over to the austrian Airline office where everyone else is to find out something, anything of what will happen. He comes back and is like, we'll I overheard that there are no more flights out of Linz tonight, that all the hotels in Vienna are booked up and there are alot of flights already fully booked for tomorrow morning.

So we're waiting, and the annoucement over the PA is that there is a bus going to Vienna at 830pm so everyone whos last destination is Vienna, please get on the bus, everone else, go to the ticket counter.

We go over there, wait some more then a lady comes out saying, we cant rebook your flights from here because Vienna office wants to do it themselves. You can go to Vienna on the bus tonight if you want, but there is no guarantee that you are going to get a hotel there. If you dont want to do that, we can put you in a hotel here and we will get you to Vienna tomorrow morning by 8am. (2 hour drive remember??)

So we figure, well, better to stay in Linz,get a decent feed, decent bed and sleep and then head over later. Sam and Liz's mum was going to pick them up from the airport but the other 3 of us were catching trains from Frankfurt so no one was waiting for us really. Just work the next day. Luckily our jobs arent so strict so it isnt that crucial!! Sarah is at Uni so she just missed classes.

The captain had said to another lady that we were in quite a bit of danger when we got hit.

that it is very rare  and then another flight attendant said that in all her 13 years of flying, that had never happened. We thought oh, "needing to refuel" is their code for " we need to get on the ground as soon as possible". On the ship we had a similar code system... we used to say "cherry red" when we needed to evacuate. It could have also possibly been because at that time they had closed the airport and had no idea for how long and the captain just wanted to get the plane down. apparently other flights had heard about the lightning striking a plane...and it was us!

 So we end up waiting a bit more and finally got to the hotel. I stayed back because there was only 4 in a cab, and it was 1015 ish by the time I got to the hotel. we then went down to dinner and had that which was yummy, especially since Rahel, Sarah and I hadnt eaten at all the whole day except for random snacks.

We then went to bed and since we were leaving at 530am, we would miss breakfast which is a shame since I LOVE breakfast. But we got a decent sleep, and then woke up at 430 to get ready for the bus. I wouldnt have needed that long, but I was sharing my room with Rahel. We hadnt had decent showers the whole weekend since we didnt have hot water and the water in Romania was like ice cubes coming out of the showerhead... seriously. like it hurt your hands to wash them after going to the bathroom and washing your hair was like pain. serious pain. so we wanted to enjoy warm showers. :) and be clean. because who knows what was going to happen for the rest of the  day!!

We bussed it to Vienna, and went to the ticket desk and they'd already booked us on our next flight.

Sam and Liz got on an earlier flight than we did, to zurich, and then the three of us got the 11am flight to Frankfurt.

BUT it doesnt end there!! We get on board, and everyone is settled and ready... and then the captain is like, well, there is a lot of fog in Frankfurt so we will be delayed 40 minutes. we will wait here ready to go for that long.if there is any improvement on the flight time, I'll let you know.

I was like... great. :)

We ended up waiting only 15-20 mins and then took off which was good. We made it into Frankfurt around 1230 then caught at 130 train and were back in Mosbach at 330pm.

15 hours after our original ETA.
good story eh??

We made it to Frankfurt!!