Tag Archives: departures board

Six Hours Late

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What kind of business people are frequently late?

What kind of business people never let you know that they’re running late?

What kind of business people are absolutely unforgiving if you’re late?

What kind of business people never apologize for being late?

What kind of business people claim that they are “on time” if they are under 6 hours late?

Airlines, that’s who!  I’m not sure why we put up with it, but we do.  Honestly, their behavior is outrageous.

Today I am at Milan Malpensa Airport.  I was here on time for my flight, but the plane is 6 hours late.  No apology, no explanation, besides “technical problem” was given.  I was lucky enough to find one of the 3 plugs in this part of the airport.  Thus the ability to write a bit as I wait.

I have to say that I am glad not to be stuck on the plane for 6 hours.  A friend was on her plane for 5 ½ hours before the start of a transatlantic flight.  So add 7 or 8 hours to that 5 ½.  The airline can maintain a good “on time” record if they manage to take off within 6 hours of their scheduled time.  Being stuck in the airport is far better than being stuck on the plane for all that time.

Of course it’s always wise to travel with something to read, but 6 hours in an uncomfortable airline waiting room chair is still too much.  I feel especially sorry for one of my companions.  She’s a young mother with a 2 year old.  She told me that they had left the house at 5:00 this morning, and now our flight (originally scheduled for 12:50) is scheduled for 7:00 this evening.  Her little boy is cute, and a very happy child, but how do you keep a 2 year old entertained for 6 hours in an airport?  I don’t envy her at all!  Every once in a while I see him dash past me with her in pursuit.  She had asked the airline to put her on a flight to somewhere near Budapest, but they refused because it would mean putting her with another airline.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIf you can see a pink Z next to this notice, you might know which airline I was flying!

I had missionaries who were coming to meet me at the airport in Budapest from about an hour away.  They were going to take me to a gypsy Bible study group, but I will have to miss that.  I checked into the possibility of being compensated in some way for missing the meeting.  But that’s not happening.  I guess I’m glad it’s not actually costing me money to miss the meeting.  But I imagine that some of these people might lose money over being late.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou can pass the time playing silly games with your friends.

Anyway, that’s enough griping for now.  No matter how incompetent or inconsiderate the airline is, God is always good.  Maybe I’ll go see if that young mother could use a hand keeping the boy entertained.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe young mother and her little boy take a rest.

—The Next Day—

I found the young mother with tears in her eyes.  She said that she had a terrible headache, so I offered to go get her some aspirin.  However, the airport newsstand that sells all sorts of other travel aids doesn’t sell aspirin.  They told me that I would have to exit security and go to the airport pharmacy.  By this point, it was too close to our 7PM takeoff time to do that, so I got her a bottle of water instead.

She refused the water, but told me that she managed to find someone with aspirin.  And she pointed to the signboard for our gate, which now had takeoff time at 7:50.  She was planning on taking a train to her town about 2 hours away.  She wouldn’t get home until about midnight now.  I wanted to talk with my missionary friends to see if there was any way that we could help her, but the really odd thing is that she vanished into the crowd.  I never saw her again.  I looked for her on the bus on the plane, at baggage claim, but she was just not there.  I have no idea what happened to her.

Some people might be discouraged by not having been able to help the young mother, and I felt that way at first.  But there are some people who are very closed and unwilling to accept help.  I suspect that is the case with her.  She told me that she is Hungarian, but her son and his father are Italian.  She said that she is a believer.

But although she may believe, she doesn’t appear to have a personal relationship with Jesus.  She didn’t refer to the boy’s father as her husband.  Also, I think she’s probably not Hungarian, but Romanian.  Many Romanians from Transylvania (Hungarian-speaking Romania) claim to be Hungarian because of the extreme prejudice of the Italians against Romanians.  Northern Romania is about 2 hours by train from Budapest.  I also got the sense that she was running away.  Perhaps the boy’s father is abusive.  Who knows.  One possible explanation for her disappearance could be the father discovering where she was and blocking her from taking his son out of Italy.  And being abused could be a reason for refusing help—abuse victims don’t feel worthy of help.  That tends to keep the cycle repeating on them.

Whatever the reason, she disappeared, and I never saw her again.  Nevertheless, I feel a peace about her.  I did what I could for her, but there is only so much that some people will accept before the burden of kindness becomes more than they can bear.  I think you call that a guilty conscience.  I prayed for her, and will continue to pray for her.  She didn’t allow me to do much of anything for her, but God can do what I can’t—and more.  God is good!

Say No to Negativity and Bad Moods

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Adam Dachis wrote that a single bad episode can negatively taint the memory of an otherwise pleasant event (“Your Brain Can Fool You Into Hating Something You Actually Like,” http://lifehacker.com/5948851, see also “How to Beat a Bad Day Before it Starts,” http://lifehacker.com/5754196/how-to-beat-a-bad-day-before-it-starts).  It is so easy to fall into a negativity trap, and it actually takes some self-awareness and creativity to short-circuit the negative process your mind would normally take.

