Craziest Day EVER!! part 2 (this is long, but totally worth it!)

So we spent the rest of the afternoon at the hostel catching up on some homework, playing some cards and just hanging out. Our flight was supposed to leave at 21:40 and there was a train leaving at 19:20 that would get us to the airport by 19:32 so we thought that would be the perfect way to do it. So at 19:00 we headed out the door. On the way out we talked to the front desk and they told us that it would be better to just take a bus and not to take the train. We figured that would probably be fine so they told us where to go to catch the bus and we headed out. When we got there we couldn’t find the bus that they were talking about so we frantically searched around the entire station several times trying to figure out what to do and trying to find this bus. There were lots of other tour buses going to the airport, but we only had 20 EURO with us, just enough money with us to pay for a taxi to our hostel in Prague and those buses were all pretty expensive, or so we thought. We never did find the bus the hostel told us about, but now it was 19:30 and the bus routes took about 30 minutes to get to the airport so I’m starting to freak out now because I really like being exactly 2 hours early for our flights, especially since when we arrived in Italy they never stamped our passports so we weren’t really sure what they was about, but we were hoping that everything would workout okay. We decided that we would just take one of the expensive tour buses to the airport, but that we would need to go find an ATM to take out some more money. We only knew where a few ATM’s were in the train station so we headed to the closest one—out of order, and then we headed to the next one—out of order. By now I’m starting to freak out because we need to get to the airport if we’re going to make this flight. We ran downstairs looking for another ATM and luckily found one there and it was working! Of course the only ATM we could possibly find was the one farthest away from where we were! We tried to take out 20 EURO thinking that would be plenty to get to the airport and we didn’t want to have any extra because then we would just lose money trying to exchange it somewhere. Well, the minimum you could take out was 50 EURO so we said whatever and just took the 50. We found one of the tour buses, which turned out to not be expensive at all only 4 EURO a person and hopped on. I was stressing because the bus wouldn’t get us to the airport until 20:15 only a little over an hour before our flight left. As I’m sitting in the bus I keep thinking to myself that I thought we were supposed to fly out of Rome at a different airport than the one we flew in at, I asked Justin and he seemed pretty sure that we were going to the right airport. I knew that sometime during our trip we would be flying out of a different airport than the one we flew into, it must have been our flight from Bucuresti I kept telling myself.

