November 7/8 Beginning of Elegant Elbe Cruise

Day 1 – Thursday/Friday

We left the house around 4 PM for an 8:10 plane on Lufthansa.  We were not aware of the Lufthansa strike which was in progress in Europe.  Plane left around 8:40 PM bound for Munich.  The cabin crew was not quite the usual service, since I think they wished they were out on strike.  Anyway, we got in around 9:30 AM in Munich and made our way to the departure gate.  While waiting, we noticed that the plane had disappeared from the board at gate K1 and when we looked at the monitor we found it was cancelled.  

I called Viking Air and they finally said to go to the service desk and Lufthansa would arrange a train ride to Prague.  A few of us proceeded to the huge line halfway up the building.  Two of our party, the Kershaws have trouble walking long distance (Gordon is 91 and Carolyn has some heart issues), so Susan managed to procure two wheelchairs, since there wasn’t much support from Lufthansa people.  Anyway, we eventually go met in the line by a nice gentleman who arrange for us to stay at the Hilton at the Munich airport and gave us lunch, dinner, hotel and breakfast vouchers, as well as seats on the earliest flight to Prague.

We went to the hotel and got checked in, went back to the terminal for lunch at a beer garden, then went back to the hotel for afternoon naps. During all this time, we were using the procured wheelchairs. We had a nice dinner, and then slept. We managed to sleep to 5:30 am, which is hard with a six hour time difference. We had breakfast and were able to get back to the Munich airport in time. We even returned the wheelchairs after getting to the gate.

We arrived at the hotel in Prague only 16 hours or so after we were supposed to.