Wednesday 2/15 – transferring to Belgium
Wednesday is the day I transferred to Belgium. But things did not go as planned. I was supposed to have a short 1-hour, 20 minute flight from Berlin to Brussels on Brussels Airlines, which is a part of the Lufthansa group. But when I got to the airport, lines kept forming, and things kept not moving. We finally found out from one of the workers that Lufthansa group was experiencing a major security breach in their IT and they are not we’re not able to do anything. They couldn’t check bags, they couldn’t check in passengers, nothing. They said this was a pretty major worldwide problem for Lufthansa, and they were meeting in Frankfurt soon to try to figure it out. I don’t know what the problem was but it was crazy. (I learned later that they were able to get things going later that afternoon. I’m glad I didn’t wait around.) So I sat there for a couple of hours until I realized nothing was going to happen. Then I decided to take a train from Brussels to Belgium. It’s only about eight hours which isn’t terrible but it did cut into my first day in Belgium. But I texted with Ashley. We did decide that was a better thing than me just waiting around because it was doable. So I did that. I bought a train ticket for that day of which was €156 which is about $177. My airline ticket was only $55. I was kind of shocked at how much it was. But they said Lufthansa is going to pay us back if we get submit tickets for reimbursement. One crazy thing about this experience was that that I bought a ticket, I did not have a seat assignment, so I had to just find a place to be on the first leg of the train trip (maybe 5 hours!). And I guess the plan was that if I didn’t find a seat, I was just going to stand up for eight hours?! I don’t understand how this is Plan A. But luckily, somehow, I did find a seat and was able to sit down for the trip. I also made friends with a girl who was in my same situation, she was supposed to be on that Lufthansa flight going to Belgium. The difference for her was that she lives in Belgium and she is very well-versed in all of this. She happened to be a professional vocal musician of all things, and she spoke English, thank goodness. So she and I talked on the train, and I basically just asked if I could hang with her to make sure that I got to the right place and she of course was very nice and said yes. So that made me feel a lot easier about the whole thing. So ultimately, the journey was fine, and I got a lot of work done on the train, which I actually really needed to do. So all in all and not a terrible experience. I got into Brussels around seven or something and met up with Ashley and Anna – they have a car and picked me up from the train station.
We went directly to eat dinner because I was starving. Anna picked this really cool place that she knew was a bit touristy but said it’s a pretty fun environment and they have really good food. So we had mussels and beer and I had a really good piece of fish as well. It was lovely to see them and to finally just be there and relax. We got to Waterloo, which is where they live, around 10 PM and I went straight to bed! What a day!
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