Tough Trip To Macedonia

Well  I made it. I am sitting in my hotel in Skopje, Macedonia. It wasn't easy though. I am traveling with another lady from ILM. We met at SFO and I was embarrassed to find out that I had more luggage than her. I guess I am not such a good packer. I guess that must be the old Boy Scout in me that tries to always 'be prepared'. Getting out of SFO was a snap.

My trip was supposed to be a 9 hour flight to London. A couple of hour flight to Budapest and then another couple of hour flight to Skopje and I would get in here around 3:30pm local time.  That was around 18 hours total. We had a pretty short layover in London which worried me a bit but I think it was an hour and a half so that seemed reasonable to me at the time. Well our plane was a little late getting in to Heathrow Airport. Heathrow is huge and we actually had to exit the airport and get on a bus for a 10 minute bus ride to the proper terminal. Then you go through immigration and you are off. Sounds simple, right? Well it wasn't. To make a long story short we got to the immigration about 25 minutes before our plane was supposed to leave. Apparently, that isn't enough time. They told us the flight was closed and we couldn't get on the plane. I immediately flashed to the Amazing Race and we did everything we could to get the lady to let us board but it was no use. So we get back on the bus and take another ride to get to the terminal where we can go to the ticket counter and try to work everything out. The people were very nice. Unfortunately there aren't tons of flights to this part of the world and to make matters worse nobody really new where our luggage was. They could put us on different flights but there were no guarantees our luggage would make it when we did. That wasn't a very happy thought. They were able to book us on an Italian airlines but the bad part was the next plane didn't leave for 4 hours. Instead of Budapest the flight would go to Belgrade, Serbia and then we would have another 4 hour layover and go to Skopje. Instead of getting in at 3:30 and having the afternoon to relax we were to get in at 10:30 pm. there weren't really any choices though so that is what we did. 

We finally arrived at Belgrade and were told to check with the airlines here to see if there was any word on where our luggage was. After we landed at Belgrade we went straight to the office. The guy looked over our paperwork and said there was pretty much no chance that the luggage had made it to Belgrade with us. He told us to come back a couple of hours later and he would see what he could find out. At this point I was pretty much resigned to the fact that the luggage was going to be a royal pain in the butt and I better be getting used to wearing the same underwear for the next couple of days, NOT a pleasant thought.

We were hungry so we found the only restaurant that was open in the airport. They had a few unusual things on the menu but they did have pizza. I figured a Margherita pizza was simple enough. That is what we both ordered. The guy brought our pizza out and I guess they somehow couldn't make that pizza so we got one with ham, mushrooms, and whole green olives. I guess they didn't feel like they should have asked us if we wanted that pizza. It seemed like just going with the flow was the thing to do so I picked off the whole olives. It was really a pretty decent pizza. We killed some time and then went back to the ticket window. I expected the worst but was REALLY hoping I was wrong. The guy got on the phone and it seemed like he took forever. Finally he came back and told us our luggage had made it. I was so relieved to hear that. I wasn't going to feel like I was totally out of the woods until I saw the bags with my own eyes though.  Of course our plane was delayed by 40 minutes.

We finally made it to Skopje and magically our bags came out on the carousel. Someone was looking out for me. 

A guy from the company we are visiting picked us up and gave us a ride to the hotel. It is a pretty nice hotel from what I can tell. It is late and dark here so I haven't had much of a chance to see what the city looks like. I guess I will save that for the blog tomorrow.  Tune in tomorrow to hear about Skopje.  I have only slept about 5 hours in various chunks in the last 24 so it is time to get some sleep.

Naten e mire.