Jackpot!

Well, coming to Spain was definitely the right move. One call to Merck's Travel Services later and I got the last ticket on a JFK-bound Delta flight tomorrow morning. I'll be back at my house before dinnertime tomorrow if all goes as planned.

More details to come later, and maybe a "retrospective" on this whole experience with day by day summaries since the actual time from when I started the blog to when I got my ticket home turned out to be quite short.

Hola de Madrid!

I wish I had some way to upload photos from my digital camera, because I took about 40 yesterday during the road trip. Yes, we made it all the way from Brussels to Madrid in one day. This was about 14 hours driving time. Javier did all the driving--while first off I am pretty I can't legally drive in Europe, the car Javier rented was a stick shift so I really couldn't drive (being a lazy American who never bothered to learn manual).

But anyway, in summary, the drive down through the middle of France is pretty much boring, long, and flat. We did go past Paris, Orleans, Bordeaux, and Bayonne, but frankly from the highway there's not much to see. Ah, Paris and Bordeaux, I will always remember you for your awful traffic jams.

At one point in northern France, we passed an airport named Orly. O RLY? YA RLY. (yes, I have a picture, no I can't upload it, I didn't expect to need my camera's USB cord while actually on the trip)

Also, we got to experience 2 non-city based traffic jams because the French highway people were doing roadwork on only the southbound side of the main highway from Paris down to Bordeaux, the A10. One of these backups lasted about 30-40 minutes and they actually shut down the southbound side entirely, split the northbound side in two lanes, and rerouted the southbound traffic from 2 lanes to 1 lane and then sent us over to the northbound side for 5 km. Seriously, France, did you need to do that work today when everyone in Europe is trying to migrate south?

Otherwise, there wasn't much noteworthy in France, though I had a wonderful baguette for lunch at a rest stop. Was kinda worried cause all the ingredients were listed in french but it looked like it said chicken with vegetables and cheese, basically. Which is what I got. So that's a plus. In southern France, we stopped for a snack around 5 PM. I had a Magnum ice cream bar with vanilla ice cream, a layer of chocolate, a layer of caramel, and another layer of chocolate. It was as good as it sounds. We also snacked on some pringles and candied peanut thingies. That's just how we roll.

Once we got to northern Spain, the drive became much more scenic. The Pyrenees are absolutely gorgeous and the roads are kind of fun and windy with tunnels every few km. Javier was enjoying, weaving back and forth across the fairly deserted lanes like he was a F1 driver at 150+ kmh. He even touched 190 kmh (~120 mph) a few times, though that was more on straightaways through boring-ass France. I guess they mostly use photo radar to catch speeders, but they have signs ~1 km or so before the photo, so as long as you watch for the signs you can go as fast as you want and there's very few actual police to catch you.

We stopped for dinner at a rest stop in northern Spain. I had some kind of chicken, salad, potato croquettes, and fries platter thing. All things considered, it was pretty decent for a rest stop/diner type place. Also had some kind of Spanish beer. Good, but I miss Belgium already in that regard. Had a couple of Grimbergen blondes (before my wife freaks out--that's a beer, not a European female...love you honey and miss you lots) the night before I left Brussels and those were excellent. This was, well, let's just say I'm not judging Spain's alcohol quality by a beer from a rest stop, and hopefully there will be something better during my week in Spanish exile.

The rest of the drive was at night so I didn't see too much of the countryside. We went past St. Sebastian, almost got to Bilbao, then past Burgos, and finally to Madrid without passing much else of note.

Once to Madrid (around 12:30 AM), we had to take the rental car to Barajas Airport and switch to Javier's car. That took a while because Avis was already closing up, so Javier had to run around inside the airport to get the paperwork done. Finally around 1:30 AM, we arrived at Hotel Campanelile, located sorta near Javier's house. Nothing special, tiny little room, but it has a bed and Internet. Tomorrow I'll get a nicer hotel either near the airport or near things to see since I will be here probably until Friday.

Well, I'm gonna grab some breakfast from the hotel buffet and then count the minutes until 2 PM when I'll call travel services. It looks like I might be able to get home on Wednesday (if I fly through South America) or Thursday (which might only require connecting through Chicago and its economy). However these are substantially more expensive than the business class tickets I booked myself for Friday, so I'll leave it up to my corporate Travel Services folks to tell me what to do.

Good news for the rest of Europe, lots of flights are reopening, at least south of the UK. Apparently I should have just stayed in Paris, sounds like Air France is going to get a lot of people to the US today by adding extra planes heading west. Doesn't look like there's much heading that way yet, however, and my original airline (Jet Airways) isn't flying anything out of Brussels until at least Thursday. Still confident that coming to Madrid was the right decision.

Allright hombres, hasta la vista.

The Great Migration

Well, today is the last day of exile in Brussels. Tomorrow I take my situation into my own hands and head for Madrid with my coworker Javier, who happens to live there. I've booked a flight home on Friday (direct flight Madrid to JFK, from which I will need to figure out a way to get to Newark but I'm sure that can be achieved easily via a variety of means). I may be able to get home Wednesday or Thursday, but it'll require routing through somewhere like Ecuador or Columbia, or before I do that I'm going to talk to my company's real Travel Services office and get their perspective.

In the meantime, I will be spending the next day (or two?) driving from Brussels, all of France, and most of Spain down to Madrid, where I will stay until I can get a flight home (again, at latest, it should be Friday).

Not gonna write much more tonight because I need to get some sleep and I'm meeting Javier at the airport quite early to begin the first real tangible step in my journey home.

Should have named this blog "stuck on hold"

I'm still on hold trying to get in touch with the 24 hour emergency travel agency. At this point I have been on hold for 4 1/2 hours. This is the downside of this being corporate travel. My company's Travel Services sent out an email this morning basically saying "Hey we know you are stuck because of the volcano, but please make all your arrangements through the travel agencies cause we're trying to figure out how to get you home and need to know where you are." So I get that, but it also means that I need to follow "procedure" when I'm making my plans as opposed to what I'd like to do--head south until I can fly west, cost/timing/logistics be damned. Unfortunately...
(note--at this point while typing, I got ahold of someone, so it was about 4:32 that I was on hold. awesome)
...I can not really afford to be paying my own way south and west, so I'm just going to follow policy and procedure. I'm hoping my company works something out to get us back other than just continuing to wait around.

The agent I'm speaking with just told me that he can't find any seats on any flights until next Sunday 4/25 and put me back on hold. Do I add this as incremental additional hold time to the previous 4 hours and 32 (now 33) minutes?

Back off hold. He says Sunday 4/25 is the best we can do. I asked to make sure it was cancellable in case the real Travel Services office for my company has a better plan. He said he needed to check something and put me back on hold again.

So now as we roll on to the 4:35 mark, I'd just like to note that I have basically lost an entire weekend day again here in Brussels. I basically spent 2 of the last 3 days mostly dealing with travel logistics.

Allright, back off hold again (up to ~4:45)...and yes, I have a ticket home (that I cancel if needed) for ... (drumroll please) ... next Sunday, 4/25. That flight goes to Dulles, actually, but once I'm on North America I can take care of the rest. I'm going to have to call my company's regular Travel Services office tomorrow AM (well, it'll be PM here) as soon as they open and find out if they have a better plan in mind that might get me home sooner.

Allright, finally off the phone, 4:51 after I called. With a ticket for a flight to North America that doesn't leave for 7 more days. Unreal.

On the plus side, there's really absolutely nothing more I can do until tomorrow afternoon when I can call the real Travel Services office, so I can finally get cleaned up and go try to enjoy another night in Brussels.

Eyjafjallajökull is Not Your Friend

You know a problem has reached epic proportions when updating Facebook statuses and Tweeting is no longer enough-it has now merited a blog of its own. While chatting with a friend on Facebook and joking that I'd write a book about this someday, it occured to me today that after having a flight for which I held a ticket cancelled for the second time and then waiting on hold for 2 hours with the emergency service travel agency (well, 2 hours so far--on hold as I type this) that this mess has reached that level. So, here it is, a place for me to write my rants, ravings, and observations on this whole situation without making all of my Facebook friends hate me.

So what's my story? Compared to most, frankly, I have pretty little reason to complain. I went to Brussels on corporate travel on the Sunday 4/11-Monday 4/12 redeye with plans to return home on Friday morning, 4/16. On Thursday morning, while in the middle of a major presentation to some senior business partners that was the principal reason for my trip to Brussels in the first place, I get an email from my Dad saying that it looked like I might not get home to the Philly area in time for a round of golf we'd planned for Sunday due to a volcano erupting in Iceland. We were planning on golfing with my father-in-law, who was travelling in from Phoenix to spend a few days with my wife and I. When I got that email, my jaw just hit the floor. Volcano? Seriously?

Not really understanding the severity of the situation, I just went back to business with the meeting, figuring that I'd deal with it later. Not that I could have done anything at that point. By then, the airports were already shutting down, and I was stuck in Brussels whether I knew it or not.

Now, I said my situation isn't so bad, and that's true. I'm on corporate travel, so I can pretty much expense everything major. I can continue staying at a very nice hotel as long as they keep having rooms available for me to extend my stay. The hotel has good food, comfortable beds, good service, a decent breakfast, and generally pleasant staff. And my company has a travel agency with 24 hour emergency service to help me with getting home. But I am just not a good traveller even under optimal circumstances, so this is all a giant pain for me.

Anyway, more to come later detailing some of my travel-related struggles so far, my unplanned adventures, and everything else...but I skipped out on lunch due to being on hold since, well, lunchtime, and my room service just arrived. Bon appetit!

P.S. Still on hold with the emergency service travel agency. Almost 3 hours now.