The longest journey from A to B ever (part 1)

When a friend advises you of a flight change before the airline does, you kind of know things are going to be problematic. 

 

This is what happened with me and my award flight which made up the bulk of my trip from Nairobi – to Helsinki – yes you read that correctly – Kenya to Finland – what on earth?!  I hear you yelp – I know….but perhaps more on the why as opposed the how in another blog entry.

 

About 4 weeks before I was due to depart Nairobi (NBO) on Qatar Airways, I contacted their call centre to verify the supposed flight changes.  JKIA, the airport at Nairobi had communicated (rather poorly, it must be admitted) that they were to commence runway upgrades from 1^st April and as a result no flights would be taking off or landing between 0000 and 00600.  Yes, I was calmly advised, your flight has been retimed.  I stress the “calmly” because I wasn’t at all calm.

So many airports I needed TWO luggage tags.

 

My original transit time in Doha went from 1 hour 40 minutes to a whopping 13 hours and then some.  I was, as you can imagine, a tad annoyed.  I couldn’t cancel my trip and rebook with someone else,  as I’d organised connecting flights with SAS to Copenhagen then Helsinki – are you still with me?!

 

After about 20 minutes she confirmed, that despite me having an award ticket (one I’d thankfully been able to get using my Qatar Airways miles online for a song) would still allow me a hotel in Doha overnight due to the connection being longer than 8 hours.  I sighed with relief and hung up.

 

On the afternoon of 2^nd April I made my way to JKIA and boarded my flight.

 

Sitting in 1A can give you a false sense of security

Arriving in Doha, I did as was instructed and approached the stop over desk.  And the first response was a suspicion I had from the outset, but didn’t want to acknowledge.  “You’re not eligible for a stopover hotel, since your ticket was purchased with miles.”  “What?” I whimpered…..”I knew this would happen, I knew it!?”  I asked for the supervisor and said I’d been advised by the call centre weeks ago, that I was indeed eligible.

 

I escalated and then escalated some more.  I was getting know where; my emerald oneworld (platinum to you and me) seemed to be of little use.  Having travelled and been a committed advocate of Qatar Airways my loyalty was being sorely tested.

 

I was told about the quiet area in the lounge – yeah right!  The last time I was there not only was a man snoring so loudly the walls shook, but they were actually repairing a broken automatic door with drills – not exactly quiet – I can tell you.

 

Then the flustered supervisor offered me the customer services email – a red rag to an already enraged bull: “It’s not an email address that will deliver my wrath into a black hole of non-reply I need – it’s a bed for the night..!”

Rose champagne on board the brand new A350XB

 

I got nowhere and resorted to paying for a room in the airport hotel at my own expense – a nice room it was indeed – but that’s hardly the point.  I woke the next morning, boarded my delayed flight to Frankfurt – but was delighted to find myself aboard a brand new A350X – complete with a flat-bed seat, a screen larger than my TV at home – well almost – and service from a well-trained crew – all things I’d come to expect from “World’s 5 star airline”.  Pity the 5-star treatment is apparently confined to the air and absent on the ground.

 

My plane was just docking...an omen perhaps?

Disembarking in Frankfurt was easy, but then came the slog of navigating one of the worst maze-like airports I think there is on the planet.  I managed to find my gate, get my boarding pass, check my luggage was on board and then spring on to the bus to take me to my SAS flight to Copenhagen – oh, yes my journey was far from over.  I did have an emergency exit seat- which was nice and not one but two spare seats next to me – I was going to be thankful for the space for the wait that was in front of me. 

 

A non-customer-service customer service call

I've been a customer of my cable provider in Kenya, Zuku, now for 4 years.
And today I received my first ever "customer service follow up call".

Well that's how the politely spoken lady described it.

It didn't start well and accelerated downhill with alarming speed.

I see a number I don't recognise on my phone.
I gingerly answer with a simple "Hello."

"Hello," comes the reply then silence.
"Hello" I repeat."Yes, Hello, " she insists.

I'm adamant I'm not going to introduce myself first.
I salute her a 3rd time and perhaps then she gets it.

"Hello, I'm calling from Zuku, am I talking to Darren Stanley?"
"Yes you are."
I pause, so does she.  She called me, does she expect a rant?  Does she expect me to ask her questions?  The proverbial penny drops.

"I'm doing a customer service follow up call on your Zuku service."
"Yes, OK." I respond.
Then another awkward pause.  That seems to last forever.....

"How has the service been overall?" she pursues.
"Fine, thank you."

The longest pause of all ensues.
Am I actually taking this call?
Am I a survey guinea pig?
What is going on?!

Eventually, she realises I'm not going to say anything else without prompting or probing.
"Fine - that's good."  Then she stops and pauses again.
"OK," she continues, "Thank you for your feedback."
I interject: "I'm sorry but I have found this call very strange.  Aren't you supposed to ask me questions and probe?"
"Oh, Sir, I'm sorry the line is breaking, I can't hear you...."

In exasperation, I lose my patience: "Forget it, I'm eating my lunch, goodbye."
I hang up.

I know research is my metier, and I don't want to sound disingenuous, but this must be the weirdest most unstructured survey / service call I have ever ever encountered.

I smell a sales opportunity somewhere......

