Briefly in Brussels
The next day, it was off to a meeting in Brussels. Just the meeting, nothing else! We departed on a noon flight, went to the company for a 2.5-hour meeting, and went back to the airport. Oy. I had never been to Brussels, and I can honestly say that I still haven’t.
But first we had the adventure of changing my plane tickets. We were originally booked on an earlier flight from Prague to Brussels, and I was planning on going on to London that evening so I could leave for the US straight from Heathrow. But nooooooo. British Airways wouldn’t let me change an earlier leg I had booked from Prague to Heathrow, so I had to return from Brussels to Prague just to spend one night. So I wanted two changes: the later Prague-Brussels flight, and a flight back to Prague instead of on to London.
And I wasn’t even making the change itself—that had already been done by phone to our British travel agent. All I had to do was get them to look up this change on their computer screens and print me out a new paper ticket.
You’d think this wouldn’t be hard. Europeans hop all over the place all the time, especially business people. But the people at Czech Air did their best to imitate the customer service they had learned to give during the Soviet era. This apparently simple process took more than 30 minutes and included a period when they told us we had to cancel the whole ticket and rebook, for a cost of an additional $600. We got out British travel agent on the phone, who told the Czech Air people that we had already paid the (modest) penalty to change our flights, and did not need to pay another $600, thank you very much.
Finally it worked, but I still had to officially check in at the check-in counter. For some reason, this is not possible at the ticket purchase counter. And even though my colleagues were able to check in for their later flights out of Brussels at the same time, I was told I couldn’t do that “because the flight is closed right now,” and would have to do it in Brussels. OK, whatever.
The little I saw of Brussels was lovely. At this time of year, it is lushly green, and in general it has lots of forest surrounding the city. We drove through gently rolling hills and open spaces. The roads were not too crowded, although they were more busy at rush hour when we went back to the airport. One thing I noticed was a terminal for private jets. After all the hopping around, I can see that a rich European would certainly want her own plane!
I was disappointed not to see the subway. My friend tells me that there is gorgeous street art there, like used to exist on the Berlin Wall. I guess that will be something to see next time.
I like the sound of Flemish. Belgium has two official languages, French and Flemish. On the plane, they made announcements in those two plus English. Some of the people I heard were speaking French, others Flemish, which sounds more like German in that I can pick up half the words or so.
But first we had the adventure of changing my plane tickets. We were originally booked on an earlier flight from Prague to Brussels, and I was planning on going on to London that evening so I could leave for the US straight from Heathrow. But nooooooo. British Airways wouldn’t let me change an earlier leg I had booked from Prague to Heathrow, so I had to return from Brussels to Prague just to spend one night. So I wanted two changes: the later Prague-Brussels flight, and a flight back to Prague instead of on to London.
And I wasn’t even making the change itself—that had already been done by phone to our British travel agent. All I had to do was get them to look up this change on their computer screens and print me out a new paper ticket.
You’d think this wouldn’t be hard. Europeans hop all over the place all the time, especially business people. But the people at Czech Air did their best to imitate the customer service they had learned to give during the Soviet era. This apparently simple process took more than 30 minutes and included a period when they told us we had to cancel the whole ticket and rebook, for a cost of an additional $600. We got out British travel agent on the phone, who told the Czech Air people that we had already paid the (modest) penalty to change our flights, and did not need to pay another $600, thank you very much.
Finally it worked, but I still had to officially check in at the check-in counter. For some reason, this is not possible at the ticket purchase counter. And even though my colleagues were able to check in for their later flights out of Brussels at the same time, I was told I couldn’t do that “because the flight is closed right now,” and would have to do it in Brussels. OK, whatever.
The little I saw of Brussels was lovely. At this time of year, it is lushly green, and in general it has lots of forest surrounding the city. We drove through gently rolling hills and open spaces. The roads were not too crowded, although they were more busy at rush hour when we went back to the airport. One thing I noticed was a terminal for private jets. After all the hopping around, I can see that a rich European would certainly want her own plane!
I was disappointed not to see the subway. My friend tells me that there is gorgeous street art there, like used to exist on the Berlin Wall. I guess that will be something to see next time.
I like the sound of Flemish. Belgium has two official languages, French and Flemish. On the plane, they made announcements in those two plus English. Some of the people I heard were speaking French, others Flemish, which sounds more like German in that I can pick up half the words or so.
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