Guus Bosman

Ha! Finally home.

This morning around 10:30 o'clock I arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, and Sasha arrived yesterday according to schedule in Washington.

It was quite a journey! Like I wrote yesterday the connection that I was scheduled to get caused Sasha a day delay a few months ago. And yes: yesterday the same happened to me. From Sofia there was a plane to Budapest, from where a connecting flight would bring me to Amsterdam to arrive yesterday evening. This went spectacularly wrong. The Malev plane had "technical difficulties", and after a long time Malev decided to get a new plane from Budapest to Sofia to pick us up. We spent around seven (!) hours waiting in the departure hall in Sofia.

Actually, the delay didn't really bother me too much; in fact I enjoyed it. I was just hoping that the flight wouldn't be cancelled. If that would happen we would have to go back to get our luggage, arrange a new ticket again, probably again in Bulgarian-style 'line'. But we were lucky: around 22:30 o'clock a new plane did indeed arrive.

I met a few fellow travelers, which made the waiting pleasant. Penga, a lady living in Norwegian and her mother were traveling to Bergen, and Vesi, a Bulgarian girl studying in Arnhem (in Holland) was going to Amsterdam. Without their company the waiting and the flights would have been a lot less fun.

We arrived in Budapest around 23:00 o'clock local time, and we were brought to a hotel. The passengers were mainly Bulgarian, with a number of Germans. It was nice to observe the typical Bulgarian behavior of some passengers. When we had to wait in the bus for the rest of the group to arrive, I heard a Bulgarian woman complaining: "...mrmmmr.... Bai Ganio... mrmrmr...".

I fell asleep around 01:30 but the wake-up call was for 04:00 in the morning, to make sure I could catch the bus to the airport. Checking in went smooth; the airport of Budapest is well organized. We had some coffee, and we took a plane at 07:10 o'clock. This also had a small delay, but that was okay -- we were very experienced already ;)

I'm glad Chess (my employer) was so flexible, and must say I'm very happy I didn't have important appointments Tuesday or today.