Well…as I’m sure you’ve guessed when we arrived at the airport there was no flight to Prague! We were at the wrong airport and we only had about 1 hour and 20 minutes until our flight was supposed to leave! We ran to an information desk and they told us that Fiumicino (the other airport) was about 50km away and would cost us about 40 EURO by taxi! Ah!!!! We run outside find the nearest taxi and he tells us that it will be 55 EURO and at least a 30-minute drive, depending on traffic. AH! We tell him that we’ll take it, as we have no other options! We tell him that we need to get there fast so I don’t really know how he did it, but he got us to the airport in 15 minutes, let me tell you we were flying down that highway! We paid him 60 EURO, 55 for the drive and a 5 EURO tip for getting us there so quickly, which also happened to be all the money that we had…hopefully we can find an ATM when we reach Prague so we can get to our hostel. We run inside the airport and start looking for where we need to go, but we can’t seem to find anything that says SMART WINGS (our airline) or anything that says that there is a flight leaving for Prague at 21:40. By this point we are so confused so we go ask information where the SMART WINGS desk is, this incredibly grouchy and unhelpful woman says, “it is down there on the left”…well we’ve already been “down there on the left” for a while now and we didn’t see anything. We figured we might as well go look one more time so we went and sure enough…there was nothing. I walked back over to her, she was thrilled to see me again, and ask her specifically where the desk is. She tells me it is at box 238. Justin and I run to box 238 and …no one is there..? The time is now 21:00 and our flight is supposed to be leaving in about 40 minutes? I walk back over to the unhappy lady and she says, before I can say anything, “it is at box 238”. I tell her that there is no one there and she says, “it is too early, you can only check in 2 hours before your flight leaves”….? What?! Our flight is supposed to leave in 40 minutes. I tell her the flight# and she says, “yes, that flight leaves at midnight 15”…? By this point I am so confused that I just say okay and walk away. I go tell Justin and we figure that we better try to call SMART WINGS and see what is going on so we try to buy the airport Internet, but, of course, there is a problem with the page and we can’t input any of our information. We’re trying to figure out what our options are and decided that it would probably just be best to wait until 22:15 when someone will show up at the SMART WINGS desk so we can ask them what is going on. We have 1 hour and 15 minutes to kill and we both are starving so we go buy some overpriced airport food and sit and wait. When we get back to box 238 it has a large line of people in it so we jump right in line. The line is beginning to get restless because the time is now 22:45 and there is still no one at the SMART WINGS desk. There were a few tour groups that were on our flight so one of the tour guides heads to information and comes running back and says something in either Italian or Czech, I’m not sure which and everyone in line takes off running in a different direction. Hmm…? Justin and I figure we better follow everyone so we take off running too and end up in a line on the other side of the airport. When we get to the front of the line and it is our turn we hand our passports to the checker lady and she starts looking through the computer. A few different times she starts to look really confused, so I’m getting nervous that we’re not going to be able to get on this flight, but luckily she never says anything and then she just hands us our tickets…score!! We had arranged with our hostel to be picked up from the airport when our plane landed so that we wouldn’t have to deal with trying to find a taxi at such a late hour and making sure that we didn’t get ripped off. We called them to let them know that we would be getting in two hours later and the guy that answers says that he has to work in the morning so he can’t come get us and that we would just need to take a taxi…perfect. The only problem with that is that we have zero money because we had to pay 60 EURO to get to the Fiumicino airport (the second airport) super fast even though we ended up having to wait for almost two full hours before we could even check in, talk about a wasted $90. We were really praying that there would be an ATM in the airport because neither the Bucuresti airport or the Rome airport had ATM’s inside them and we ended up having to exchange US dollars, but since we would be arriving in Prague at 2:15am, we didn’t figure any exchange places would be open. We head down to where our flight is supposed to leave from and wait in line. We were supposed to start boarding at 23:30 and again by 23:50 our line is starting to get pretty restless. One of the tour guides asks what is going on and then she announces again something about an autobus, at least that was the only word I could pull out. Justin and I figured that meant that we would have to take a bus to our airplane and I thought I heard someone say something about the plane being fueled, but I’m really not sure. So at 00:05 the doors open and everyone starts walking down the ramp to the outside, since we can’t understand what anyone is saying we just follow and sure enough we all get on a bus. Once we’re all on the bus takes off. We were pretty excited that we were actually going to get on the airplane until the bus starts driving around in circles. The driver has no clue where the plane is! He takes us through this scary back ally and all the passengers on the bus are getting antsy; this is seriously the weirdest thing ever. Finally he pulls up to this airplane that doesn’t say SMART WINGS on it anywhere, but he lets us off and we all jump on the plane. I’m asleep before we even leave the runway, but finally we are officially on our way to Prague!

We arrived in Prague at 2:30am and headed to baggage claim. We were both exhausted and our luggage made it just fine and we found tons of ATM’s!! yay! We took out some money and headed outside to get a taxi, but at 2:40 in the morning, of course, there were no taxis. We sat around for about two hours and contemplated taking the bus, but decided that since we had no city map and no idea where the bus would take us exactly that it wouldn’t be the best idea to take the bus. We tried to fall asleep thinking that when the next flight came in at 5:55am that we may be able to catch a taxi then, but neither of us were able to fall asleep. We found a telephone and tried to call for a taxi, but we only had 50 EURO cents, which only gave us about 1 minute of talk time and it wasn’t enough to tell the lady that there were no taxi’s at the airport, because she seemed to think there were taxi’s right out front. So at 4:00am we decided to walk around until we found one. Luckily we didn’t have to walk that far, just to the next set of terminals before we found a taxi that could take us to our hostel!!! Finally! I guess we should have walked around sooner, but there was only one taxi there so hopefully no one else needed a taxi either! We arrived at our hostel about 4:30am, checked in and headed straight for bed. What a day! This has definitely been the craziest day of our European travel, but I figure that if we made it through today unscathed that we can pretty much make it through anything!