24th December 2005 – Day 82

As expected, I wasn’t able to wake up at 0700 after such a long day yesterday. I woke up at 0812. Since I’m not able to make it on time for the 1200 flight, I might as well sleep in and try to catch the evening flight.

For the people who are still confused about what I’m talking, the situation is as follow:

• Before my Exchange Program, I thought that it would be a good idea to spend Christmas in Germany (or Europe in the general sense).
• I realized, that Christmas is more of a family festivity. Which means most of the people in my hostel will be going home.
• Nothing is opened on Christmas, since it is a holiday.
• Since the opportunity presents itself for me to fly back home, I might as well make full use of it.
• The ticket I got is for the evening flight on 25^th December.
• Here I am, going to try my luck by going a day earlier to see if there’s any empty seats left.
• But if luck runs out, then too bad for me, and I’ll spend a memorable Christmas Eve at Frankfurt Flughafen.

I prepared everything and left the hostel at 1615. Only Uedat and his friend were still in the hostel. Guess Uedat’s not going home for Christmas. After the usual exchange of greetings, I was on my way to the Hauptbahnhof.

The trip to the Hauptbahnhof was quite smooth. The bus and the tram came on time, and I was able to board the 1700 Inter-City-Express train to Frankfurt Flughafen.

The conductor finally checked my ticket!

I reached the airport more than 4 hours ahead of the scheduled flight time of 2220 in hope of standing a better chance to get on the plane.

After waiting for the counter to open at 1840, I asked the counter staff whether it was possible or not to make the change. I’m quite lucky that the flight’s not fully booked, and I managed to get on the flight.

Macdonald’s was closed due Christmas Eve, and so were many other shops, including duty-free shops. Looks like I can’t get my Ice Wine this time round.

With another 3 hours on hand, I was really quite bored waiting.

I found out that I was on the same flight as the meet-up-in-Köln friend. He’s going back to Singapore for around 2 weeks too.

It’s quite cool, there’s actually Wireless LAN internet access in the plane. But I’ll have to pay if I want to use it. Maybe in a few more years, the service will be free.

So, I guess I’ll be spending the rest of my time on board sleeping and watching movies.