Four airports and 44 hours later

...we were in Berlin, safe and secure in our first Airbnb, but tired to the core from the hassle of getting to the first city we visited on this trip!

September 2024. This was our first time flying with Etihad. Rakesh was impressed when, instead of a sign, a ground staff at Melbourne Airport directed us to a counter for those who'd checked in online. The impression, however, dissipated when we discovered after boarding the first flight that the aircraft was quite cramped, mainly because of the legroom, which was inadequate even for a shorty like me! The screen was quite literally in your face! The food was good though! Correction: The food was amazing!

We reached Abu Dhabi well ahead of schedule and had almost four hours of layover. We explored the impressively golden and shiny airport for a bit and then sat down near a flight information display, relaxing and waiting for the board to show the gate number of our flight to Brussels.

The feeling of calm was, however, soon replaced with worry. Rakesh happened to see on Google that our flight to Brussels, scheduled for 2:25 am, was delayed by 50 minutes. That would mean an impossibly tight transfer at Brussels Airport for our third and final flight to Berlin. We arrived at the gate. The board still showed the original departure time. When we asked the ground staff, all they said was that the flight was possibly delayed. Then an email landed in Rakesh's inbox at 2:08 am confirming the 50-minute delay. We still hoped (against all hope?) that boarding would be swift and we'd take off at the new time of 3:15 am.

Guess when we actually took off. At 4:01 am Abu Dhabi time. The six-and-a-half-hour journey was anything but pleasant. I, more than the other two, was worried about missing the connection and its flow-on effect on our itinerary.

We landed in Brussels at 8:37 am but weren't out of the aircraft until around 8:45. Our next flight was in 40 minutes. We were handed, quite unexpectedly, three 'Express Connection' cards by a ground staff and followed the orange sign of hope towards the gate. We had to clear security, which claimed more valuable minutes, but then I suddenly realised that I'd misplaced my boarding pass. Our ever-resourceful daughter, without checking with the accompanying adults, rushed back to security to look for it and ended up having to go through security again. This time they made her open the bag as the scanner found some previously undetected residual water in her drink bottle, which caused a further delay. ShNaajh was visibly panicking, so Rakesh went over to help and also got stuck at security! I retrieved ShNaajh from there, left Rakesh with ShNaajh's hand luggage along with his own, and speed-walked towards the gate.

We made it there at 9:15. There was a bus just outside the gate. A family with an infant, supposedly taking the same flight as us, was talking to the ground staff. We waited patiently while speaking to Rakesh on the phone. He was on his way.

When the family moved aside, I told the staff we were there for flight SN2581. It was 9:20. She said, in the coldest, most matter-of-fact tone, that the bus was gone (, which I only then noticed!) and the flight was probably preparing to take off as we spoke. My heart sank, less because we missed the flight, more because of how little the staff cared. She dismissed us by saying we needed to sort this out with Etihad. It was 9:30.

Should we go to Etihad since our booking was with them? Did they even have a counter at Brussels Airport? Or should we go to Brussels Airlines since they were the carrier of the missed flight? Where was our luggage? Where was our luggage?

We headed to Baggage Claim, hoping our backpacks would be on the carousel. Surely they wouldn't have been loaded onto the departed plane! But they weren't on the belt. What now? To locate the luggage, we would probably need the receipt numbers, which, I suddenly recalled, were stuck on my lost boarding pass! What else could go wrong?

We spotted a young woman in a high-vis vest near the carousel where our luggage should've been and grabbed the opportunity (, as well as her!). What transpired in the next hour was nothing short of a miracle for us! The high-vis-clad staff took us to a counter where a nice lady found the receipt numbers for our checked bags. She also assured us that Etihad would confirm our new flight details within half an hour.

Armed with the receipt numbers written on a small piece of paper, we returned to Baggage Claim and queued up at Lost Property. The man there looked up our luggage numbers and, after a few minutes of clickety-clack on the computer, told us to return to the same carousel where the checked bags from the Abu Dhabi to Brussels flight had been and wait. 'How long?' we asked. '10 minutes', he said.

We stationed ourselves at the conveyor belt. It whirred into life within a few minutes and out popped three backpacks. We were reunited with our luggage!

There was still no email from Etihad or Brussels Airlines though. It'd already been more than 30 minutes. We went back to the counter upstairs to double-check the email addresses we'd given to the nice lady. She told us that we'd probably be on the 4:30 flight from Brussels to Berlin and the email should arrive soon. It did, at 10:15.

With our faith in kindness and compassion restored, we then had about six hours to spend at Brussels Airport. Hunger and thirst hit us right on cue. We went straight to Exki, a cosy cafe that wasn't too busy. We needed room to put down our backpacks.

Fed and watered, we had some brainspace to think! Maybe we could catch up with the friends who rescued us previously when we visited the city in 2018. We called them, and as soon as they had their weekly housework out of the way, they were there.

I could not help but feel thankful for this effortless friendship, and its foundation, which was laid many moons ago, when Sudipta and I were teenagers.

As our boarding time neared, we bade Sudipta and Shubhadeep farewell and headed inside.

The gate number was still not available, which worried me a little, but the information board said, 'Relax. Gate number will be available at 3:30.' It made me laugh! Remember the other family that had also missed the flight? The mum of the infant spotted us and we started talking. They were also from Melbourne. After Berlin, they were travelling to Italy for a wedding. I was pleased to hear that I wasn't the only one who couldn't relax until they were on the 4:30 plane!

The plane was on time. As soon as we boarded and saw our windowless seats, we suspected we were perhaps the last passengers booked into the flight. It didn't matter though. It was only a two-hour journey. We landed in Berlin at 6:30.

We were thankful that we reached Berlin on the same day, albeit several hours later. Our Airbnb was in Dallgow-Döberitz, about 48 kilometres from Brandenburg Airport. Had we arrived in Berlin earlier, we would've taken the regional train, but it was already 6:45 pm and our brains were too foggy to figure out the train network. We booked an Uber to Dallgow-Döberitz. The drive took 50 minutes. We checked into the Airbnb shortly before 8:00 pm.

...

As I was saying, four airports and 44 hours later, we were safe and secure in our first accommodation, so exhausted that, quite uncharacteristically, we didn't set the alarm for the crack of dawn. We decided that we'd wake up when our bodies would.