Turbulence

I had hoped that my trip to France last week would be relatively smooth, since I could barely move my neck after my bike crash. Unfortunately, striking airline employees, Thalys (a train company), and Orbitz/Delta/KLM/Air France did not take these desires into account.

After struggling out of bed at 6am (struggling because my neck felt like it was holding my head up with frayed dental floss), I walked half a kilometer to the metro station, grabbed a connecting train to the airport, and tried to check in for my flight to Montpellier from Amsterdam. To my surprise, the flight had been canceled, and neither the booking agency (Orbitz) nor the airlines had informed me. In fact, Orbitz had emailed me the day before saying that my flight was “confirmed.” The woman at the KLM ticket counter appeared unsympathetic, and she said that she could neither rebook me for another flight, nor could she do anything about reimbursing me, since I’d booked through Orbitz.

I was a bit torn – should I cancel the trip, since I had no way to get there and my neck and back hurt badly enough that I was having trouble moving and taking deep breaths? Or should I try to get there another way, since I’d already paid for the conference registration and lodging, I was scheduled to give a talk, and the prospect of canceling felt like an admission of defeat at the hands of bad luck.

I decided that canceling the trip wasn’t the way to go, and I trudged through the airport to the train booking counter. I explained my situation to an agent, and she was able to book a one-way trip from Amsterdam to Paris, and then from Paris to Montpellier. In all, it would take about eight hours, and it would cost me 285 euros (about $400). I bought the ticket at 9am, and the train was supposed to depart at 11:15am, so I had some time to kill. I spent part of it going back to the KLM ticket counter and trying (and again failing) to get my flight refunded.

After waiting for two hours, I went to the train platform just in time to hear an announcement that the train had been delayed by 20 minutes. Twenty minutes after that, I heard an announcement that the train was being delayed an additional thirty minutes. These announcements continued until the train arrived around 1:30pm. This was going to make my 3:30pm train connection in Paris kind of difficult to make, since Amsterdam to Paris is over four hours by train. Apparently the original train had some mechanical problems, so they sent a substitute train that would take us the Brussels, where we’d board the “real” train to Paris.

Unfortunately, the “real” train ended up being overbooked, since it had both us refugees from Amsterdam and its original passengers. So I was left without a seat, crammed into a little corridor between two train cars with eight other passengers. Not the best way to spend ninety minutes.

Once in Paris, the rest of the trip was uneventful. I missed my connection to Montpellier, but I was able to catch another one. I ended up getting into Montepellier around 10:30pm, and I mercifully was able to figure out the tram system and check into my dorm without incident.

Despite the train quagmire, going to the conference ended up being the right choice. My talk went very well, a lot of the other talks were interesting and enjoyable, and it felt really cool to be around people speaking French, to eat French food, to drink French wine, and to see French architecture. I regretfully forgot my camera in Amsterdam; some of the pictures (including the courtyard of an old cathedral in which we had the final night banquet) would have been amazing.

I did get a nice, unexpected surprise when I returned to Amsterdam. I realized that the airport, the train, the tram, and all the people on bicycles made me feel like I had come home rather than arrived in another foreign, European city. So that’s good progress, I suppose.