Misconnected

As with so many things in life, be it 100k mountain marathons or book chapters on N-DAC, one’s luck does at one point run out. After spending twenty minutes that I did not have in a holding pattern above Frankfurt Airport, I rushed all the way down the A-gates, up the elevator, through passport control (who knew that Cyprus was not in the Schengen area?), down to Z21 only to see that my flight had already departed.

Walking back towards the Lufthansa Service Centre, my phone alerted me that I had been rebooked to the exact same flight. Tomorrow. Meaning that I would miss Cyprus Marathon. Since I knew I would receive 300 EUR in EU 261 compensation from Lufthansa, I immediately started searching for other options of my own. And there it was. Frankfurt to Larnaca via London Heathrow for 231 EUR, landing at 9 pm which would still allow me to run the marathon tomorrow. Since I would only do an airside transfer at Heathrow, I would not even need a Covid test. So, I picked up my credit card, realizing that I was about to play a very dangerous game. There were only minutes left to issue the ticket and, if I would miss the check-in deadline once it was issued, I would maybe then ended up being denied boarding. Still, worth it. So, while rushing over to BA in Terminal 2, I entered my credit card details and tried to book. Sadly, my card was declined as the highly unusual transaction had triggered a fraud warning and, while I called American Express to unlock the card, my booking window had expired.

Thus, instead of a marathon along the Med, I had no choice but checking in at the Hyatt Place Frankfurt Airport where I, yes, briefly entertained the idea of running 42.2 km right there on the hotel treadmill but, after not sleeping more than a few hours and not having eaten lunch, 10k turned out to be a bit more sensible. And tomorrow? Well, fun fact, I will now spend two hours at Larnaca Airport before flying back to Sweden via Vienna with Austrian Airlines.