Saturday, July 26: A Ridiculous Day

We landed in Brussels early Saturday morning. With five hours until our next flight, we decided to leave the secure area of the airport and either take a taxi into town, or shop in the airport shops. All the Belgian Immigration lines were long, except for the one at the very end. We walked across the room to that line. We moved rapidly, but when a man in wheelchair was rolled up to the front of the line. The guard asked him a few questions then stamped him through. IN a minute, another wheelchair came, then another, then two kids travelling without adults, then a slew of teens. Every single person that joined the lines when we did beat us out by more than 10 minutes!

It as finally our turn. The guard looked at our tickets. “These are connecting tickets,” he said.
“Where do you go next?”

“Chicago, then on to Atlanta.”

“is Atlanta your final destination?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. I meant that would be the end of our flying.

“He flipped through each passport carefully and asked a few more questions.

“You are transients, “ he said in a not very friendly voice. “You leave from upstairs.” He pushed our passports back ot us.

“You mean we have to go back”

“The flight leaves from upstairs,” he said. “Thank you.” He motioned for the next people in line to step forward. We turned around and retraced our steps past the long immigration lines.
We had to go through another checkpoint in order to go upstairs. We went through the metal detectors, and I sat mine off. A guard made me step aside. He searched me very carefully. His wand went off at my billfold. He looked at it, then finished searching me.

“Did the magnetic strip on my credit card set it off?” I asked. The man ignored me and started checking my ankles and shoes. I waited until he was finished and repeated my question a little louder. He nodded without acknowledging my question in any other way. So now I know!

We knew that there was nothing at all upstairs, so we went toward a duty free store. There was an entire mini-mall around the corner! We went to a bar and had a Belgian Waffle and real coffee! We still had a lot of time, so I went to a bookstore. It wa very strange. There were signs saying “Best Seelers’ and “Mysteries” and “Romance,” but the books were n French or German! There were a few English title, but they were very expensive (as in $45 for an old best seller!)
I found Lisa sitting under a skylight. There was enough sun coming through to feel warm. We went into the duty free shop and bought chocolate for my office, for our house sitter, and for the kennel. I bought Lisa chocolate and she bought me a yellow tie with giraffes.

After shopping, we went upstairs. We met a young woman in a Vanderbilt sweatshirt, and we talked about Uganda for more than an hour. A woman in an American Airlines uniform came by. She looked very carefully at every person sitting in the waiting area. A moment later, she returned. They had just announced final boarding for a flight to Kenya. “Are you going to Kenya?” asked the woman.

“No, Chicago,” I said.

“Well what are you doing here? You must go to gate 1.”

“The agent told us Gate 4.”

“I announced the change. You should have been listening. Your flight will leave very soon from gate 1. Would you like to be on it?”

We gathered our carry-ons and hurried down the corridor to Gate 1. There was a large sign on it telling all American Airlines customers to go there for clearance. We got in another long line and waited as each and every passenger was asked a series of questions. When we were cleared, we were sent to another line to get a new boarding pass. Then we waited in a confused line for our flight to be called.

I became dizzy standing in the crowd, so I asked to board early. I was allowed to board with the Platinum Fliers. We had seats across the aisle from one another. I sat down and a man soon asked me to let him into the window seat. “Would you mind to swap seats with my wife?” I asked.

“Not at all,” said the man. So we were able to sit together on this flight, too!

We were back in 767 land, so there was no leg room. There was also no personal video players, but we were sitting close enough to the screen to see if we wanted to watch. They announced a charge for headset rental, but Lisa had brought two sets of ear buds from home. We were all set, but there was nothing on! Despite the tight legroom, I soon fell asleep in spite of myself.
We had a bumpy flight most of the way to Chicago, but we arrived safely and on time.

We had less than 2 hours for the next connection, and this is no fun when you’re very tired. We started walking down an incredibly long corridor, but a man in a golf cart picked us up and drove us to Immigration. We were cleared through without question. Next we had to claim our bags. We found two free carts and our bags were soon there. We rolled the carts to Customs where another busy guard seemed only interested in whether we were transporting fruits or vegetables. Then we rechecked our bags. A woman looked at our tickets. “I think there will be time to get your bags to your airplane,” she said. “Just leave them here and I’ll put them on the belt to your plane.”

I thanked the lady. It was 30 minutes later when I realized she was expecting a tip!!
With bags secure, we only had to get ourselves to the plane. We had to clear a very busy security checkpoint, but we both made it without a problem. We arrived at our gate with about 10 minutes until boarding!

The flight was very easy and we arrived 20 minutes early in Atlanta. I called Jim Fulmer and he said they were there. He wanted to meet us at departures where he’d dropped us off. I told him to go to Arrivals instead. Our bags were slow arriving, but they did make Iit in good shape. We put our bags on a $3 cart and we walked out into the hall. There was an escalator with a sign saying you couldn’t take luggage carts up. We boarded the elevator. Our only option was to ride to the Departure level. I called Jim and he and Karen picked us up in a few minutes.
We managed to stay awake until we stopped for dinner at a Cracker Barrel somewhere north of Atlanta. The vegetables tasted wonderful!

Lisa began dozing soon after we ate, but I was able to keep talking until Jim pulled us into our driveway. They unloaded the bags for us, then left us to go to sleep. The lizard and rabbit were fine and the rabbit seemed glad to see us. Buster was sitting in his chair by the piano. He didn’t have much to say and Jelly remained hidden until we were ready to turn the lights out. Our house looked great.

And it was great to be home!

Looking at true clock hours, removing all the time changes and focusing on the time of our trip, I found that it was 48 hours from the time we awoke at Kolping House until we walked through the door of our house. We had a few cat naps, but we were actually travelling for two full days!