I’m actually very fortunate to have had my goofy Dad as a silly, but wonderful example.  All his life, Daddy had the ability to see the humor in the kind of things that wreck other people’s whole day—and usually it was his own clumsiness, lack of planning, or just plain stupidity.  Take for example the time we were camping in Palo Duro Canyon when I was four years old.  It had rained overnight, and my three-year-old brother and I had left our sneakers outside the tent.  In the morning they were soaking wet when we woke up.  Daddy set fire to the trash in one of the 55 gallon drums that the park used as trash cans, put a grill from the barbecue on top and set our shoes on the grill to dry while we had breakfast.  Halfway through breakfast, Mom wrinkled her nose and said, “What is that smell?”  The rubber soles of our sneakers had melted.

Another man might have gotten upset, after all, this would mean cutting the weekend short.  Another man might have gotten angry at us for leaving our sneakers outside all night.  But Daddy was able to see the humor and his own fallible humanity in melting our sneakers, so he just began to laugh.  And when he began to laugh, we all began to laugh.  What could have been an ugly incident was turned into one of our funniest family stories—one that I immortalized in my book, “Hannard Productions,” a memoir of Daddy.

The other day I used that same skill to navigate the difficulties of trying to get to the airport in Wroclaw, Poland.  The desk clerk at my hotel in Kalisz helped me figure out how to get back to Wroclaw, recommending the bus, rather than the train because of some unexplained difficulties that would have me getting off the train at some point and taking a bus the rest of the way.  She called a taxi for me, and told him where to take me (it was too far to walk with a suitcase).  When I asked about how to get to the airport from the bus station, she recommended a taxi.

On the bus, about an hour after starting the trip, we were suddenly sitting at a dead halt in the woods somewhere.  In fact, the driver had turned off the engine.  A few cars passed us coming the other way, and those were the only times the driver turned on the engine and inched forward.  Finally a fire truck pulled up and exchanged words in Polish with the bus driver.  I asked the woman next to me what was going on.  She said that there was an accident blocking the road, and the fireman was advising us to turn around and go another way.  With admirable skill the driver turned the enormous bus around on the tiny two-lane road, and backtracked to the last town we had gone through.

He chose another route, and before long we had stopped again.  The road was completely shut down due to roadwork.  So he turned the bus around and headed back to town, choosing another route.  By the time we got to Wroclaw, the bus was about an hour late, and I still needed to get to the airport.

I followed the other passengers into the bus station, and found the information booth.  But the woman there didn’t speak English.  I pulled out my phrasebook, looking for the Polish phrase: “I need to go to the airport.”  The phrasebook has the following useful phrases:

Where’s the . . . ?

bus station

city center

road to . . .

train station

How do I get there?

Where can I buy a ticket?

I want to go to . . .

Which bus goes to . . . ?

Please take me to . . .

In fact, it has every useful word and phrase for getting around in Poland except the word “airport”!  And I couldn’t remember the name of the airport, so I couldn’t even ask it that way.  I went to look at the departures board, but that was as unintelligible as Sanskrit.  I felt panic rising in me as my check-in time approached, knowing that the taxi ride had taken almost an hour from the airport to the city center.

I wanted to chuck the phrasebook in the trash.  How can it have phrases like “What a great film!”, “Do you like horseback riding?”, and “Where can you go to hear folk music?” and not have the word airport?

I went back to the information window and tried again.  Upon hearing the word airport, she wrote 408 and a Polish word in indecipherable scratch.  What does that mean?  Do I need to look for bus number 408 to wherever this says?  I was as uninformed as ever.

I went to the ticket window for the bus and asked the woman there if she speaks English.  She shook her head no.  I asked her how to get to the airport, and instead of selling me a bus ticket, she wrote on a slip of paper 408 and a Polish word as illegible as the other.  What to do?

I saw a sign for bus tickets at the pharmacy, and seeing that the woman behind the counter was young, I decided that it couldn’t hurt to try and ask her.  Usually it is the younger people who speak English.  The woman ahead of me talked and talked, and I fought hard to contain the panic and wait patiently.  Finally after several false exits in which she turned and said something else as she stepped away from the counter, she finally left.  The young woman did speak some English, and she advised me that my best bet was to take a taxi to the airport.  I asked where I might find a taxi because I hadn’t seen a single taxi in this part of town.  She told me where to find the taxi stand.

I easily found the taxi stand, and when I said the word airport, he popped my bag into the trunk and whisked me away.  I made it on time, and with no further difficulties.  And I said all that to say that my scary moments at the bus station might have soured me on Wroclaw or even ruined my day.  But I started thinking of how the folks at Lonely Planet had overlooked something very simple, but essential to the traveler.  And I started laughing right there in the taxi as I thought, Well, at least I know how to ask people if they like horseback riding!