Holy cow, it takes a long time to get to Stuttgart from Santa Clara. So I get up in the morning and Kristen drives me to San Fransisco airport, where we discover that my Delta filght to Atlanta is delayed by an hour, which means I won't make my connection to Frankfurt. OK, well that sucks. The next flight would be the following morning which really sucks, because I hate getting up early and it just wasted a day of my week in Germany. Better still, we're having ID problems because I didn't book my flight; a travel agency did it on behalf of ApacheCon, which is the why of this whole trip.
See, my last name is Sánchez Vega, but in the States having a last name with two parts really confuses people, so we Puerto Ricans often play games with our last names. Some folks hyphenate them (Sánchez-Vega), and others drop the latter half (Sánchez). Using only the first part of your last name is actually pretty normal in Puerto Rico; people understand that you are shorting your name, much as when I say I'm Wilfredo, most people, even stateside, recognize that there is more to my name, but one doesn't always say all of it. Anyway, I've never changed my last name officially; it's still Sánchez Vega, but when I got my drivers license and my passport (which is a whole story as well), I used the name Wilfredo Sánchez.
The plane tickets, however, were booked under Wilfredo Sánchez Vega, because the kind folks in Germany booked them for me. So the gate agent who is trying to get me on the next day's flight is unsure of this whole situation, like I'm Sánchez, not Sánchez Vega, so that's not really my ticket. I have to say that the whole business of strict authentication on using the ticket despite absolutely no authentication on buying the ticket is complete crap, and it's just a game the airlines play to price discriminate; any claim that this is a security thing is bunk, even if the government has been sucked into playing along.
Which isn't to say that the gate agent wasn't very nice; she was simply understandably confused by the bogus process she has to follow. It turns out that her friend at the next counter was Latin American and was familiar with the weird two-part last name thing and vouched for the OK-ness of that being my ticket, and explained that the folks in Europe are quite so ignorant; I'd be fine on the other side of the pond.
The good news is that this other agent also happens to have mad gate agent skillz, and we were getting along with her, so she decides to get us better hook-ups than this next day nonsense. After much wrangling with the computer she scores me a series of flights: San Francisco to Atlanta to Madrid on Delta, then Madrid to Frankfurt on Iberia. Longer travel time, but it'll happen that day, plus the flight from Atlanta to Madrid (the longest leg) was in Business Class. Now we're talking.
So I get on the next flight to Atlanta and Kristen goes on to San Francisco for the day. I scoot on over to my connection to Madrid, at which point I was sure I had lost my passport, possibly I left it at the counter in San Francisco. Nyeargh!!! Turns out it was in my shirt pocket. OK. Needless panic, it's over, get on the plane.
Last time ApacheCon was in Europe, I went there on Apple's dime via British Airways Business Class. It was swank. There's a nice lounge to wait in at SFO, the seats recline flat into little beds… oh, boy, that was nice. Delta wasn't quite so swank, but on this flight the service was excellent, and, more importantly, I took advantage of it. I got the apetizer this and the salad that, and oh, some Shiraz, and the main course (more Shiraz), and so on. It was like a long take-your-time dinner at a pretty OK restaurant. The main course was blah, but the rest was just fine, and four glasses of Shiraz, four glasses of port and a hot fudge sundae later, I was feeling OK with life as I took a nap in the roomy seat. And then there was breakfast. It was all good.
Then I'm in Madrid, and pretty well lost. I meander through the airport hoping to find Iberia, which is the national carrier of Spain, and on which I'm connecting to Frankfurt. Being a native (but very rusty) Spanish speaker, I'm, thinking I can talk the talk. So when I find someone looking like they could help me, the conversation would start with me asking a question in Spanish, them responding in much faster Spanish, my responding in confused Spanish and a little bit of English, and then they would apologize for assuming I knew Spanish and continue in English. Oh, well.
The flight to Frankfurt was OK. I bought a chicken curry sandwich on the flight and I was sure when I got it that it was egg salad instead, but it was, actually chicken curry.
Then in Frankfurt, I found my way to the train station. Fortunately, most signs have English in small text. Unlike Spain, in Germany, I can't even try to fake it. I know nothing German. After fumbling with the automatic ticket machines to get them to speak English, I was all set. I had missed the reserved train I had tickets for, but with a little help from the info desk, I was able to get on a train in Frankfurt, hop off in Manheim, and connect on to Stuttgart. German trains are nice. Really nice. It makes me wonder why my very rich country has no cool rain system going.
In Stuttgart I discover that Germans use bark, right off the tree, as toilet paper. Eek.
A bad ride later, I'm at the Maritim Hotel, starving and exhausted after about 26 hours of continunous travel. I find the Hackathon room, where I find several ASF folks, and decide I really need a taco. Unfortunately, that'll have to wait until I get back home.
