Day 11: Komarom in Prague and the Danube Travel Log

We had a relatively smooth transfer back home. We woke up at 3:30am for a 9:30am flight. The airport was 1 ½ hours away, so we needed to be there at 6:30am, so our bus was at 5am, but the ship needs our luggages ready to be loaded by 4am, so we needed to be up at 3:30am to finish packing. We only had 4 hours of sleep, but that was plenty.

The ride to the airport was nice… we saw sunrise over corn fields on the way, and there were so many wind farms. I noticed once we got into Hungary how much I was relying on signs in Germany.

We had airport breakfast for 1 ½ hours, The flight into Zurich was delayed because of a storm there, we were delayed for only ½ hours, and the flight was another 1 ½ hours. When we got there it was still pouring rain, we only had 1 hour to transfer to the international terminal. Luckily the lines weren’t that long so we got through with plenty of time. La Professeure thought our connecting flight leaves at boarding time so we were worried and hurried. We managed to get to the gate at the boarding time, only to find that our connecting flight was also delayed by 1/2 hours. Good thing that bad weather affects everyone equally.

The flight back was 9 hours long but it was during the day so we didn’t need to sleep. I think I watched 2 movies and listened to podcasts. Swiss airline seats are narrow, but at least we are slim. We sat on the two seats by the window, me by the window and La Professeure by the aisle. There was a loud and sometimes crying toddler to our left across the aisle from La Professeure, so that was annoying. We took off at 1:15 Zurich time, and got back to JFK at 4:15. By the time we got out of the airport, took the LIRR, and Uber back, it was already 7… We had spent 21 hours just on the road. The slowest bit was definitely the 50 minutes it took to travel the 50 feet at US immigration control at JFK Terminal 2 - it amazes me that, after so many years of flying Delta, Terminal 2 can reveal new levels of shittiness.

We had fun on this trip. What we found was that the travelling set are a self-selecting group - not many people were wearing masks… maybe 1 or 2 in a 40-person bus. We don’t put our masks on on Viking buses because they have a vaccine policy, but when we go indoors with other tourists, we put our masks on. There were some buses where people were coughing (we’d call them “Covid buses”) that we’d put our masks on, but nobody would blink.

Last updated September 23, 2022