Commuovere (v.) Italian.
Heartwarming, something that stirs and moves you
Hello all! I just got back from a two week whirlwind trip to Europe. It was absolutely amazing. There is so much I could post and talk about including food, money, weird European quirks, history, art, culture, travel, etc. But what I want to share right now is what I experienced the last day- our travel day.
It's kind of a long story, and I wish I could tell it to everybody in person with dramatic gestures and all the gusto it deserves, but I can't, so I'm sharing it here.
Background: I found out that we needed to get home on the day after the Harry Potter play in London. The only way I could really find that that feasible was to catch a ridiculously early flight out of London the next day to Dublin. Our second flight would take us directly from Dublin to Chicago. However, there was only a roughly two hour interval between when we were supposed to land in Dublin and when we were taking off for Chicago. I thought we could make it, but out of everything I planned for the trip, this is what stressed me out the most.
Wednesday (the last day in London and the day of the show): I tried to check into both of our flights.The flight home was giving me problems. The website for the airline wasn't working with me, so I decided to try it later. We went to the play (it was exceptionally magical), and in the break between we were at dinner, and I tried to check into the flight again. It wouldn't work. The flight confirmation number wasn't correct, the website was giving me problems, my phone battery was dying, the wifi was sketchy, and I was thoroughly frustrated. I didn't want to call the airline because international calls cost a lot, so I was messaging my dad for advice. It just didn't work. We get out of the play, it's still not working, so I give up for the night. I'm tired, it's late, and I have to get up in 4 hours. I decided to try again in the morning.
Thursday- the day of the flights: After 3 hours of sleep, we check into our first flight. Overnight, my dad had found the correct confirmation number (thanks Dad!) and I tried to check in. I go through all of it, and it tells me that the airport will not accept a mobile boarding pass. I go to every station and shop in the airport asking if someone would let me borrow a printer to print out the passes. Everyone sends me to someone else, and I have no luck. I am pretty tired at this point and at the end of my rope. I shed a couple of tears. Eventually, it's time to board our flight, so I tell myself it'll be ok.
We board the first plane, and they tell us there'll be a 15 minute delay to wait for late passengers. I tell myself it'll be ok. Then there's an extra bag on the flight, and the ground crew is trying to find it. I'm kinda freaking out as the minutes pass by. 40 excruciating minutes after our flight was supposed to leave, they announce that they have to take all of the bags off of the plane to individually scan them to find the extra bag.
I lose it. I am sleep deprived, frustrated, stressed, and ready to go home. I start to cry. A lot. It was a straight up meltdown.
An Irish mum in front of us sees me crying and tells the flight attendant to check on me. The attendant comes over and asks if I'm ok, and listens to our predicament. She asks for our flight information and goes and talks to the captain. She comes back and says that they phoned ahead of us to tell the airline that we're coming. She reassures us and is extremely kind. We eventually take off and land in Dublin. The flight attendant comes back and says that the captain phoned and asked if an airline representative would meet us at the gate to help us. She tells us the terminal and the gate to help us. The flight crew lets us leave the plane first to get a head start. The captain and first officer encourage us and wish us luck.
Unfortunately, our flight was in another terminal which required us to check out, leave the terminal, and check in all over again into a new one. We take off our flip flops and start running until we hit the customs line. It's long. My heart sinks. A passenger who had heard the whole thing comes up behind us and says, "you got to go! Ask them to let you pass!". I approach people in line, tell them we're trying to catch a flight, and most of them let us in front of them before we could even finish our story.
The entire line lets us go by.
We start running again, barefoot, with our backpacks, through the airport to the next terminal. We reach the airline check in, and the lady tells us that check in for our flight has closed. It has been closed for 20 minutes, and we need to go and reschedule other arrangements. Although there's still time until our flight, the customs line is too long and there's no way we could make it. I hope you can imagine my disappointment.
Dejectedly we walk to the airline desk and talk to the representative. He picks up the phone. He gets our boarding passes printed. He tells us to go straight to the counter and pick them up and that we still might make it.
We get into the line for the counter, but another gentleman from the airline comes up to us. He had been leaning up against the desk and saw us waiting in line. My family has named him "the Ginger Angel". He puts on his neon vest and moves us to the front of the line. He then tells the lady at the counter that he'd personally see us all the way through.
This wonderful Irish man walks us through the airport. He fast tracks us through security and then lounges against the machine while we put our bags through. His legs are so long that we're half jogging to keep up with him.
What I didn't realize was that our flight required pre-clearance into the U.S. This meant that all of the security happened in Dublin instead of the States. I thought we were done after one security line, but we ended up having to go through multiple lines, putting out stuff through the scanner multiple times, and showing our boarding passes and passports a total of 6 times. I don't even know what all of the lines were for. Our Ginger Angel escorted us through every line.
We made it into our terminal with 35 minutes until our flight (absolutely unbelievable.) And we were quickly walking the long walk to our actual gate. Someone (I don't know who she was) came up to us and asked us if we were going to the Chicago flight. She then told us that we needed to run. Off came the flip flops and we ran again to the gate which was about to close. After showing them our passport and boarding passes AGAIN, we were finally allowed to board the plane. I started crying again, this time out of gratefulness as I realized how many people had been so kind and allowed us to make the flight.
Wow that's a long story. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Europe. However, it was one of my most memorable parts of the trip. I see now that if everything had gone exactly right and according to my plan, we never would have made it. There is absolutely no way we would have made it through those lines without help. If my confirmation number had been correct, if my phone battery was full, if I had checked in the day before and had boarding passes printed, we would have missed the flight by hours. If everything hadn't gone wrong, I wouldn't have cried. And the flight attendant wouldn't have called. And the first class passenger wouldn't have encouraged us to ask the people in line if we could cut in front. And we wouldn't have talked to the airline desk worker. And the Ginger Angel wouldn't have been there to personally escort us through the lines. The kindness of literally a hundred strangers helped us make that stupid flight.
What's the big deal? It's just two girls catching a flight. If we had missed it, we would have made another one and gotten home some time later. We'd deal with the inconvenience and move on. It happens all the time. It's a really long and dramatic story about making a flight.
But I felt the kindness of strangers. And I realized that my 'plan' was completely flawed and never would have worked. I don't want to assume I know God's plan or think that he messed up the confirmation number and my phone or the mobile boarding pass issue. And whether this was God working it all out so I could catch a flight or not, I know that I could learn from it and share what I learned.
People are still kind. People are still generous. I am a planner and like things to go according to my plan, but even the best laid plans can still not work out. It's ok when they don't work out. I'm not saying that everything will work out better in the end every time, but my plans are an infinitesimally small part of a huge plan that is created by someone a whole lot better at planning than me. And that is a good thing.
Thanks for reading! I'll try to post a highlight reel of Europe soon!
-C-
