Sunday is travel day--or I hate Iberia Airlines

Flying around Europe is a nightmare of conflicting information, impossible to navigate websites, and crazy airline fees.  There are whole travel forums dedicated to avoiding the exorbitant fees these regional airlines charge.  Some tips include not packing any bags at all and buying a coat or vest with many pockets in which to carry all your clothes, toiletries, and electronics.  I'm not kidding.  They give you nothing for free--no food of any kind, nothing to drink, use of the bathroom, bags of any kind, etc. Some examples of baggage fees posted on their various websites include 30€ for a checked bag if you pay ahead of time--60€ at the airport, 90€ for a checked bag--30€ for a carry-on, checked bags can't weigh more than 20k--carry-on not more than 10k and carry-on can't be more than 15x8 in., over-weight bags are an additional 10€ per kilo! The horror goes on and on.  

We tried and tried to figure out how to pay our baggage fees online ahead of time, but no matter which one of us worked our way through the website of Iberia, we could not find anyway to do it.  They have no on-line customer service, no phone customer service, and the help section of their website just talks about what the fees are, very complicated charts for various destinations and tickets, and says to pay no more than 24 hours before you board but to pay ahead of time to avoid extra fees.  There are no links to pay anywhere! We were very frustrated and stressed about it and spent an unreasonable amount of time the night before trying to figure it all out.  Argh!

Oh, well.  Nothing to do about it.

We got up Sunday morning and went to breakfast before taking the metro across town to attend a Madrid ward for Sacrament meeting.  It was sweet and familiar even though I don't speak Spanish. The missionaries were thrilled to see us and chat for a few minutes.

Most of the last few days Matt has been talking about having toast and jam for breakfast. Nickersons are big on toast.  We hadn't found any until Sunday morning when it was on the menu of the little place we stopped in for breakfast.  He was so excited when it came.

The jam was tomatoe. I don't think that was what he had been dreaming of for the past several days.

After church we wound our way back to our hotel where they had been holding our bags.  I can't say enough about how sweet they were at our charming abode.  And made our way to the train station to get to the airport.  I was nervous about the potential exorbitant fees I was sure we would have to pay for our bags when we presented our boarding passes that I had downloaded to my phone. 

When our turn in line came, the man behind the baggage/check-in counter waved us up while he was talking on the phone. He scanned the passes on my phone, indicated for us to put our bags on the scale, printed the baggage stickers/strips, sent them down the chute, and waved us on our way.  He didn't say one word about a fee.  We couldn't believe what had just happened and in a dazed state, hurried on to security.

I'm not sure what happened, but I going to chalk it up to good travel karma and leave it at that.  We had a cramped but uneventful flight and were excited to see beautiful, green Berlin out our windows.

Bart was having us picked up at the airport, but because we were traveling, we didn't get his email telling us exactly who/how/where etc.  When we landed, the airport was under construction, and we deplaned out on the tarmac, loaded onto buses, and were driven to a detoured entrance and a really cramped stuffy baggage claim area that had several plane loads of people all crammed together, waiting for their luggage.

After a long while, we got our luggage, walked through customs--where nobody checked our passports or even gave us a second look--and searched through the crowd waiting for arrivals for anybody with a sign we would recognize. 

Nothing.

After a while there was nobody left in the whole area.  We decided to find our way to another part of the terminal not under construction and see if there was a general passenger pickup area that our ride might be waiting at.  After much lugging of ourselves and our bags, we couldn't find anybody that had a sign for us anywhere and realized that there were three more terminals that you couldn't even walk to.  We had just about decided to take a taxi but decided to go back to the original arrival area for one more look.  Once there, we were approached by a man who asked us if we were by any chance waiting for someone from Bart Mueller.  We were saved! 

We had seen him before in the crowd of sign-bearers bearing a sign that read "a word I can't put on-line." We were supposed to know that was a code word.  Why Bart didn't just put our names on the sign, we may never know.  He's been working on this movie for a year and been using that code word for so long, he automatically used it.  Apparently he sent me an email with the code word, but because we were traveling I didn't get it.  Bart was becoming pretty worried by this time, and was about to have us paged at the airport, like we would have heard that! No harm done, and all just part of the adventure!

We are in Berlin and living the good life. Next up, the Waldorf Astoria!