I made it! All my connections worked. The SAS flight was a mixed bag. On the bright side, the food wasn’t bad, the seat was huge, and the flight seemed to go by quickly. The downsides included advertised WiFi that didn’t work at all (the pilot announced after takeoff that it would be out for the duration of the flight), the plane was old, things were breaking, and the food that was fine took forever to be served. Seriously. We boarded at 3:30, and we pulled back from the gate at 4:10. The seatbelt light was turned off around 4:30. They brought warm cashews and water at 4:45, and dinner wasn’t served until 8:30.
See what I mean about my seat being big! Widest Business class seat I have ever had.
I hadn’t been on a flight with outside cameras before. Takeoff and landing were very cool.
It was crazy and strange that it took four flight attendants that long to serve dinner. One of the weirdest things was a male FA who was in a regular FA uniform when we got on, then changed into chef whites to serve dinner. He brought a trolley up each aisle, offered a choice of appetizers, and then asked if you would like a salad, which he made while standing there. He did the same thing later with the entrée and dessert. It felt like they were pretending to make the food onboard. By the time they were finished and they shut off the lights so we could sleep, it was almost 10:00, and we were landing at the West Coast equivalent of 1:00 am.
I could stretch out completely and not even get my feet near the well they would go into when I was sleeping.
The other major disappointment was the entertainment. One fairly recent movie (the new Mandalorian film I’d already seen), and everything else was pretty much worthless. For an action film person like me, there were exactly two films in the “action” category. Good thing I had a couple of my favorites on my iPhone.
Basically, the plane (even though it’s an Airbus A350) was old. Just little things like shredded carpet, chipped tabletops, and an auxiliary engine that wouldn’t start, so they couldn’t turn on the AC until the big engines started up (that was kind of scary to hear). There was just other little stuff. None of this was enough to make me not fly SAS again, but it would be nice if they fixed the little things.
We did get off about half an hour late, and as I mentioned in my post on Sunday, what caused me the most anxiety was my plane change in Copenhagen. I had a close connection to start with, and since I had to go through EES for the first time (which meant being photographed and fingerprinted), I was really worried when we landed about half an hour late. Originally, I had one hour and forty-five minutes between flights, but by the time I got off the plane (I was literally the first person off), I was down to about an hour. So when I got to the line for EES, I asked the airport personnel monitoring the line what my time frame was. He told me, “About two hours.” He asked me when my next flight was, and when I said 55 minutes, he beckoned me to a different line, and I was through EES in less than 10 minutes. Talk about a happy guy!
I got on my Brussels flight in plenty of time, but I had to check my carry-on because they are very strict about allowing only one. They kept making the usual announcement that the flight was full and that extra bags needed to be checked. They even went so far as to say that if you didn’t check your bag and they had to force you, you would be charged for it, but not if you gave it to them willingly. What ticked me off was that the flight was half empty. The overhead bin above my row had my camera bag in it and NOTHING ELSE! So why did I have to check my bag?
Got into Brussels, and sure enough, it was beyond easy to stay in the airport and just take an elevator down three floors from baggage claim to the train station. I used the prepaid ticket I had purchased to jump on the train to Bruges.
I got to the hotel by 4:30, took a one-hour nap, had a quick shower and felt almost as good as new, then headed off to dinner with the entire group (including spouses of those who brought them). They’re a really nice group of people from all over. We have a married couple from the UK, one from Australia, quite a few from the Midwest, and four guys named Bob. I am the only one from anywhere west of Iowa or Indiana (whichever is further west), which really surprised me. Scott, our instructor, is from Tampa and Memo, his able assistant, lives in Canada. We even have a local guide who takes care of logistics, whose name is Andy. He is a Montreal Canadian married to a Bruges girl.
That about covers day two. After dinner, we met in a conference room to discuss the very long day I am experiencing today, but more about that in the next post. And some of my new photos.
“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald