Zurich - Departure

Café Felix, Zurich

There’s always scope for things to go wrong when you’re travelling and with the way things have gone recently, I feared the worst. But actually there’s not really anything to report.

My flight was at 0930, so I aimed to get at the airport by 0800. I’d already checked in my luggage the night before to make things easier for myself. Annoyingly, because I’d had my purse stolen, I didn’t have my frequent flyer cards any more and the system wouldn’t recognise the Aegean Airlines one as Gold, so I had to register on my Swiss Silver one. Initially, the woman claimed I couldn’t get an extra bag for free on this particular flight, but after I asserted that the flight was run by Swiss, she double-checked and then agreed that I was right (always very satisfying!). It could have gone a lot worse, and worse is what I’ve got used to recently. So, the fact that it went relatively smoothly was a good sign.

I’d ordered an underwater camera off Ricardo (the Swiss version of Ebay). Of course, since I ordered the camera during my period of bad luck, the order went missing (see, I’ve only told you the highlights of my bad luck, there was actually more!). I contacted the (business) seller on Friday and they apologised for the error, promising to send it the next day and informing me that it would be there by early the following week. By Wednesday, the camera still hadn’t arrived and I was travelling on Thursday.

Markus said he would text me as soon as it came. I checked my text at around 1815 and there was no news.

I met Lena for a goodbye drink in Café Felix and we parted at 2100. I checked my texts. Markus had written to say that the camera had arrived, and he was asking if I wanted to collect it that evening or meet him at the airport the next morning since he had a flight at 0730. So, the fact that the camera arrived before my departure after all was another good sign.

I texted him back to say I would come over now, inwardly hoping that he was not asleep as he was presumably still jet-lagged from his vacation in Peru. I didn’t wait for a reply and hopped on the tram to get to his place.  I got there, rang the doorbell – no response! I didn’t ring again in case he was asleep and I made my way back to the main station.

I think I’ve already made my displeasure of early starts quite clear in this blog, but I decided in my head that I should nevertheless collect the camera at the airport as the whole point of ordering it early was so that I could start using it straight away. I was feeling quite stressed about the unplanned early start as it was nearing 10pm and my sleeping time was now limited.

As I arrived at the main station, I switched on my phone again (the battery was flashing red to say that it was about to conk out, which is why I’d promptly switched it off after reading the text) and at that very moment it rang. I kid you not! It was Markus to say that he’d just got back and I could come and collect the camera. So, yet another good sign.

My mother always used to say that I had the Devil’s luck – meaning, I think, that bad things happen to me and then by a stroke of luck, the badness gets cancelled out. This was an example of that, I think! It’s better to have the Devil’s luck than no luck at all.

The flight itself went very smoothly. I had a seat free next to me and the time passed quite quickly. My luggage arrived, my Swiss Francs were accepted for my entry Visa, and I arrived the other side of customs before my pick-up had expected me.

This is a new start and I hope that my bad luck is now also behind me, at least for a while.