After a month in Croatia I was heading to Japan to visit my best friend and her husband on the island of Okinawa. With a 28 hour flight ahead of me, a new book, and a bag of pretzels (favorite snack food FYI), I was ready to get to Japan!
But not so fast, my journey did not go as smoothly as planned starting from the first flight leaving Croatia. My flight was delayed an hour and I was worried about making my connection in Frankfurt. I gave the flight staff my info and they said I would still have an hour and that will be enough time. This may have been true if the plane was on time to Frankfurt, but we spent around 30 minutes parking and de-boarding. I looked at my phone and saw that I had 30 minutes until my gate closed, I was still on the plane, I didn’t know my gate, and didn’t have a boarding pass. Plan B Abby, initiate Plan B, nothing, I got nothing.
Fast forward 5 minutes and I am racing through the airport like a mad woman sprinting towards the terminal shuttle and squeezing through the doors as they close on me. PHEW, I made it (this far). I found the first person who looked like they could help and in moments I had two flight attendants scanning the board finding my gate. She looked at her watch and said “Your gate is down the hall and to your left…and RUN!”
When I made it to security I looked at the hour long line in absolute horror. My gate closed in 10 minutes. I took a deep breath to try and think of a plan, it’s not like I could just catch the next 13 hour flight to Taiwan, I had another connection to make! At this moment two police officers walked by me and I blurted out “Hi, I need help, my gate is about to close and I really, really cannot miss this flight, what should I do in this situation?” They said “Well, just cut everyone! You have to do it right?” Yes, they were right, I had no other choice. I started shoving my way through a crowd to the front of the priority passengers line trying not to make eye contact because I was being that person. Sorry, excuse me, I’m so sorry, forgive me. No one gave me crap, they looked understanding, actually, and another person let me cut them to the very front, what a miracle. I walked through the body scanner and they decided they needed to preform a “random” body search. I don’t blame them, I looked extra suspicious with sweat dripping down my face and shaking like a leaf. The lady asked me “Are you alright?” “NO, I’m not, I’m going to miss my flight because of this!” “Ok, you’re good to go.”
After security I rushed to the gate to find my fate and saw that they were still boarding. Relief. The attendants took one look at my face and said, “It’s going to be okay, you made it.”
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