Monday, April 10, 2006

Happy Monday!

And a good monday it was! I really thought today would go by sooooooo slowly, but thankfully, it didn't. Could be partially because I've only been up for 12 hours (it's 10pm now). I also spent a bunch of time this morning packing a duffel bag for Mom to take home. Actually, I think packing is the wrong word. "Cramming" is more like it. My poor little duffel bag is practically exploding at the seams. It kind of looks like it's in pain, honestly. It probably is. I'm guessing it weighs almost 50 pounds. If you could see it, you'd be very surprised something that small weighs that much. Seriously, it's only about 2 x 1 x 1 (feet, that is) and I can barely lift it. It's almost completely full of books.

*Sniff*

I'm saying goodbye to all my scrapbook idea books and magazines. I'm also sending home a huge pile of letters that I've been sent since I've been here, mostly thanks to Gram (thank you!!), my big honkin' French dictionary (seriously, that's almost 5 pounds right there), a truckload of makeup stuff that I never use, all the CDs I have here, my beloved 2nd season of Arrested Development (really gonna miss that, but everything that isn't an essential had to go), all my knitting supplies, and any other random memorabilia that I want to keep but don't want to put in my luggage in 6 weeks.

That's right, 6 weeks, and I'll be gone. Holy crap. This semester has gone by soooooo fast.

Anyway, I don't want to get all mushy on you, so I'll just explain why I'm saddling my mother with an extra 50 pounds of luggage. Hmm, I could've sworn I blogged about this earlier this semester, but apparently not. So here's the story:

When I came back to Paris, I flew in on Air Berlin from Germany. I did not read the fine print about the baggage allowance for EU flights. I thought you were allowed 20 kg per piece of checked luggage.

Wrong.

You're only allowed 20kg per person.

Oops.

Anybody want to guess how much I had, seeing as I had packed for a month?

Ok, I'll just tell you.

33 kg.

Now of course Air Berlin doesn't have a flat rate like most American airlines do, like if you're between 1 and 25 pounds over, it's this much money, between 26 and 50 it's this much, etc. Nope, they charge you by the kilo.

I had to pay them 50 euro to get my luggage on the plane. And they definitely felt sorry for me and bent the rules a little, because technically you're not even allowed to have more than 30kg no matter how much you pay. So suddenly my bargain basement flight of 30 euro turned into an 80 euro trip.

Yes, you guessed it. I'm flying Air Berlin back to Germany with EVERYTHING I OWN at the end of the semester.

Enter Pack Mule Mom.

I'm hoping that with most of the heavy stuff gone, I won't be over by quite so much. I really didn't want to fly Air Berlin again because in addition to the luggage fiasco, they had some major problems with my credit card. I don't really want to get into the whole thing in the interest of time, but it involved some very sketchy emails about them not being able to process my credit card and asking me to send them my bank information and me not believing said emails, even though it turns out they were real.

Customer service isn't a strong suit of Air Berlin's.

Anyway, enough of that. Mom will be here in roughly 13 hours! Hooray! I haven't packed yet, so I should probably go do that now.

Just to let you know - we will not have internet access at the hotel. I probably will not be posting again until Saturday. I know, it's sad, but true. I hope to post lots of pictures then. Me and mom are making dinner at my house on Saturday night because my host parents will be away and they gave me permission to use the kitchen, so I'll probably steal a bunch of mom's photos for my own personal use. You probably won't see any of my shots because I plan on using the 35mm all week. Just cross your fingers that the good people at the airport didn't make my mom put the film through the x-ray machine (she's bringing me 10 rolls).

I hope you all have a fabulous week!

A Samedi!

1 Comments:

Blogger Margie said...

Ugh!! Can't believe you were charged so much for your luggage! How come you didn't fly a regular airline to Paris? We flew Wizz Air (quite a comforting name wouldn't you say) to England and they are the same with the weight-made me repack items from one suitcase to another!! Hope you are having fun and the weather is good :)

8:39 AM  

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