Missed It by That Much

After a week in the good ole U.S.A., followed by a cold week in the Great White North, Marty and I were once again on a plane winging our way across the Atlantic. We departed DFW on Saturday at 4:30pm and arrived in Frankfurt on Sunday at 9am.

We had free passes to the Lufthansa lounge, and looked forward to a place to hang out for our 3-1/2 hour layover before taking off to Copenhagen on Scandinavian Airlines. We arrived in the B terminal, and our SAS flight was out of a B gate, so we mistakenly thought it would be easy to get there and take off.

The lounge was packed and so the only place to sit was in the computer area. We surfed the web. Then at 11:15 we went to the desk to get our SAS boarding passes for our 12:25 flight. It took 10 minutes to deal with a problem with finding our tickets in the system. Then the lady at the counter told us to run.

It turned out we had to go through Passport Control and then through security... again! What was up with that?!?! It took 15 minutes to get through Immigration and then we hit the security line. We knew we were done for. It was so long, it reminded me of a line at Six Flags. We got through at exact 12:25 and burst forth running to our gate. We didn't make it.

Several ticket and transfer lines later, we had new tickets with Lufthansa for 4:50pm and we went to the gate early. As it was nearing the boarding time, they changed the gate and we had to take off again. We made it this time, boarded and took off to Copenhagen. We landed around 6pm, took the train, which was surprisingly fast, to Malmo, and then walked from the train station in the freezing cold, the 3 blocks to our hotel. I was so thankful for a hot shower and a soft bed after 28 hours without sleep.

I still don't know why God didn't help us get through to the SAS flight, costing us about 350 unexpected euros, despite many desperate prayers. I can only guess that someone else was pleading with Him for someone to not show up so they could make it from standby onto the oversold plane. Maybe I'll hear the story when I arrive at my final destination... some day. =)