We slept until about 7 am, had our last hotel breakfast, and then got to work packing up our suitcase for the final time. It looked like we’d be able to make the weight, so no worries. I was a little worried about getting the suitcase all the way across town to catch the bus to the airport, but as it turned out it handled the trip like a champ.
We waited patiently at the bus stop for the airport shuttle, and soon enough we were on our way. The driver handled the streets of Prague like a pro – darting in between trains and cars and generally driving the minibus like a sports car. At one point we went uphill for a while and then started passing tour bus after tour bus with huge crowds of people walking away from the road. There must have been a major sightseeing spot that we missed! I did a quick consultation of my map, and it turned out that everyone was going to see the St. Vitus Cathedral – the same one we saw the previous morning. I couldn’t believe the difference in crowds between the early time we arrived yesterday and the late morning today.
It was just a twenty minute drive to the airport. I was expecting Prague International Airport to be quite large. Every time we travel on the flight board I see flights to Prague, so I expected it to be a major hub, but actually the place was really tiny. We arrived too early to check in, so we killed time shopping and drinking our last Pilsner Urquells at the bar.
Once we got our gate we headed there, and the airport was the kind where the security is done at each gate, instead of out front before all the gates. On our flight to Istanbul was a big group of Indian guys. These guys must have been on the first airplane flight of their lives – they didn’t know any of the rules for going through security. Every mistake was made – their bags were full of liquids, their belts set off the metal detector, they had aerosol cans everywhere – it was like a comedy. The security staff just kept having them go through again and again – eventually we could get through as well.
It was just a two hour flight to Istanbul, and it was a piece of cake. We arrived at around 6 pm local time in Istanbul, and our flight out wasn’t until after 1 am that night, so we had a lot of time to kill. We did it the usual way, at the airport bar, but even I can’t kill six hours in a bar without ending up in a hospital. We also walked around the shops, sat in various locations to people watch (including an interesting group of Turkmenistanis flying back to Turkmenistan – beautiful traditional clothing), ate hamburgers at a strange restaurant called “Burger Lab”, played picture shiritori, and considered buying a bottle of Blood Orange Cointreau (we decided to wait and buy it in Japan).
The big event while we were waiting was to try to get our seats upgraded to business class. The magic number of miles to upgrade was 45,000. Kuniko had 50,000 miles, so she was set. I had 44,860 miles, and having just flown in on a flight from Prague I was sure that I could qualify. However, the Turkish Airlines staff working the lounge showed no mercy. According to their computer right now I was short 140 miles, so I was out of luck. The name of Turkish Airlines’ mileage program is called “Miles and Smiles”, but there were no smiles to be seen on any of the staff that evening. They yelled at customers to go away and check the flight board, the growled at old ladies to call a phone number and leave the desk alone, and they sternly told me that if I wanted to buy miles to make the upgrade I should call a number in Istanbul and make arrangements.
I didn’t want Kuniko to miss the chance to rest up on the way back, so she went ahead and upgraded to business class. I was happy that she’d be able to enjoy a more comfortable flight. I ended up riding in economy in a middle seat, but it didn’t really matter since at 1:35 am I was only thinking about sleeping. I slept through the first meal and barely remember accepting the second one. It was a smooth, uneventful flight back for me. Kuniko showed me the pictures later of her business class experience, and it looked great. I probably wouldn’t have been awake long enough to enjoy it myself, so things worked out perfectly.
We arrived around 6 pm on Saturday evening in Osaka, and from there it was the usual trip back home. We flew through immigration and customs, and then caught a bus just in time to take us back to Sannomiya in Kobe. On the bus we had to sit across the aisle from each other on the ride back, but we were both so happy – even just being apart on the plane I had really missed my wife. We grinned at each other the whole ride to Kobe – it felt like we had undertaken a big challenge to travel Eastern Europe and we had passed with flying colors. Kind of like it was just us against the world – and we had won.
Our home was not a pile of ash and rubble, although our toilet was a little stinky from not being used for two weeks in the summer furnace of Japan. It took some chemicals and a lot of flushing to get things back in order. We unpacked our stuff while sipping sparkling wine – another travel tradition of ours. Kuniko had cleaned our house from top to bottom before we left, so we could go to sleep in our own bed for the first time in a couple of weeks. Thanks to the air conditioner, we could sleep well. What a trip!
