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| Don't let the face fool you... I was in complete panic mode at this moment. |
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Blogging and traveling don’t make for good bedfellows if I
am the person in charge of both duties. In
a word, I… rather, WE have been rather busy and documenting our travels has taken a back seat.
While traveling through each country, I
wrote out some highlights of our adventures so far, more as a catalog of our
trip. It's more about mine and Martin's adventures and less as a
blog. I hope you don’t mind that my
voice is written more in my traveling voice (if there is such a thing) and less in my blog voice.
To begin, traveling with the Frey family may not be ideal for
some. What I have found is that when we
hit the city we have planned to explore, we kind of hit it running at a
marathon pace; really with little time to relax. The reason is because we are on a tight
schedule if we want to hit all the cities I have planned out for our next six weeks
of travel. Yep, I said six weeks. Are we crazy?
Maybe… my reasoning is that if Martin was offering, I was willing to
take full advantage of the time and schedule.
We have a lot of cities that I have wanted to see all my life and I am
not taking this particular undertaking lying down.
So far, Lily has been more than ideal and a wonderful traveling buddy. Although getting around
Europe with a small child who is also“non-walker” has proved to be both challenging and a bit
hysterical (in a funny sense), Martin and I are managing. We have
lifted Lily up stairs and then down stairs.
We have pushed Lily’s little stroller past its maximum capabilities and
it has held up strong with both of us saying, “I don’t know how this stroller
is still moving. I was sure that last
round of stairs would have done it in for good.” However, it keeps rolling and we keep moving.
From my last post, we were still in Moscow, where Martin and
I were going to catch a flight to Prague.
That in its self proved to be a bit challenging. When I
booked the flights a few months ago (on a Russian airline), I didn’t realize
that it had us routed through Istanbul with a one hour layover before we were to catch a connecting flight to Prague. This
is all fine and dandy, but my husbnd is an engineer by trade, and taking a
flight to Instanbul instead of in a straight line to Prague didn’t seem
logical. Istanbul is great and all, but
it is completely in the opposite direction of Prague. Problem was, we didn't figure
out this important piece of information until the day were to leave Moscow.
Quickly, Martin had a travel agent cancel our tickets and book us on another flight straight to Prague. Only, the travel agent booked the wrong date, the 25th of August! Again, we didn't figure this out until noon and the supposed flight was scheduled for 2 pm! About that
moment, I felt my heart beating out of my chest wondering if we really got
ourselves into a bit of pickle. So, I jumped online while Martin called the airlines and cancelled the
flight slated for the 25th.
As I was frantically searching,
I saw that flights for that same day were upwards to $600 each. At that point, I was thinking that I am going
to need to be hauled off to the hospital because our VISA was about to expire
and I was too cheap to pay that hefty sum to get us out of Russia (my heart was
coming out of my chest at that point).
LUCKILY, I found a website with discount tickets. For some unknown
reason, I found flights on Lufthansa airlines for less than $200 each that were leaving
Russia that very afternoon. I booked them and then
went back to try and recreate that same fair and flight, only to be told that
they were still $600. I don’t know why,
but an instant prayer was answered in finding those cheap flights, because I'm still not quite sure how I was
able to secure those tickets.
When we got to the airport in Moscow, we found that our flight was
delayed, which would have been fine except we only had an hour layover in
Munich. My heart began to pick up its
pace once again as I sat there ringing my hands. We were going to miss our flight for
Prague! Finally, an hour later our
flight pulled out of the airport and headed for Munich.
When we got to Munich (an hour late) there was a Lufthansa
worker out on the tarmac waiting for Martin and I with a special shuttle to
take us to our flight. One slight glitch was that we had to clear customs in Munich! I
was sure the flight wouldn’t wait any longer; we were destined to spend the
night in Munich. I was going to need to be taken away in a stretcher at about that
moment. Martin, of course, was
completely calm joking how he wouldn’t mind spending a day in Munich. Me, on the other hand--it was Prague or
nothing!
Somehow, the customs worker could see the panic in my face
and shuffled us through customs quickly.
Then back to the shuttle, out to another part of the airport, back onto
the tarmac where our plane had been sitting waiting for the Frey family for an
hour.
When we boarded, I felt the
compelling need to individually apologize to all the patient passengers as we
passed them. FINALLY as I took my seat,
I let out a gasp and fell instantly asleep for the 40-minute flight to Prague.
To be continued…
