I'm going to the US!! ... Oh no... I'm not...

This is a blog post by Erlend again by the way...

So here's what happened...

I was asked by our organization to go to the US to a seminar on a relevant topic to our future ministry in AP.
And that sounded fine with me, I haven't even been to the US for almost 12 years, and the seminar was about a topic that I find quite interesting.

So I booked a ticket, paid and got the booking number and travel itinerary in an email. After that I got bombarded with spam (advertisement) from the online company I used, but that is normal, so I ignored those emails. I didn't really feel like going skiing in the Alps anyway.

So today the big day had arrived. I got up at 4 in the morning, and my father-in-law drove me over 100 kilometers to the airport, dropped me of and went home.

I went to the check-in desk and handed them my booking info and passport.
The lady sat there for a while and looked quite confused, trying to find my ticket on the flight.
She even tried several different ways of typing the special Norwegian letter in our last name, but found nothing.

Then I was sent to a info desk, and was told they could help me. After standing around waiting for quite a while, the lady told me that she could see that there had been a booking, but that it had been cancelled...

I then got my phone out, and started going through all of my emails from the online travel agent, and found, in between all the spam, a small email, with a topic that didn't say anything about its urgency, that basically read "We have (for some reason) rejected your payment, call us within 2 days or your ticket will be cancelled."

I have never heard of anything like this before, and we travel a lot (this year is going to be a hard-to-break-record in amounts of flights for me).

So my only two options were to buy a new ticket over the counter for 2400 Euro (No thanks) or to go home...

So just as my father-in-law came home after driving the 100 + kilometers home, Anne told him what had happened, he drank a cup of coffee (I have been told) and got back in the car for another 200 + kilometers of driving to pick me up.

(Danke für deine Geduld und Hilfe Papa!)

So now, here I am, still in Germany.
But, hey, its a nice place to be :-)

Considering all the things I would have missed this week (and a few other reasons) I'm actually totally fine with not going.

Maybe next year :-)

random

Here are some pictures of the things we have been up to during the last few weeks.

 We got to hang out with lots my siblings (I don't mean the cow!)

which meant lots of fun play time for Alia

 Even drove to Stuttgart to see one special auntie 

and Onkel Ma and Tante Schuli came all the way from Vienna

Alia is enjoying hanging out with her cousins and friends

We got to share about Asia with our youth group

 Also told them how to make Es Jeruk nipis from scratch

 and how to break down garlic without a garlic press 

but with a their bare hands - hard core, I know :-)