I'd never been to Berlin before. I've only been here three months, but already people couldn't believe it when I told them. So, I was pretty excited when Lars invited me to come with the rest of the office crew to a meeting of alumni in Berlin for the weekend. Plus, we were going to fly. Now this was a real business trip, 'fly to Berlin for business meeting' I penciled into my calendar all too smugly. But of course, let's not forget that the 'business' I work for is a not-for-profit, student-run one. The trip began by squeezing all seven of us into a van. It seemed fine at first, seven chairs, seven people. Then I noticed, no trunk. I was only going for the weekend, but the other six would be staying on until Wednesday for further meetings, and thus had luggage. It was a tight fit.
We arrived at the airport just after three o'clock and proceeded to the Lufthansa counter to pick up our tickets. Lufthansa is good enough to provide us (AIESEC) with a number of free tickets which can be picked up at the airport in exchange for a pin code. The tickets are 100% free, the only catch is that you have to fly standby. Sometimes one catch is enough. Standby passengers are the pecked of the pecking list. There is no class of passenger lowlier than he whose ticket does not bear a flight number. When a flight is being prepared for boarding, there is a list of people who can get on, those with normal tickets, those in transit, those who have missed connecting flights, and then us. Any new additions from any other category are placed above us. We were attempting to fly to Germany's largest and most vibrant metropolitan centre, on a Friday, on an overbooked flight, with a group of seven, and with standby tickets.
Missed the first plane. - Had lunch, and a beer. Looked into rental cars and trains.
Missed the second plane. - Had another beer. Opted against rental car as now everybody had been drinking. Decided against train as it was getting decidedly late now.
Assumed would miss next plane, prematurely ordered beer and quickly tried to finish it as names are called for boarding.
Walked onto plane, singing lively Finnish song, likely not to an appreciative audience.
Looked out of plane window at Cologne below, blinked, noticed far more lights than a moment before, and realized we were landing in Berlin.
;)