Sometimes you end up in the most unexpected of places – read on to see how I got an extra night in Warsaw, Poland after an airline kerfuffle!

The Story

“Your flights are cancelled.” These are not the words you want to hear a week before your vacation. We had been planning a trip to Munich and Vienna for months. With just a week to go we had our itinerary set, had pulled our suitcases out of the closet, and dug our passports out of our desks. We booked our flights with an airline called AirBerlin that had unluckily for us, declared insolvency right before our trip. As a result Air Berlin cancelled all flights out of Chicago to Europe. Wonderful.

I received this message at work and thought ok no big deal, I’ll call the airline tonight and they’ll get us on a connecting flight and get us to our destination. Hours on the phone left me with this fiasco:

• All flights cancelled
• AirBerlin could do nothing to get us on another flight or partner airline
• NO REFUND WOULD BE AVAILABLE
• We had to file a claim with the company to try to get our money back.

Yup – folks after that smack in the face AirBerlin was still taking our money. So what happened? Ted and I looked at each other and knew that there was nothing we could do in this situation. It was a bad and unfair one, but it was what it was. I started looking at the costs of flights right away to see whether or not we could even go on a trip. Given it was only a week out  – were there still flights available? Could we even afford them?  Thankfully Ted and I got the last two flights to Vienna at a slightly reasonable (but still expensive) price via LOT, a Polish airline. We looked at each other and booked it without hesitation. We were gonna worry about the money later. So with that crisis averted (kinda).

A week later, our flight leaves Chicago and we start our journey to Vienna, Austria. To get there, we had a short three hour layover in Warsaw, Poland. Just an hour before boarding time we found out THAT flight was cancelled due to technical reasons. At this point, exhaustion and hours on a plane started to take its toll. We were on a cursed trip. I felt myself start to get angry and frustrated. But you know what – I let that last only about five minutes.

The Lesson

For the rest of the time I made a conscious decision to flip a switch and not let this inconvenience ruin our trip  or my attitude. I chose to to stay hopeful as we approached the LOT airlines service desk. I kept telling Ted over and over again “it’s gonna be fine – it’s gonna be fine.” Fortunately LOT was a lot more accommodating than AirBerlin and was able to get us to Vienna early the next day. On top of that we got to stay in a nice hotel and got vouchers to enjoy plenty of  good Polish food.

Instead of being grumpy that we’d lose a day in Vienna  – Ted and I made the most of the afternoon and got to enjoy an unexpected stay in Warsaw, Poland. One of my favorite countries and my mother land! I’d been before when I studied abroad and always wanted Ted to have a chance to see this city – and here it was!  Totally unplanned! But we had so much fun and I’m actually kind of glad that it happened. We visited the Old Town, did some shopping, and had a nice dinner.

And you know what , the rest of the trip went just fine.  I’m convinced a big part of this was because of our attitudes. I’m a big believer in energies and that you get what you give out in this world. I really think that if we let ourselves become negative and bitter about an unlucky situation, it could have put a cloud on the rest of our trip. Instead we chose the opposite and everything ended up working beautifully. Even the weather was perfect and nothing else went wrong.

So this is my big lesson from the trip!  After some extra hassle, we got to add another beautiful city to our itinerary. Not so bad!

As for AirBerlin – the claim is filed.  I’m pretty sure I’ll see that money someday, just not any time soon. For now, I’ll consider it a massive advance paid to the forces of karma 🙂

Here are a few pics we were able to take while exploring Warsaw. We made it just in time for sunset which made the whole city glow with a warm light. One of my favorite things about this city is its resilience. During WWII, Nazis utterly destroyed the city by leveling it to the ground. Decades later its been rebuilt – brick by brick. Every time I visit I remember to appreciate this as I walk the streets.

Stay tuned for more posts on Bratislava, Vienna, and spots in Germany!