Another Adventure

Last weekend, Lindsey and I went up to Hamburg for the Waterkant Jam, a swing dancing workshop and festival. Had a pretty good time, we were really lucky that 1. we even got spots, since it sold out within 15 minutes or so, and 2. that we had a host. It was fun to see some of the people that I had met in Hamburg in 2008 again, and they have a pretty fun scene.

Monday morning we booked it to the airport, and Lindsey got on her plane back to the US. I was going to fly out before her, but my flight got moved to 6 PM. Not that big of a deal, sent a couple emails, and then I got some work done over the day. Sure, I probably could have gone back into Hamburg, but after being all checked in, I didn't want to lug my stuff around Hamburg. Especially considering the weather wasn't very good.

My actual flight from Hamburg to Düsseldorf went pretty well, I took a quick nap. Nothing too out of the ordinary, at this point I'm thinking that my first AirBerlin experience is going pretty well. This is when things took a turn for the worse. Around 8:40, we found out that our 9:15 (boarding time 8:45) flight was delayed until 9:45. A lot of people were upset, making calls, etc. I was thinking how that might be inconvenient, but an hour delay isn't that bad, and I could still catch a train from Zürich to St. Gallen around 11 when we'd arrive, no problem.

Around 9:35 - 9:40, we got a new announcement. Flight cancelled! Unbelievable! All 100+ of us went to the desk and started asking for some information - still not sure why our original plane was so late, but they were unable to even put us on a new plane because Düsseldorf apparently has Nachtflugverbot - no nighttime departures / arrivals allowed. At this point, they were talking about putting us all up in the hotel next door and putting us on the 6:45 AM flight the next morning. For me that wouldn't have been quite the end of the world, but there were some people who were quite upset, and needed to be in Zürich either that night or the next morning at 7.

When we showed up at the AirBerlin booth, a huge line formed (Swiss are so orderly!). I was towards the middle, but things didn't seem to be moving all that quickly. At this point, a guy named Stefan turned to the group and said "This is ridiculous, I'm driving. Who wants to come with?" Being that I was already right next to him and the guy next to me (Mauritz) was heading towards him as well, I got one of the four seats. Sandra, a Swiss woman who needed to meet a moving crew in Zürich at 7 AM, got the other seat. Stefan was Swiss, but lived in the Netherlands and had driven to the Düsseldorf airport with his car because it was the closest (and cheapest) one. We got into Stefan's car and headed out around 10, and pulled into Zürich a little after 3. Mauritz had his own car parked at Zürich airport, and was miraculously also heading to St. Gallen. He gave me a lift the rest of the way.

Just before we hit Zürich, it started snowing (it had most likely already been snowing before we got there). It's been coming down ever since, a light snowfall, nothing too intense. I was initially impressed with how fast everything had been plowed last night, even at 3 AM. As we were going down the highway, everything had already been plowed and the roads had been cleared. I'm not sure that'd you'd be able to drive 120 km/h (Swiss national highway speed limit, ~75 mp/h) down 394 at 3 AM after an hour or two of snow in Minneapolis.

All in all, the trip turned out alright. A few German cities along the way were lit up and looked somewhat serene in the dead of night, but for the most part, there wasn't much visible scenery. As far as new experiences goes, that's the first time I've travelled across a country in the middle of the night in a car, and I think the first time that I've gone 210 km/h (130 mph) in a car. Here's our approximate route:


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I'll take some pictures of snowy St. Gallen after it clears up a bit and the clouds clear up.