Traveling again!

Wtf? Wtf! Finally, after three years hiatus, we were supposed to be on the way to NZ again. This time with extra buffer, because greedy airlines are so fucked-up. Turns out, the airlines were not the problem this time. The plan was to take the train to Paris on Friday morning, enjoy a nice Friday afternoon / evening and Saturday in Paris, then hop on the plane(s) to AKL. Well. Turns out, the Reisebegleitung caught some food poisoning (avoid sandwiches at Potsdam central station!) on Thursday and was not able to travel on Friday. Soooo, booked another train ticket for early Saturday morning, with still plenty of wiggle room left. Of course, neither hotel nor train ticket were refundable because cancelation was same-day. Greedy fuckers. Anyway, the train is on time, everything is looking peachy, until a few minutes before Frankfurt, the train from Mannheim to Paris is canceled, just like that. Probably to increase some operating margin so some fucker in C-level can get an extra bonus. Deutsche Bahn of course doesn’t help you, they don’t care about their customers. So, the DB app tells me to continue on to Offenburg and then switch to the TGV to CDG. Only problem is, that TGV requires a reservation. The Reisezentrum in Offenburg denies all knowledge about TGV and basically tells passengers to fuck off. Offenburg is a place that deserves to be wiped off the face of the Earth, including all inbred inhabitants with their disgusting dialect. Nuclear war, yes please!

So, I decided to just get on the train and fucking stay on it until the police carries me off. Fortunately, French TGV staff is much nicer and solution-oriented than German staff, no worries at all, got to CDG with plenty of time left. Which we needed, because getting from the train station to the shitty LH Terminal 1 takes forever. You cannot use the luggage trolleys either, don’t know how people with restricted mobility would manage this?

We make it to the check-in eventually and it’s LH at it’s best/worst, as usual. My guess is that it was maybe her first day/week on the job? She clearly didn’t really know what she was doing … told us our bags were „oversized“ (they are not) … mumbled her way through the checkin process … and then, finally, said: „You know, your flight might be cancelled.“ Just like that. When I questioned her it turned out she did not know anything really, so we monitored the flight in the crappy LH lounge, all went well (with a 30min delay). The leg to SIN was ok, LH still has a shitty C product, but the service was great. Air NZ’s good old herringbone is not the greatest C either, but again, service was great, was able to sleep on both flights, enjoyed decent food, and arrived in AKL on time! 🙂