The Europeans
Once upon a time, not so long ago…
“Well, it can’t get worse than this!”
Elena Tonucci on the length of her journey, Santiago de Chile, 23rd November 2024
“I never lost my luggage!”
Sebastiaan Haffert, Santiago de Chile, 23rd November 2024
Yes, dear friends, these are real statements that our heroes have pronounced at the beginning of their journey back home, and I am sure you already know what happened next.
Sebastiaan and I started off our journey in the best way: We managed to get into the LATAM lounge in Santiago, chill and recharge with free food and drinks, and later reached Bogota without any troubles. Maybe this is why we were brave enough to pronounce those words. In the end, we were half way there and full of optimism.
The flight from Bogota to Madrid got delayed by about 2 hours and a half, to make us land exactly when our final connection to Amsterdam took off. But, hey, at least we had extra leg space during our flights.
At least we got each other, and that’s a lot. Ah, no, actually… At first, it seemed that the very smart LATAM system had already rebooked me to a new direct flight to Amsterdam at 20:30, operated by KLM. Great! I just needed to collect my luggage. Sebastiaan however was not that lucky, and there were no flights left for Amsterdam before the end of the day. We waited for news for a while, until he got two flights, with a stop in Milano Linate. Mamma mia! As the great PhD student I am, I offered to switch and let him have my direct flight. However, as the great supervisor he is, he refused and said (I quote) “You live for the fight when that’s all that you’ve got”. Okay, he didn’t say that but that would have been pretty cool, right?
This is how we parted ways with the promise to see each other the next day at the workshop we had to attend in Leiden. Sure….. When I got to the KLM desk to get my boarding pass, they weirdly could not find me in the system. Strange! The very very smart LATAM system had rebooked me to a new flight, what could have gone wrong??? Spot the mistake in the picture below.
At least, I was determined to find my luggage (I forgot to mention I had lost it in the meantime). In theory, Sebastiaan’s luggage was flying together with him to Milano and then to Amsterdam. Sure….. Fortunately, after going back and forth two times between terminal 4 and 2 of hell emmm I meant Madrid airport (if you want to remember the layout, go to Day 0) I finally managed to find my lost luggage!
Since I sadly couldn’t time travel back to the 24th of September to catch my flight nor wait for the 24th of September of 2025 or any other year after that, LATAM decided to pay for my food and accommodation in a luxurious hotel in Madrid. So sweet of them!
In the meantime, Sebastiaan got safely to Amsterdam and could make it to the workshop, but without his luggage. As of me, I slept (very bad) and finally got to Amsterdam on lunch time the day after. This is why our quotes at the beginning of this post are so ironic, but this is also how Sebastiaan became…
The New York traveler
Joseph, the lonely and brave New York traveler, had instead a lot of time ahead of him. After saying goodbye to the mountains, he started his journey and witnessed many interesting things. For example, a middle aged lady taking off at a right angle to the line and climbing through all the barriers. The immigration queue is an amazing place. At least he was alone and could just judge people internally while listening to the Cowboy Bebop OST to keep his spirits up. Then I think he literally kept his spirit up with some – maybe too much? – pisco. We gotta hold on to what we’ve got, you know? What matters is that, more or less at my same time, he landed in New York, but he left one day later than me. Great job Joseph.
Laird and Jialin
Sorry I couldn’t come up with a fancy title here, I am pretty lame. Laird was very disappointed at the start of his journey in La Serena: LATAM refused to give him the boarding pass for Atlanta and check his bags any further than Santiago. Not to mention passport control had a queue of over 2 hours!! Fortunately, Jialin and Laird had a layover of six hours, which was barely enough to get on the flight to Atlanta… But you know what?? They left the mountain one day after Sebastiaan and I and still managed to get home before us. It’s tough, so tough.
The last of us
After some final fun games, vizzy spotting, and sunset (with apparently the best green flash ever seen by human eyes) the last of us started their journey back to a different desert: Tucson. Stay tuned for the next blog post to hear about their journey!!
Song of the day
Although after three days of travel I could add multiple songs really, I will stick to the most important one, because during this trip we were really living on a prayer. See you next time, that’s all from Elena, folks! 😉