THE PRICE IS RIGHT?
By Colleen Forbush
Let’s see how did it all happen. Perhaps, it was my up bringing; my parents taught me that people are generally nice and to trust them. Or perhaps it was when the priest said, "…for better or worse, for richer or poorer…" And I said, "I do." Yes, I said those unforgettable, naive, absolutely absurd words, "Oh, Honey, I love you; of course I’ll follow you to where ever your job takes you." Now I’m not Ann Landers or anything, but listen to me ladies; if you insist on saying this silly thing - not the I love you part, that’s not the part that gets you in trouble. I’m talking about the other part - then put some parameters on it. For example: "Oh, Honey, I love you; of course I’ll follow you where ever your job takes you AS LONG AS it’s Hawaii or The Virgin Islands." Or "Oh, Honey, I love you; of course I’ll follow you where ever your job takes you AS LONG AS the salary is tripled and the company pays all of our moving expenses there AND back - because if you are going to be stuck somewhere that is, shall we say, less than perfect, you might as well have the money to travel and eat well. Because if you make this silly statement without stipulations, and you think that your knight in shining armor won’t hold you to it or will be reasonable about the places he chooses; think again. I mean look at me. I said this statement, but I was much to general in what I requested. I just said anywhere that is cooler than Texas. Well, I got cooler all right; as a matter of fact I got a place that is down right cold, rainy 10 months out of the year, and is twice as expensive as just about any place in the U.S.
So as you can see, every once in a while, I have to escape this paradise and get back to my roots.
Booking a trip from anywhere in Germany is very strange. Most travel agents do not speak English which is not really a big surprise; after all, this is Germany and not England. But the weird part is that they don’t look for the lowest prices. They just ask you which airlines you want to fly, give you the price, and then expect you to book the flight. Or they won’t tell you any of the prices until you either promise to book the flight with them or pay a service charge for them telling you the price. Well, through the recommendation of some friends, we booked our flight with a travel agency that specializes in U.S. tours. They didn’t speak English, but I managed with my German. But they would tell us the price without any obligation, and they did look at everything to try to find the cheapest flight. Everything was fine except that they messed up my daughter’s ticket. Normally, I wouldn’t mind letting her ride in my lap for a 20 hour trip, but traveling alone and being 6 months pregnant - well, let’s put it this way; she needed her own seat if for no other reason than there wasn’t much lap left for her to sit on.
We both thought something was "funny" when we paid for the tickets because the price was too low. And we knew something was up when the travel agent found it nearly impossible to book our seats and had to write out some strange looking voucher and told us to present it to the airline people if they would not give us our seats. But we were not savvy enough to ask all of the right questions at the time.
So it’s off to the airport we go on Wednesday at 6 AM full of good spirits and fun. Then we hit the ticket counter. The ticket agent looks at our tickets. "I see the child is riding on your lap." "No, I paid for two seats." "Not according to this you didn’t." "What? Are you sure?" "Yes." So I hand her THE VOUCHER. ‘This doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps if you talk to the people in ticketing you can straighten this out, but there aren’t any seats left on the plane even if you want to buy one." So we go over to ticketing to find out that the voucher means nothing, and that there is nothing they can do because not only is it 6:30 in the morning and the travel agent isn’t open yet, but because it’s Wednesday and all of the travel agencies are closed on Wednesdays. "But," my Knight in Shining Armor says, "I called on Sunday to confirm the seats and the guy not only confirmed the seat reservations, but he gave us the seat numbers." "Did you say you talked to a man?" "Yes." "Well, all I can say is that someone was playing a trick on you because we had only women working all day Sunday." Then to top it off, she says, "But if you would like to buy a ticket right now, here, from me you can." "But the lady over there just said that there are no more seats left." "I don’t know. My screen shows seats available, but not two seats together." So needless to say we opted for the child on the lap, or in my case the child on the knees.
Colleen ForbushCopyright 1999
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