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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I had a bad day

Today was not a good day. Today was supposed to end perfect, but now I feel because of my stupidity this day is ending far from perfect.
Last Friday, November 5th, marked Ryan and my 4th anniversary. To celebrate this I had previously booked Ryan and I a flight to Porto, Portugal on our two-day weekend. While we were in Spain we received an email from our supervisor at work that she had granted us time off to go to Greece as well. However at this point Ryan still did not know I had the trip to Portugal booked. So being sneaky I booked our flight to Greece to leave from Porto, but then fly back to Athens at the end of our time there.
On our anniversary I gave Ryan a card that I had secretly encrypted with the word Portugal as a clue to where we were going. Unfortunately Ryan did not figure out the message on his own and I had to continue to give him verbal clues until he could figure it out. He finally did though and was very excited we would begin our vacation in Porto. Although it would be flying in the opposite direction as Greece it is somewhere we’ve wanted to go and with so much time off why not hit two countries important to us?
Ryan has been so diligent for the last few days looking up information about Greece and planning that part of our trip. I on the other hand have spent almost all my time looking for a cute hostel in Porto because when the hostel has character we’ve learned it can really add to the experience there. Somewhere thought there must have been a disconnect in my brain because although I did look at the train schedule I was stupid enough to think we would make our flight if we took the 6:04 train. Well we had to train from Garmisch to Munich for 1.5 hours, then change trains to get to Memmingen for another 1.5 hours, then it is a 12 minute taxi ride to the airport. We have to go all the way to Memmingen because that is where the discount airline Ryanair flies out of. And although it would only be 1.5-2 hours to drive there we weren’t going to fly back to the same airport and would have to train back to get the car and thought it would be less expensive to train than that option. Also when we had to change trains I had seen online there was one leaving at 19:34 but when we arrived with just enough to time catch that one it was no where to be found and the next one didn’t leave until 19:51, which I started to realize might be too late.
Well as it turns out it would have been less expensive than throwing money away I did. We missed our flight to Porto, if you haven’t picked up on that yet. We got their about 9:30 and the flight was scheduled to leave at 9:50 but apparently Ryanair believes that is the time the plane will be in the air not the time they let late arriving passengers run their behinds off to get on their plane and breath a sigh of relief once they are in their seat. UGH! I can’t believe I did this. I feel so stupid. I am so mad at myself. I am so sorry for Ryan that I ruined what was supposed to be a gift to him. And I feel absolutely awful that what I have done is being a very poor steward of my money and money management is something I take very seriously. My parent’s taught me well. Unfortunately I didn’t channel my Dad in regard to checking the train schedule 10 or more times, printing it, thinking of every possible scenario, and double and triple checking with my own calculations and having someone else look it over to make sure we’d arrive on time. So now 20 euros is gone from the flight, 15 euros for the bag I added the day before we wanted to check, 20 euros for the train pass we had to buy, 19 euros for our two taxi rides, about 10 euros worth of food we bought during the travel, 10 euros for the hostel we had to stay in back in Munich, oh and at least the deposit for the hostel in Porto we’ll see if they are kind and don’t charge me everything for the two nights and of course the hours and hours from our lives. I am so upset with myself and I really don’t know how to fix it.
It is now Wednesday morning. Ryan is still asleep and I am eating breakfast at our hostel. We had to take another taxi from the airport back to the train station. Then take the train another 1.5 hours back to Munich and then we walked 15 minutes down the road to a hostel we thankfully knew was there because we stayed here the first night of my Mom’s visit. The first thing we have to do this morning is figure out if we can get a hold of Lufthansa and see if they can change our departure airport from Porto to Munich. And if they can’t we need to see how much it would cost to fly to Porto today or tomorrow. And if none of that works then my bill of wasted money is about to more than double and I don’t even like to think about that.
Last night on the second train as we went along and it occurred to me we likely would not make the flight I prayed so hard for God to have mercy on my stupidity and show me Grace. I wish I could blame him for not delaying the plane or stopping time, but I know it was not his fault. And although when I prayed for mercy and grace it was in regard to making our flight I saw Him pouring out both these things in another way. I could not ask for a better person in my life than Ryan. From the moment we knew we were not getting on the plane he was calm, cool, and collected. I knew he was disappointed, but he held himself together and he comforted me when the whole thing was my fault and he could have gotten very angry at me. He showed me mercy and he offered me grace. As awful as I still feel I am glad I have him by my side.
So you’ll just have to stay tuned to figure out if we have a vacation or just 10 days off work stuck in the land of the cold and the occasional snow.

1 comment:

  1. Emily, it is okay, well all do things like that...reminds me of a time when I locked Baron's keys in some other guys car and Baron didn't have a car for two weeks.

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