#TeamSuitcase: Rough Start

The view from our room in Germany.  It was awesome.

Our week long meetings in Germany ended late on Wednesday night.  We knew that our company would get us back to the airport on Thursday, but didn't know what time, and wanted a day to rest before hitting the ground in Hungary, and so we booked a night at a hotel at the Frankfurt airport for the time between the meetings and our flight to Budapest on Friday night.

Then we found out that we were being bussed to the airport at 6am on Thursday.  Fail.

After a week of meetings in a lovely conference center, surrounded by awesome coworkers, my good mood came to a crashing halt because I had to be on a bus at 6am.  In case you didn't know, neither Maple nor myself are morning people.  We were up and ready to go, though.  #teamsuitcase for the win!

Then, as I was pulling my suitcase towards the bus, my back went out.  Another fail.

I suppose a week of sitting all day long was not what my crooked spine was used to and it decided to revolt.  I could barely walk that whole day and was a pitiful sight to see.  But Maple is a super trouper, and helped me get everything where it needed to go, even carrying one of my bags for me.  We arrived at our hotel at 9am and got an early check-in and we crashed and went back to sleep.

Because of my back and inability to walk, we spent that entire day in our little airport hotel room.  For all the fun I show my life is on social media, I did not show that boring moment.  It was restful, though!

We got to the Frankfurt airport early, hoping to find a Starbucks to sit in and work on our internet research for our trip to Hungary.  However, the Frankfurt airport is the worst in the world and so we got trapped in our particular gate/terminal area where there was no Starbucks and no restaurants (save one), and no plug-ins for computers and just plain boringness.  First-world problems, I know.

We took off super late for our flight, and arrived in our connection city of Rome in time to grab a quick bite while we waited for our delayed flight to Budapest.  When we finally arrived in Budapest, we watched all the suitcases going round and round and round the carousel...and ours were not there.

Arriving late in the middle of the night AND no luggage.  Yet another fail.

We finally made it to the apartment we'd rented for the week (due to Budapest's awesome taxi service, no joke), and found that while it advertised 2 separate beds... it really just had one double bed and some chaise lounge thing a kid could sleep on.

Maple gave me a look that said, "If I wasn't so tired, I'd kill you right now."  And still another fail.

We figured out how to jerry-rig the armchair and the bedchair together to be long enough for me to sleep on, and the apartment turned out to be perfect for us for the week.  Our luggage was delivered just fine.  And work was super great all week, so no complaints there.

We may have had a rough start, but the trip seems so blessed in so many ways that it didn't even phase us.  Stay tuned for all the fun stuff we saw in Hungary!