Catching Up Again - Travel Vignettes

Ah!  We left off while I was waiting to make my way through passport control at London Heathrow's Terminal 5, where I had gulped more than once after realizing that the sign signalling a 45-minute wait there had badly underestimated that waiting time.  A good 1 1/2 hours later, I was finally through, after answering the question, "How long do you intend to stay in London?"  After hearing my somewhat open-ended response, "As long as it takes me to get rebooked on a flight to Baltimore," the beleaguered immigration official didn't even bother asking the usual follow-up, "Are you here for business or pleasure?"  I'm sure that he had already gotten some choice responses to that question.

By this time, it was well after 2 pm (14:00) and I chose to make a quick pit stop before finding Departures and, hopefully, rebooking possibilities.  Thankfully, we hapless refugees had been advised to leave our luggage, being told that our baggage stubs would ensure that the luggage would be tracked down and placed on any flight we had been rebooked to. Considering how poorly things had functioned to this point, it literally took a major leap of faith to believe this.  But I decided that I really did not want to trail my luggage around with me for god knew how long.

Finally arriving at the line for rebooking on British Air flights, which looked at first glance every bit as long and winding as those I had encountered before, I took a place there.  Once again, another 30 people were quickly lined up behind me and the line was growing exponentially.  Mercifully, I did not realize until some hours later that once we had made it through the visible line, there were still another four serpentined loops behind a partition before we would arrive at one of the rebooking counters.  There seemed to be about 10 of  them but what seemed especially frustrating was that not all stations were occupied.  

In the meantime, a couple from Nebraska, whom I had already met and chatted with in the passport control line, greeted me once again as they took their places behind me in line.  They had already had a long journey behind them.  Bound for Rome, they had begun their travels by driving to the Denver, CO airport.  From there, they had boarded the flight to London, only to be diverted just before their projected arrival to Dublin Airport.  They said that Ireland had looked so green and inviting, they would have been happy to get off there.  But that was not to be.  Ultimately they arrived at Heathrow, naturally having missed their scheduled flight to Rome.  They were planning to meet their son in Rome and from there head to Paris to spend Christmas.  They would complete their tour in Barcelona, where their son was studying for the year.  While in line, her husband was calling the rebooking line posted at various points in front of us all.  After about 45 minutes, he was finally able to get through and successfully book them both on an evening flight!  I wished them well as they gathered up their carry-ons and headed for the check-in counters.

Some others in line were having similar success, but the long waiting time before reaching a human being discouraged me from doing the same.  I had neglected to bring my phone charger with me.  My telephone works in every country except those in North America(!), so I usually carry it with me only in case there is some small emergency in London.  In the US, I share with HWMBO.  Still, I should have brought the charger with me and that is one omission that will not occur again.  While I was waiting in line, however, I decided to let HWMBO know where I was and what was happening - which wasn't much.  I didn't want him to head to Dulles Airport until I knew for sure whether I would even be there.  He was standing by and I let him know that I would keep him updated on the situation.

I found myself surrounded by lots of unhappy people.  Most were seasoned travelers who knew that glitches are part of the experience so, even though people were tired or disappointed, most were fun to talk to.  Misery loves company.  There were lots of us and lots of misery.  I, for one, thanked every lucky star I could think of that I wasn't traveling with little ones - I could only empathize with those who were or hold their places when they had to feed them, take them to the potty or generally just amuse them.  There was a group of Swedes, many of whom were booked on a Caribbean cruise from Miami.  While disgruntled by the situation and fervently hoping they would make it to Miami in good time to catch their cruise ship, they settled in philosophically as comfortably as they could for a long wait, speaking Swedish and English with lively and equal fluency and making sandwich runs for all who were hungry.  British Air staff passed by with copious amounts of bottled water.

One woman just in front of me, an American from Wisconsin, was making her first-ever trip to Europe.  Her destination for the day was Amsterdam where she was scheduled to meet a friend and take the train with him  to a tiny Dutch village where she was to stay for the next three months.  She had two major concerns: a) she had left her winter coat in the car when her mother had dropped her off at the airport in Chicago and b) her train tickets were valid for that day only, so she would lose that money if she couldn't get to Amsterdam that day.  Then she added a third concern to the list: her cellphone would not work at all in London and she needed to call her friend and tell him what was happening.  To her great relief, I let her use my cell for that.

Seven hours later, just as we were at the point where we could see the other lines awaiting us behind the partition, British Airways staff came by to let us know that they were closing the rebooking counters for the day once they had finished with the lines behind the partition.  To be fair, it was after 9 pm (21:00) by that time. But this meant that our hours of standing in line had been fruitless and we had no idea whether we would even be able to be booked on a flight for the next day.  At the same time, staff did hand out hotel, transportation and meal vouchers for use in airline hotels and told us that the lines would reopen the next morning at 5 am (05:00).

Being exhausted by this time, I decided to make my way to the hotel, have something to eat and have a nice hot bath in the hope of getting some sleep before making my way back to the airport to be there when the lines reopened.  On the bus, I made a bunch of new "friends," headed for various destinations in the US, and we arrived at the hotel just in time to grab some of the picked-over leavings of the buffet supper before the hotel closed the service altogether.  I gave a quick call to HWMBO to let him know the latest, i.e., nothing new, soaked in the bathtub and fell into bed for a few hours of sleep.  Thankfully, I slept.