Over the kids holiday break, we decided to take a trip to Germany. The idea was born from many intentions. 1. Our younger child goes to an International school where she speaks German everyday. It would be great if she can practice her German somewhere outside of school. 2. Teddy used to live in Germany many years ago so it would be neat to see where he lived during his teenage years. 3. Teddy has a hand condition that supposedly is related to being a Northern European descendant so we were hoping to find some better treatment options while in Europe. 4. Cruising is unanimously the favorite form of travel in this family and we discovered an affordable cruise line, AIDA, that speaks predominantly German on the ship.
So the initial plan was to fly in to Hamburg on Friday, then spend 2 days in Hamburg to adjust to the local timezones and checkout Miniature Wonderland, then board the ship on Sunday, for 5 nights, then take a train to Frankfurt and spend 3 nights in Frankfurt. Then fly home on Delta, nonstop. It would have been a total of 10 nights, 3 flights, 1 ship, and 1 train ride. Instead, our trip turned into 17 nights, 5 flights, 4 long distance train rides, and a different ship entirely…
Welcome to Part 1 of our Holiday Trip from Hell…
Day 1: December 15, 2022
Neither kids wanted to go to school today and managed to convince me to let them stay home and get ready for the trip. Our flight departs from 3:55pm and lands in Amsterdam at 5:55am on December 16th, then we have another flight from Amsterdam at 8:30am to Hamburg, arriving at 9:30am. Both flights are operated by Delta’s partner airline, KLM. Since we planned on flying back from Frankfurt directly to Atlanta, we parked our car at the International Park-Ride, then boarded the airport shuttle. Look at our smiling faces. If only we had known what was going to transpire in the next 24 hours…
Day 2: December 16, 2022
Well, the KLM flights were pretty bad. At least I wasn’t a fan. None of us got any sleep. Teddy and I flew Economy+ which had no difference from the regular Economy. At least no difference that I could come up with. The seats were so tight and the person sitting next to me was so large. It was so uncomfortable. I had my jacket, scarf, and backpack under the seat in front of me. When it was time to get off the flight (in Amsterdam), I only grabbed my jacket and backpack, and left the scarf behind. I don’t think I would have made the mistake if I were actually able to bend down and check under the seat, but I couldn’t because it was SO TIGHT. I would hit my head on the seat in front of me if I tried to bend down at all. I realized my mistake as soon as we went to passport control in Amsterdam airport. So I spoke to the gate agent at our next departure gate, who clearly had better things in mind to do than talking to me. She RELUCTANTLY called the previous gate and talked to someone in Dutch, then told me that they couldn’t do anything about it because the flight was a Delta flight – a bold faced lie. When I proved that it was indeed a KLM flight, she RELUCTANTLY called them back, spoke in Dutch again, then told me that there’s nothing they can do because they don’t have anyone that has the time to go pick up the scarf or bring it over. Wow, nice customer service. I asked her how I can file a missing item report, she told me to do that at Hamburg. Huh? But I’m in Amsterdam, and my scarf is in Amsterdam… OK.
So I ran to the nearby Lost & Found center to see what I could do there. Based on the sign, they should be open, but would you be surprised if I told you there’s no one working there at all? There’s a line of hopeless people waiting for help, but there’s no staff in sight.
Our next flight was short, and smooth. We landed in Hamburg, picked up our luggage, and dragged our tired bodies to our hotel, Pierdrei HafenCity. It’s only 10:35am at this time so our room wasn’t ready. We dropped off our items and picked up our tickets for Miniature Wonderland, then decided to be early for our COVID test. COVID tests are required for boarding our AIDA ship. We all felt fine and Alice and I were tested at home before departure so we weren’t worried about this test at all.
We got our tests done with Corona Freepass. They have many locations around town and one of the locations is only a 5 minute walk from our hotel. The problem is that they require a European phone number in order to book the appointment (and receive the results), so I had to ask a childhood friend who lives in Amsterdam now, to help me with the booking of the appointment and sending me the result when she received them.
The testing center received us early with no issues. Then we walked to the Miniature Wonderland. We were all grinning from ear to ear at this point. Other than my lost scarf, everything else is going according to plan swiftly. Shortly after we entered the museum, I got the results from my friend, which stopped me cold in my tracks. ALICE TESTED POSITIVE.
What do we do now? Nowhere in our plans did we prepare for this. We did not have a backup plan whatsoever! Alice still felt healthy and the rest of us all tested negative, so we thought to ourselves that perhaps, it’s a false positive? We decided to finish visiting Miniature Wonderland and schedule another test for her later in the day.
Miniature Wonderland was amazing, but it was so hard to enjoy much of it because there was way too much looming over us. What does this positive test mean? Does it mean our entire trip is foiled? Can we get any money back? What about all of the private excursions we had booked for the ports? If we can’t board the ship, where are we even going to sleep for those nights?
Miniature Wonderland is a sight to behold. No words can do it justice. If you are ever in Hamburg, this is definitely the number one must-do attraction, even if you don’t care about toy trains or museums. This has got to be the coolest train museum in the world.
After being dead tired at the train museum, Teddy and Ava wanted to walk back to the hotel to see if our room was ready. I didn’t think our room would be ready since I never got a phone call (the hotel told me they would call when it was ready), and I was just so tired. So Alice and I stayed behind. Then turns out, our room WAS ready, hotel said they couldn’t get the phone call through. They didn’t bother emailing me either.
Now we settled in at our hotel and I signed Alice up for another COVID test. We were getting a little more cheery again, really starting to believe that the test had to be a false positive.
This time we decided to try the testing center near the main train station. We had to take a taxi there and back, the whole time trying to keep our spirits up.
Alice tested positive, again. We were shattered. Our dream vacation dashed before our eyes. I felt so bad for my kids who had been so looking forward to this trip of a lifetime.
I tried to cheer everyone up. We were going to make the best of it. We had some dinner at Kitchens, the in-house restaurant in our hotel. The restaurant was a lot fancier than I expected. We chose the 5 course meal. The food was very good but every course took a LONG time to arrive. I simply didn’t have the stamina to last through the whole thing so I had to go back to the room before the dessert was served. My plan was to try to contact the cruiseline to see what our next step was, but most of the time I fell asleep before I could figure out how to get the phone call through (since the menu was entirely in German).
Course 0: Amuse-bouche
I don’t remember what either Amuse-bouche was made of but they were both incredible.
Course 1: POLAND – Cauliflower (Crumb | Leek | Hazelnut)
Course 2: FRANCE – Scallops (Parmesean | Parsley)
The green little frozen balls were delicious and the scallops were cooked perfectly.
Course 3: GERMANY – Everything Except Goose (Bread | Apple | Onion)
Course 4: ENGLAND – Roast Beef (Cabbage | Potato | Jus)
The beef was very tender but I didn’t care for whatever was inside that cabbage roll.
Course 5: SOUTH AFRICA – Malva Pudding (Apricot | Vanilla)
The dinner was expensive but good. Our room was very nice and even though we had so much weighing on our minds, we were so tired that we all slept soundly.
