The beginning of my trip – Monday, August 12th – was a bit rocky. Saying goodbye to my family and loved ones wasn’t easy, but at least I expected that challenge. What I didn’t expect was to miss my international connecting flight to Dublin. My flight from Minneapolis to Chicago was on time when I arrived at the airport and it remained on time throughout the check-in and security processes. When I got to my gate, however, one of the employees came over the P.A. system and announced that our flight was to be delayed about an hour due to a groundstop at the Chicago O’Hare airport. This sent me into immediate panic mode because, if everything went as planned, I was only going to have about 25 minutes from when my flight landed in Chicago to when I needed to be on the plane headed to Dublin. And, of course, nothing was going as planned. The woman over the P.A. explained that a groundstop meant that no flights were coming in to or leaving the Chicago airport. I thought this meant I was in the clear: If no flights were allowed to leave, then surely I would make my international flight. But the employee sent me over the edge when she continued to say that all international flights were still operating on schedule despite the groundstop.
Upon hearing this unwelcome news, I immediately headed up to the counter to ask the employee what the heck I was supposed to do about missing my flight. I must have looked extremely concerned, because as soon as I started asking for her help, her face softened and she assured me that she could work everything out. She remained true to her word by putting me on a much later flight out of Chicago that was going to London and then booking an additional flight from London to Dublin for me.
Fortunately, I was flying with another girl in my group so I wasn’t alone for the elongated layovers. We kept each other company (and calm) throughout the following 24 hours as we made our way to Dublin. After the hiccough of getting to Chicago, everything went smoothly. Our international flight was actually rather comfortable. I slept for most of the 8-hour flight (which really helped lessen the jet lag!) and we were sitting next to the cutest little baby, so at least we had something to look at when we were awake. We made it to Dublin safely and with all of our luggage, but instead of arriving at 8:00am, we arrived at around 6:00pm. I’m so thankful that everything worked out, but it was a real shame that we missed out on 10 precious hours in Dublin.
Losing Myself in Europe... Literally 