Went back to sleep and woke up by 8! Went back in the queue to get some food … broke the line – no one figured out I did.. got food in an hour and a half what would have taken easily 3.5 hours! Ate a hearty breakfast, and M and me went back to sleep! Woke up by 10 and called my sister up – poort thing did not sleep a wink figuring out what the hell to do! Checked once again – the morons at Kingfisher haven’t done shit.. for all the customer service crap that Dr. Vijay Mallya spews out while taking off in a video .. we were left to do our own jazz!
So my sis then asked to check if there were flights from Brussels to other airports .. there is no information desk in the area where we were been shepherded like cattle (Damn.. Shashi Tharoor should’ve been on this expedition – He would have given a whole new spin to the phrase “cattle class”!!). Asked my sis to check if there are indeed any airports that are actually operating out of London and poor thing did check and get back that Manchester and South Hampton airports were indeed functioning, she booked M and self on the FlyBe Brussels to South Hampton flight at 5:55 PM! Thought we had to get the tickets from the Brussels Airline counter and stood in the queue for about 2 hours! Standing the queue gave me perspective on why jobs are getting outsourced to India! It takes 15 minutes to book an international ticket in India at the airport counter (did that last year for our Bali trip where makemytrip screwed up for us!) Finally after I hit the counter, get to know that they do not give flybe tickets and that we need to print on our own! Fortunately, the Brussels airport has enough Internet terminals with printers that allowed us to do that. My sis meanwhile (bless her soul) had even called up the Brussels airport authority and checked the gate where we had to egt in the flight! Came back, checked the gate and finally had the first hot meal in about 28 hours at the Bar! Typing this while M is passed out on the table and waiting for the announcement of the flight! Meanwhile, it is snowing here in Brussels and is tremendously pretty looking at the concourse with the planes parked all over! Meanwhile, no word from Kingfisher and even Air India had arranged for their passenger to be moved to Madrid and Jet Airways arranged for transit visas for their passengers and tickets on EuroStar! Talk about customer service! Korean Air, meanwhile, was the ultimate in customer service. They don’t have a hub in Brussels – they actually flew in a crew from somewhere so that they can keep their passengers updated on the status on a hourly basis! KingFisher for all its 5 star experience is shit!
Waiting now for the Flybe flight so that we can start our holiday in earnest! Well.. Flybe also got cancelled! back to the drawing board! Checking a few other options!
Meanwhile the Kingfisher guys showed up and took everyone's passports except ours! :-)
So now we are stuck! Resting for the night at the Brussels airport in a tent bag! :-) Talk about roughing it!
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