Dag 863: The case of the metallic case

Once upon a time I booked some plane tickets for a trip to Sweden, using my air miles, a year in advance. When you use air miles you still have to pay the tax and this particular airline charges your credit card, for the tax, a couple of weeks before you fly rather than at the time of booking. There was a slight problem here because my credit cards all expired before the charge would be made so I picked the one I wanted to use and made a mental note that I would need to ring them once my new card arrived to ensure they had the correct details when it came to take the tax payment from it.

The only flights I had been able to find that I could use my air miles on had been Manchester to Stockholm via Copenhagen. I would rather have had direct flights but I'd flown via this route a few times before and Copenhagen has a very nice airport so I wasn't too bothered.

A couple of months later I got a call from the airline saying they had changed the time of the connecting flight so I would no longer get to Copenhagen soon enough to make my connection and could I book a different flight. There didn't seem to be any convenient alternative, but then she said "do you need to go via Copenhagen or would you consider a direct flight?" I said I would be happy to take a direct flight and the booking was changed accordingly. This was pretty good, apart from the fact that we now would be staying only 4 nights instead of 6 - but it would at least mean that we didn't spend so much money on the hotel. Which, I then reminded myself, I hadn't booked yet. The last few years we had stayed at the Scandic Hasselbacken Hotel on Djugården. It is in a nice quiet location next to Skansen and various other places the kids (and I) like to go to and it is also next to a ferry terminal so it was great to have a few drinks in the patio area in the early evening before taking the ferry to one of the restaurants in Gamla Stan. Each previous year we had booked direct with the hotel but this time I was determined to try and book online through one of those websites that gets you discounted rates. Over the following weeks I checked various websites, but most didn't have a decent way of specifying how many kids you had and how you wanted them to sleep (i.e. cots, foldaway beds etc). The ones that did let you say how many kids you had kept coming back with "This exceeds the maximum occupancy for this hotel", but I knew it didn't because we had stayed there loads of times before. I decided to put this off for a while.

I then thought it was time to look up the booking on the airline website to make sure it was still in order. I went to the "my bookings section" and there in bold letters was a single booking for a return trip from Manchester to Copenhagen. My heart sank as I clicked on it to open it up, but in the details it said Manchester to Stockholm so it seemed ok, so my heart rose again. I rang them up, just to be sure, and they reassured me that the booking was from Manchester to Stockholm, and as I had acquired more air miles by then I decided to upgrade the outward trip to business to make up for the fact that it was going to be a shorter trip than I had wanted. (I should add that it is impossible for any trip I make to Sweden to be long enough).

Time passed and my new credit card arrived so I rang up again to explain that when I had originally booked the flight my card had a date that would expire before it would be charged so could I give them the new expiry date. They asked if I still wanted to use the same card, so I said yes and just gave them the new expiry date.

Now it was time to try and book the hotel again. I had another few weeks of trying to book online, but then decided to give up and book directly again. So we rang the hotel only to be told, "sorry we are fully booked at that time." We asked to be put on the waiting list and then had to think about another hotel. We had stayed at Stallmästaregården before which was in a fantastic location by a lake with loads of grass for the kids to play on and a decking area by the water to have drinks on, but it was not in a good location for visiting all the places we liked to go, so we really needed to find a different one. The main criteria was:

1. central location
2. outdoor space for the kids to play
3. somewhere to have a drink outside before dinner

The Hasselbacken seemed to be the only one that matched all three, with Stallmästaregården matching numbers 2 and 3.

So, we not only couldn't find a perfect hotel, but there was also the possibility that we wouldn't find any hotel at all.
When I was working in Sweden the sales manager for the client we were working for used to stay at the SAS Radisson Strand hotel which he rated very highly. We had walked passed it on loads of previous trips and thought it looked nice so we rang them up and they had a suite we could stay in. We booked it in the hope that The Hasselbacken would come back to us as this room was about twice the price we had wanted to pay. It only met number 1 in the above criteria, but it had a lounge for the kids to play in, it overlooked the water, was extremely central and just round the corner from NK, which is one of my favourite shops in Stockholm.

It got closer to the day of our holiday and the Hasselbacken didn't phone, but I began to look forward to staying in a waterfront suite in the Radisson Strand hotel.

We were due to travel out on a wednesday and the sunday before I logged into the website to check my booking status. Sure enough there was the Manchester to Copenhagen heading so I clicked on it and then the browser froze. I waited for something to happen and eventually it came back with "no booking found". I tried going to a different screen and coming back to this one, but it would no longer display the "Manchester to Copenhagen" heading. I tried logging out and back in again, but it just said "you have no bookings".

I began to wonder if I had accidentally clicked on the cancel booking button when I tried to view it.
I found their booking number and phoned only to get a message saying "we are only open monday to friday". There was nothing to do but wait for monday, but as this was a bank holiday I wasn't expecting to get hold of anyone, and sure enough I didn't. So it was now Tuesday (the day before we thought we were going to Sweden, I had checked the website loads of times and it just said "no bookings found". I rang them up and they said that the booking was absolutely fine, nothing to worry about and we don't know why it isn't showing up on the website. So I could relax again.

The next morning we got up very early because the last 2 years we had nearly missed the flight due to being stuck in traffic on the way to the airport.

The flight was at 10:00 and we drove into the airport grounds at 08:00 - loads of time.

The first thing we notice is the sign listing the terminals. My wife asks which one we are going from. Oops - I am used to flying from Leeds Bradford which only has 1 terminal and I had completely forgotten that Manchester has more than one. I remembered that the terminal we went from before was not on the ground floor and there was a ramp up to the door for cars to use. I drove around and saw a ramp going up by Terminal 2. Ok then, that's that one sorted ok we are flying from Terminal 2. I followed the road sign to Terminal 2 long stay car park and drove in around 08:15. At 08:30 we were still driving round looking for a parking space and so were about 10 other cars. At 08:45 I was about to drive the car onto a bit of pavement and park it there when a car pulled out of a space and I zoomed into it before anyone else could spot it. Next job was to get everybody out of the car and get us and the cases to the bus stop which had a bus just pulling up to it.

We tried to make it, but the bus drove off just before we got there. I looked at the sign and it said the buses travel every 15 minutes. I was beginning to feel that familiar feeling of their being a possibility of not making the flight.

15 minutes went by and 2 buses drove into the car park. The first on said Terminals 1 and 3 and the second said Terminal 2. Both buses drove around the entire car park at walking pace before coming to our stop. We clambered onto the second bus with all the bags and push chair etc and I said to the driver - SAS go from terminal 2 don't they? "Nope, they go from terminal 1 - you should be on that bus" he said, pointing at the bus that was just pulling away. I said that I guess they must have changed terminal as last time we went it was from terminal 2 - I remembered because it had a ramp. The driver told me that they hadn't changed and both terminals 1 and 2 had ramps. I thought we were going to have to get off and wait another 15 minutes for the next bus, but the driver said he would drop us off at the station which was near terminal 1 and we just needed to go on the moving walkway.

He did this and we finally rolled up at the check in desks while they were still open, though we had wanted to get some breakfast and feed the baby before boarding the plane so we were far from relaxed. Fortunately as I have a gold card we could join the express check in queue and hopefully make up a bit of time.

Even though I had been reassured that our booking was ok, I was still a little worried that there was something wrong with it due to it not showing up on the web site, so it was a big relief when, after handing my Eurobonus card over to the check-in guy he started printing off stickers to go on the cases and sending them off down the conveyer belt. Once they had all gone he asked me for our tickets. I explained that I had booked these on an e-ticket so didn't have any. He replied that the booking showed that we had been issued with paper tickets and we needed to give them top him. He suggested that maybe they had been left for us at the ticket desk so I went and joined the queue there. By the time it was my turn there were only a couple of people still checking in at the desks. I asked if there were any tickets for me to collect, but there weren't. I gave my booking reference and the lady looked it up. She said there was an e-ticket assigned for a 10 month old baby, but nothing else.

I explained that I had booked them online a year ago and had been rung up to change the booking and that it had disappeared from the website, but that I had been re-assured that everything was ok.

So a phone call was made and then I was told that my credit card had failed authorisation so the tickets hadn't been issued (apart from the baby one as this was completely free). I couldn't understand this, so I gave my credit card to the lady who spoke on the phone again for a bit and then said that the number of this one didn't match the number of the one that they had used. I seemed that when I had given them the new expiry date I had forgotten which card I had originally used and so the new date didn't match that card. They tried it again and this time it went through and the tickets were issued.

By now everyone had finished checking in and they said we must go straight to the plane (gate 25) - thus no time to feed the baby or buy any duty free.

We raced off and joined the back of a monster queue through security screening. I noticed there was a little door manned by a man which seemed to be some sort of express screening line. I asked if we could go through and he said ok so we raced through, raced past the booze shop and raced on towards gate 25. We rushed past gate 23 which was half way through boarding and stopped at gate 25 where people were just sitting around waiting. After a few minutes of this there appeared to be no immediate prospect that people were about to start boarding so I decided to run back to the shop to get a couple of bottles of Verve Cliquot (2 for £40) which we would certainly need that night to recover from the stress endured this far.

As I ran back past gate 23 I noticed the last few passengers going onto the plane. That must be the Copenhagen flight I thought to myself.

