At CERN

At CERN. Very nice.

I had, on average, nearly my best flight ever going to Geneva. I made it to the airport, and thanks to automatic check-in machines, I could skip the mile-long manual check-in queue and just stand in a five-meter one to dump my backpack at the self-service baggage drop, which meant that I had rather more time available than I had expected (or, in other words, I actually checked in on time).

So I went to the Frankfurt gate, sat and waited, read a bit. Then came the announcement that the plane was overbooked, and would somebody please consider taking another, slightly later plane, and receive travelling coupons worth 150 € instead?

So I volunteered, emphasizing that it wasn’t very important for me to go to Frankfurt, but rather important that I got to Geneva, as I’d been planning to do when I got to Frankfurt. So when all that was sorted out, I got my coupons, my new tickets and baggage tag, and a lunch voucher. Then I waited for the flight to Munich, and had a beer.

On the Munich flight, it turned out, I was on business class, which was an unexpected surprise. Basically, the correct answer to “Mehr Rotwein für Sie?” is “Ja, bitte”.

I didn’t have all that much time in Munich, so I didn’t risk shopping heavily at the tax-free, but I bought a bit of chocolate and a Donald Duck-book before hasting to my plane. After a bit of confusion I learned that “Geneva” is “Genf” in German. I wasn’t a businessman on this plane, but I survived. Then in Geneva I waved a red thin book at a lady in a glass cage and went looking for my backpack. Then I talked to the gent at the baggage tracing office, who informed me that my backpack had gone to Frankfurt, and would be sent with the first flight to Geneva. (Why couldn’t they have sent it with the plane I was supposed to take? It’d have been there half an hour before.)

And then my friends were banging on the window urging me to hurry up, because we had to hurry to the bus that showed up at the bus stop five minutes after we did.

The lesson, Lufthansa: You’d get ten out of ten if you had handled my baggage properly so that I didn’t have to wait until the next day for it. But I’ll give you eight point three hundred and sixty-five.

At CERN. Very nice. I had, on average, nearly my best flight ever going to Geneva. I made it to the airport, and thanks to automatic check-in machines, I could skip the mile-long manual check-in queue and just stand in a five-meter one to dump my backpack at the self-service baggage drop, which meant ...