Half way round the world and back

28,500km: that’s how many I’ve done this Festive Season; not on foot of course, and I dread to think about my carbon footprint, but...

Staggering and impressive; an eye-watering 9 flights on 7 different carriers, spanning 3 alliances, 1 budget & 1 non-aligned airlines; visited 4 cities (or towns); and proceeded through passport control on 3 continents.

It wasn’t your average Christmas / New Year break, really.  Thanks to airmiles, however, it was doable at relatively reasonable cost – and booking well in advance (for my Norwegian and BA sectors, at least) saved me a fortune.

My first journey was perhaps the most complicated in the sense that I skipped aboard airlines from SkyTeam, Star Alliance and one world.  But rather surprisingly and definitely welcomed, was the ability at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) with Kenya Airways, to check my baggage all the way to Miri, Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia – a long list of geo-locations, but I like to be specific. 

I must confess I was a tad sceptical that my luggage would appear at the other end – and since I was headed for a wedding was also rather anxious.  My suit, tie, cufflinks, collar-stiffners and other “wedding accoutrements” could end up at my destination hours or even days after the nuptials had been completed.

But they were there – at the exact same time I was.  Amazing.  Thank you KQ (#kenyaairways).

Baju melayu, samping & songkok

The wedding was a Malay affair with a million blooms, elegant females in hip-hugging frocks and dashing men in baju melayu or batik shirts – a burst of colour, putting Notting Hill Carnival to shame. 

And yet, I was only there for a couple of days before driving to Brunei to catch my connecting flight in Bangkok on Thai Airways to Oslo – yes, you read it correctly, Norway of all places.

Eschewing the balmy C35° of Borneo, I stepped out of Oslo airport to collect my hire car with a brisk C-2° shooting up my ill-prepared nostrils.  They had needed half-an-hour to de-ice and warm up my vehicle and I was glad they had done it.

I grappled with the left-hand drive and manual gears, and headed south on the E6 towards Oslo centre – or sentrum as we say in Norway.

I was in town in about 30 minutes and began to get my bearings.  My parents joined me later that afternoon, so I had a little time to cram in some culture.  The Munch Museum was for me.  The famous and infamous (for being stolen at gun-point back in 2004) painting The Scream was hankered for.

I entered the gallery only to find the canvass I’d braved the Oslo slippery ice-fondant streets for, was being restored.  Bloody typical.  

Screaming for The Scream

Leaving the gallery, after succumbing to the obligatory mug and fridge magnet purchases, I headed back to the airport to collect mam & dad.  I was, unexpectedly, rewarded with a night sky show of the aura borealis – albeit a tad too far south and far less spectacular than in Trondheim or somewhere equally arctic-circle-ish.

Norway was super: great food, charming people, impeccable infrastructure & clinical efficiency.  It was, simultaneously, possibly the most expensive place I’ve been to on planet earth.  Move over Tokyo, Singapore & New York, Oslo will rape your wallet quicker than those pesky Vikings ever did in Northumbria all those centuries ago. 

Still, we enjoyed it – and it’s somewhere I’d love to see in the summer; the snow over Christmas was perfect, crisp and Bing-Crosby-ish – just as it should be.  ;-)

Welcome to the snow

We then proceeded to Cumbria and “home”.  I put it quotations, merely because it’s “real” home – whoops there I go again.  And I now officially have three of them.  Sigh.  Or should that be LOL?!

It was great to see the fells, the lakes, my school-friends, my family and the windmills.  Cumbria is awash with them – and these huge white giants, waving their arms about are a fixture on the landscape – so much so, you hardly notice their whirring purring presence.

 

Keswick and me

Finally, it was off south to the most impressive, fantastic, compelling city on earth: London.

My other half and I were scheduled for a front-row seat for the pyrotechnics to usher in 2015 and we couldn’t wait.  Following dinner, we scrambled outside to brave the plunging temperatures to get a ringside view.  And we were not disappointed. 

Perhaps the brightest, best-coordinated, most raucous show of fireworks I have ever seen burst above the river Thames, reflected in it and reverberated around it.

Whizzes, screeches, whirls, flashes, sparks and more lit up the London sky – so vividly and with such incandescence, you could read your newspaper in the nocturnal luminescence.  Oh, that rhymes – how quaint.

Just opposite the London Eye - eye-watering!

Selfridges, Peter Jones, the King’s Road, Regent Street, Carnaby Street – all saw far too many purchases.  While a theatre treat on New Year’s Day to see the new and provocative production of King Charles III, was especially wonderful.

We ate Italian in Knightsbridge, Indian in Fulham, Chinese in the West End, Gordon Ramsay in Battersea and English fayre in Piccadilly.  Friends and merriment were bountiful and the New Year started with a bang – as it’s supposed to I guess.

As I sit in the First Class lounge at Heathrow, about to travel “home” to Nairobi [thanks (again) to my other half] sipping a beautifully chilled kir royal, I’m thankful in so many ways and on so many levels. 

What a whirlwind Yuletide I’ve had; what a mesmeric hailing in of a new year; what a splendid marvellous cacophony of friends, family, loved ones, experiences and more I’ve had.

Thank you 2014 for being rather splendiferous and watch out 2015 – you have a lot to live up to.  

I rather think you will!