I have arrived!

Hi everybody, welcome to my blog!  Instead of writing individual emails to all the people that have asked to be kept abreast, I figure this will save us all (well, mostly me) time.  I'll try to put up at least 2 posts per week--once for the work week and once for the weekend.  That being said, I can't promise I'll have anything interesting to write about--for the most part I'll be doing a lot of working
Cleo manged 9 posts in 11 months, so I guess all I have to write is 5 in order to beat her.  Doable, but by no means guaranteed

Anyways, I got in last night.  I was visiting Cleo in Vermont, so my flight went Burlington -> JFK -> Amsterdam -> Budapest . . . a total of 15 hours of travel time, not counting time spent going to and from the airport (factor that in and it's like 18).  For the most part it was uneventful and as pleasant as air travel ever is--I managed to get a window exit row seat on the plane, right by one of the main exit doors, so I had unlimited leg room, the ability to get up and walk around, and plus I got to rest my feet on the emergency exit when the flight attendants weren't looking!

The only real stress came from the Amsterdam -> Budapest leg.  See, when I checked in at Burlington, they told me that since that leg of my trip was conducted by a different airline I would need to pick up my boarding pass for that flight when I got to Amsterdam.  It didn't occur to me until I was already on the plane from JFK that I hadn't printed out exactly which flight to Budapest I was supposed to be on, or what time it left, or what airline was conducting it . . . oops.  However, I figured that I could just swipe my passport and things would be taken care of.  Tried that . . . "sorry, your reservation was not found"

. . . well crap

Thus commenced a thoroughly awkward moment when I went up to the desk (thank god she spoke English): "How can I help you?" "Hi, I'm supposed to be going to Budapest" "Well what's your flight number?" "No idea" "Ok, when does it depart?" "No idea" "Ok . . ."
Finally I realized I could boot up my computer, get online, and check the receipt in my gmail.  This got me the number of the flight I was supposed to be on . . . except I still wasn't in the computer.  There were records of my BTV -> JFK flight, records of the JFK -> Amsterdam flight, then nothing.  We were both pretty stumped.  Finally it dawned on me to show her my luggage claim--my bags had been checked through all the way to Budapest, thus proving that at least some computer somewhere knew I was going to Budapest. That was good enough for her, so she entered me on the flight.

After all that, you can imagine my trepidation waiting to claim my luggage.  I'd had a hard time making it all the way to Budapest, and I'm a sentient, somewhat intelligent, patient but incredibly persistent being . . . my bags are none of these things (seriously, they can be so impatient at times).  However, in a complete anticlimax to this story, my bags came out early in the load and in fact adjacent to each other on the conveyor belt (!) . . . and one short, uneventful, reasonably priced taxi ride later, I was settled in.  Disappointing, huh?

Anyways, I figure that's enough for one post.  I'll write more about the place I'm staying and all that later.  Thanks for reading!

Noah out