Time to un-pause before our next pause, which would be right now except — well, read on and you’ll see. We were supposed to take a road trip after the wedding and before the Easter weekend at the home village, but we are inclined to stay put because we lost two days and only have one left. Our next official pause is Easter weekend, which we hope will be less… eventful.
A Strike Cancelled Our Flight
What was supposed to be a four-day German pause was extended to a six-day hiatus, thanks to a partial closure of French airspace due to an air traffic controllers’ strike on Sunday and Monday (21/22). We did not know about it because we were busy and involved with a wedding and didn’t look at any news. Also, we checked in early last week and printed our boarding passes already. If there was any change to the schedule, we should’ve been notified about it — except we didn’t get that notification until nearly 12 hours before the flight was due to depart!
In fact, it was very late on Sunday night when the Google Assistant app on my phone informed me that our Monday afternoon flight was cancelled. We were so tired by that point, I thought I must’ve been seeing things and Paulo was already asleep. I checked the very long list of cancelled flights for ours in a state of denial, hoping it was a mistake, but it wasn’t. Even though we weren’t flying through France, many flights over their airspace were cancelled and we had to scramble and find something FAST before there weren’t any options left. When I saw the hundreds of flights cancelled, all I could think of was how many thousands of people were trying to do the same thing as we were. This strike was meant to be inconvenient, and it certainly was: just days before Easter, and people were returning from a weekend or on their way somewhere for Easter break. I could imagine families with kids stranded, hotel stays paid for that couldn’t be refunded, connections that were lost due to this strike.
I woke Paulo up and gave him the bad news, and that began a sleepless night for him searching for options at the hotel’s guest computer while I was barely functional and tried to sleep. Our options were terrible: expensive flights routing all around Europe, connections with buses and trains to reach airports. No car share rides. By the time we made a decision on a flight route, the prices skyrocketed. Instead, we opted for the bus, which was much more expensive than our return flights but carried less risk than the complicated set of connections that came with the flight routes. It turned out to be a good day to avoid airports, especially Brussels, but we didn’t know that at the time.
Three Borders And 30 Hours To Get Home
We checked out of our hotel in Heilbronn and made our way by rail to Karlsruhe Hauptbahnhof, where our bus was due to leave at 10 o’clock in the morning. We had to chase after a train at one point because our first train was late and we missed the connection, and after a mad sprint we managed to catch one at another platform.
Two things: 1) it is a myth that German trains are always on time, and 2) at times like this we are glad that we pack light (no checked bags, and backpacks so we can run after buses and trains!).
Karlsruhe had accommodation options, but we were reluctant to spend more money. For this reason and others, the hostel beside the train station was the most appealing choice to maximize sleep and minimize any chance that we’d miss this precious long-distance bus. I’ve tried to think of the last time I stayed in a hostel dorm, and I’m drawing a blank. It’s been a really long time, maybe the ’90s? It was worth it, though, the hostel room was spacious and clean, I got plenty of sleep, we saved money, and it couldn’t be easier to reach the bus.
We didn’t realize how close we were to losing the bus option until we embarked and discovered it was full all the way to Portugal. For most of the journey we had only aisle seats across from each other, and it wasn’t until the second bus near the border to Portugal that I was able to nab a window seat — which is why I only have a few photos of Portugal and none of France or Spain. Karlsruhe is near the border to France, and just as we entered Strasbourg, French police boarded the bus to check our ID. We didn’t find out until we saw the horrific news at a lunchtime stop about what had happened in Brussels just a few hours before, and it was probably the reason why the French police had set up checkpoints.
The news sunk in slowly as our bus made its long journey across France. We were prepared with food, drinks, reading material and Sudoku puzzles, but with mismatched seat partners it was harder to sleep and talk to each other. The wifi didn’t kick in until Spain because our bus was a Spanish line, and there were no power points to recharge our phones. Sleep was brief, interrupted every 2-3 hours by planned breaks. Needless to say, we were counting the hours until Porto…
Last summer I took a bus from Andorra to Porto which was 15 hours, but this was twice as long. Definitely the longest bus ride I’ve taken that I recall, but given our options I still feel we chose the best one and I’d still choose it, given this situation.
Heilbronn and Our First Wedding As Casa Aguiar
Even after writing out all that, I’d like to point out that the saga of the past three days didn’t put the slightest damper on the fabulousness of the first three days of our trip. We got married in 2013 without guests in the Azores to avoid the chaos and details of a wedding, but since this one wasn’t ours it was a lot more fun to be involved. Both of us had things to do from practically the time we arrived to the time that we left, which is funny because Paulo had never met anyone at the wedding before, but I volunteered his services as a Spanish translator for the Colombians in attendance. Between the Germans, the Colombians, and the three native English speakers (me plus two guests who flew in from London, one of whom is a friend I hadn’t seen in many years), the wedding was filled with hilarious moments, tissues, and probably some things lost in translation. It was special to be a part of it and tell the story of how they met (I was there), eight years ago.
And I finally got to see Heilbronn, after hearing about it for eight years! I will bow out on that note and leave you with a few pictures from the snippet we saw of Heilbronn, when we walked from our hotel to the groom’s house.
March 18, 2016
Album: Germany wedding trip 2016