Denver to Brussels

I’m once again heading across the pond to attend FOSDEM as I have the last three years. I’m flying to Brussels via Dulles and then I’m going to fly on to Vienna for a lightning tour of Vienna and Prague, with possible day-trips to Bratislava and Brno. I’m writing this about two hours out from Brussels, and already the trip has been quite eventful, but you’re going to have to read the whole post to learn what happened :)

Things started out very smoothly. My roommate kindly drove me to the airport this morning and dropped me off near east security at Denver International Airport. I virtually walked through security. It seems like not as many people know about the newly opened east security as west security, since it looked like west was much more crowded. They have also opened up the bridge to A-gates so I took that since I had so much time until my flight. After getting some Panda Express for breakfast, I went over to B gates for my flight. The flight to Dulles was quite turbulent (something something polar vortex) but I was able to sleep through most of it.

I had an hour pretty short connection in Dulles, but it was within the same concourse. I made it to the gate with plenty of time to spare, but the boarding process was really poor. The width of the terminal at Dulles is not wide enough for efficient loading of these wide-body aircraft, and so there was just sorta a mass of people that spread out from the too-small boarding area. Add to that, they were using biometric boarding which is so much slower than the good old “scan your boarding pass” method. Also, too many people were trying to bring overhead carry-ons, which added to the general chaos. I avoided that scramble because I’m travelling personal-item-only for this trip.

There must have been some delay on the ground because it took a while for us to take off, but I dozed off through most of it.

I woke up for dinner service which was pretty decent. I got some deconstructed shepherds pie. After the dinner service, I made myself a (sorta) comfortable cocoon with the blanket over my head and my coat for a pillow, and was having a pretty decent nap. Then, all of a sudden, I felt something wet on my leg! I woke immediately and after yelling some profanity I untangled myself from my cocoon and identified the source of the liquid. The gentleman next to me had split his coffee! I don’t think I took the brunt of the liquid, but there was a not insignificant puddle on my seat, and the side of my leg and falling down my pant leg. What a total disaster!

There’s not much you can do about a spill besides mop up what you can and wait for it to dry, which is what I am doing. Unfortunately, I don’t have another pair of pants (remember, personal-item-only travel) so I’m going to have to either just deal with that the entire trip or find a way to do laundry. There should be a washer at the hostel in Vienna, but I’m going to look a bit ridiculous sitting there in my underwear waiting for my pants to be washed.

I tried to go back to sleep, but after the adrenaline spike, that turned out to be a pointless endeavour. So here I am sitting with my laptop, writing with a still wet thigh, and a very strong smell of coffee all around me.

We are supposed to land in Brussels at around 07:30 CEST, and my flight to Vienna is not until 15:45, so I’m going to try and visit the Automium today and then head back to the airport. I should arrive in Vienna around 17:30. My first order of business after checking into my hostel is going to be to try and find a bar that is showing the NFL Championship games so that I can watch the Broncos AFC championship game. I might have planned my trip differently if I knew the Broncos would be playing this late into the postseason, but after a decade of disappointment it didn’t even cross my mind that I might care about any January games. We will see how the game goes, losing Nix was a huge blow last week, but if the defense makes life difficult for Maye, Stidham has a chance to game-manage the team to victory.

Well, I’ve now managed to waste enough time that they are starting the landing meal service. I expect we will be entering the landing sequence in about an hour, so I’m going to stop rambling. I want to put this part of my trip behind me, and I’m hoping that this is not a sign of things to come for this trip.