I got to the shop picked up the dual pack of Verve Cliquot and joined the queue at the till. There was 1 till open with 1 lady behind it and about 5 other members of staff standing around, presumably making sure people aren't pinching stuff. The queue seemed to move very slowly and finally there was only 1 guy in front of me, He had a bottle of expensive looking cognac. "Can I have your boarding card please" she asked him in a very slow voice. He handed it over and she waited a bit and said "Were did you get the bottle from". He pointed to the area where booze is extra cheap, but only for people going outside Europe. So now I had to wait while she showed him where he should have got the bottle from, but thankfully he decided he didn't want to pay that much so it was finally my turn. She served me in the slowest way possible as my stress levels increased.

I ran back to gate 25, but slowed down as I got there because they still hadn't started boarding. By now I was panting and my mouth was completely dry and in desperate need for some water, and I also needed to go to the toilet. I looked to see were the toilet was and noticed that the sign by gate 25 said Copenhagen. I looked back to gate 23 and it said Stockholm. I looked at the boarding cards, but they did say get 25.

We raced back to gate 23 just as they were starting to call our names over the tannoy system.

As we boarded the plane we wondered if something was trying to tell us that we should be going on this holiday at this time.

Te flight went very well and I was felling much better when we landed and left the plane. My usual excitement of being in Sweden had returned and I no longer cared about anything outside of my Swedish bubble.

We went to the conveyer belts and grabbed our bags as they came off. Eventually we had all but the big silver metallic one and no more bags were coming out. There was a big metallic case on the belt, but it looked nothing like ours apart from that. It had bigger wheels that ours, it had stickers and labels on it, where ours had none and it was a different shape than ours.

When out case was weighed it had a heavy bag label fixed to the handle so I wondered if it might need to be collected from the outsize luggage area. I went over there but it wasn't there and I asked at the lost luggage counter if it would come out somewhere else if it was heavy, but they said no it would come out on the normal belt.

I went back to the normal belt, but our case still hadn't come out and the other metallic case was still there.

I decided we had better go to the lost luggage section and my wife said she thought someone must have taken our case instead of their own one. I thought they must have been pretty short sighted to have done that. My wife decided that as this case contained all here stuff, if it didn't arrive we would be going straight back home on the next flight. We got to the counter and I reported our case as being lost. My wife mentioned that she thought somebody may have taken out case instead of their own as there was a single metallic case left on the belt. The lady asked me to go and get it so she could put out a call in case they were still inside the airport. At this stage we began to worry about the fact that we had not put our name or address on our case.

I arrived back at the belt and noticed our case was standing next to the wall opposite the belt. I grabbed it and raced back to the desk. All was well so we went to find the taxi rank feeling at one with the world. And after I managed to conduct the whole taxi getting transaction in Swedish I felt even more at one with the world. In fact I have never felt more at one with the world than when I am in Sweden, so you could say I was actually feeling at one with Sweden.

The hotel was great, the view from our room was fantastic, and the remainder of our holiday was great.



As well as visiting the usual places:
Junibacken
Skansen
Aquaria Vattenmuseum
Grönalund
NK
Solo (for my jeans and t-shirts) - interesting review here
Sally's Bar
we also went on a boat trip to Fjäderholmarna, where we hadn't been before, which has a great pirate ship for the kids to play on, really nice views over the water to other islands and also a fantastic workshop with all sorts of amazing wood carvings. We had a really long chat with the guy who made everything and he gave me a tiny bit of wood that had come from the handle of a Viking axe that had been found buried in the mud under the water at the edge of the island. I could quite happily have spent the whole day on that island.



We also got round the missing hotel criteria by visiting a bar by the waters edge near the bridge to djurgården that had a big grassy area for the kids to play on and a place for us to sit right on the waters edge. We went everyday and ate there on the last day before heading back to the airport.



I have noticed on few visits to Stockholm at around this time of year that students celebrate their graduation by piling onto the back of lorries decorated in branches and driving round dancing, waving and screaming at passers by. It looks a lot of fun - I wish I had graduated in Sweden and then been driven round on the back of a lorry wearing a sailors hat and drinking and shouting at passers by. I wonder if I could do a similar thing in Harrogate?



Even though it was now more than a couple of years since I had been to my Swedish classes in Edinburgh and I hadn't had that much chance to practice, I felt that I had managed to speak much more Swedish on this trip than any of my previous ones.

We also managed to solve the mystery of the metallic case on our return to Manchester Airport. As we watched our metallic case come towards us the guy standing next to us grabbed it off the belt. I told him it was my case and he then said he had done exactly the same in Stockholm the previous Wednesday, and sure enough along came the other metallic looking case that had been left on the belt by itself at Arlanda Airport. Once he had reclaimed his proper case we got chatting and found he and his wife also visit Sweden every year.

I won't even bother going through the hassle we then had getting from terminal 1 back to the terminal 2 long stay car park.