[OnyxCougar]

Day Twelve (Thursday) November 6, 2002


Dawn broke over the Austrian landscape as we pulled into Vienna, and we were back at the damned Sudbahnhof. This time, since we had learned the damn thing, we went right to the buses to the Flughafen (airport) and bought our tickets. We arrived at the airport hella early, and Kelle changed in the bathroom as I guarded the bags outside it. We picked up some Vienna postcards in the shop and made our way to the ticket line to check in. Waited about 45 minutes and checked the bags through to JFK. We were told they couldn't check them through because of US Customs restrictions, but we could recheck them right outside customs through to our final destination. We shrugged. No problem.

We went up to our gate. It was pretty crowded, so I found a little nook behind this big potted plant, and we sat there for about 30 minutes or so as I gave up on my right hand middle finger fiberglass nail, which had been a thorn in my ass since McCarran. We boarded the plane, halfheartedy making jokes about "hey, turn this thing around, I wanna go back to Zagreb!" Sighing, we settled in for the trip to JFK. I slept for a little bit, not much, maybe 45 minutes over the whole flight. The movie was K19 : Widowmaker, with Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson. Really excellent movie. And we had the BEEF!

We landed in New York at about 3:30pm with our little green cards all filled out and all of our bags made it. Our next flight was to leave at 6:20pm on National Airlines, directly to Las Vegas. We went through customs without a problem and right around the corner, as you go out, there was an Austrian Airlines "continued journey baggage check" counter with two women at it in the Austrian Red Livery that we had come to know and despise. The younger woman, we'll call her Helga, had dark hair and tried not to look completely confused at her very existance. "Verr are yoo goink?" she asked. "Las Vegas," Kelle replied, getting into the swing of this travelling thing. Helga tapped on the keyboard for a few moments. "Do you have your tickets?" she asked. We dutifully pulled out our last little ticket on the stub. She took them and perused it like Johnny Bench waiting for a pitch. The older woman, Hildegaard, craned her wrinkled old neck to the right and looked at the ticket. Immediately she pointed to the flight number. "National," she murmered. "N.A." Helga squinted up at the monitor and back down at the ticket. "It's not here," Helga muttered. Hilde now squinted up at the monitor. It was scary.

"Las Wegas?" she asked. We nodded. I gave her the flight number. Hilde moved young Helga over, almost booty bumped her, and took over. Tappity-tappity. "hmm." Tappity-tap-tap-tappity. Finally, she shrugged. "OK," she said. Baggage tags printed out, they attached them to the bags, we got our tickets back, and we were on our way from terminal 1 to terminal 4. *sigh*

Got to term4 and went upstairs, now very confident where we were going, after all, we had to look for information on the way out of the country. We got upstairs and looked around for the National counter. "That's wierd. Didn't we come in at Terminal 4?" I asked. "Yeah," Kelle said, chewing her gum. I looked around and decided to ask some of the xray techs over by the Northwest counter.

"Excuse me," I said, interrupting a very interesting conversation about football with a perfectly reasonable question, "Where is the National Counter?" They stopped and a tall black man actually laughed. "The what?" he said, rather impishly. If he didn't hear me why did he laugh? "The National Airlines counter," I repeated, more precisely. Perhaps he thought I meant the National Car Rental place downstairs or something. A young mexican looked Kelle up and down. "Nachonal went out of beesness las' nite." Now it was our turn to laugh. "No, guys, really. Where is the National counter?" The older black guy said, "No, really. They went bankrupt at midnight last night. All their flights have been cancelled." My heart sunk in my chest. No...no no no no dammit no. "What are the ticketed passengers supposed to do?" They shrugged in unison. "Some of the airlines are trying to pick up the slack and take people on standby. May want to try them," he offered, pointing at Northwest.

We looked around in a daze. Here we were, in New York's largest airport, ticketed through to Las Vegas on an airline that no longer existed. I strode up to the counter. "I'm ticketed on National to Las Vegas. Can you help me?" This poor woman was probably just as unhappy National went out of business as I was. Her hair must have been nicely coifed at one point, but had fallen, and it was gonna take hydraulics to get it back up. She was frazzled. She looked at her screen. "I have a standby to Minneapolis and Detroit in a couple hours, no guarantee you'll get a standby out of there for Vegas, though." My heart sank. "OK," I decided. "Let's go see if any other airlines can get us home." Then a thought struck me. Where the hell was our luggage that we checked in at Austrian? Going downstairs from the airline counters, Kelle was pissed, talking about "Oh, sure, good old USA! We should have stayed in Croatia! They don't lose luggage! They don't have bankrupt airlines stranding passengers! Yeah, SOOO good to be home!" *stomp stomp stomp*

We got downstairs and went to the not-so-much-information booth, but the slugbrain blonde wasn't on duty, we got fried-chicken eating, down home, big black beautiful woman at the desk, chewing her gum and staring at us like we were the ones that brought her great-great-grandparents over on the slave ship.

"Ken ah HELP ya'll?" *smack smack*

"Um, yes, we heard that National Airlines is out of business and..."

"UM..*smack* yeah yeah yeah, UM...theyah is a FLYah heyah that I can give youz about dat. *smack*" (Searches around the desk and spies a LARGE stack of paper. Recognizing it as what she has been searching for, she hands me one.) "Yeah, heeya it is." I look at it. It says National is out of business and according to FAA regs, other airlines are supposed to help where possible, but they can charge whatever they want. I knew this.

"OK," I decide to try and ask my question again. "But I need to know about...."

"UM *smack smack* yeah, UM... You'll have to cahntact de othah aiyalines for assistance wit getting a flight to yoawah final destinayshun." I blinked for a few moments, wondering if I was speaking the same language as this bitch and wondering if I could fuck her up and get out of the terminal before security got to me. I took a deep breath and tried again.

"I understand that. That isn't what I'm asking you. What I want.."

*smack smack* She had the nerve to act like she was forcibly being patient with me. "So what ah you axin me?" I'm thinking, 'maybe I could get in 2 good sucker punches to that big fat mouth of yours before anyone would notice.'

"Austrian Airlines checked our baggage in at customs, destined for Las Vegas on a National flight, which no longer exists. How do I get my bags back?"

Moo-cow blinked for a minute. "You would hafta coawall Ahstrian Aiyah." She ACTUALLY looked at her fingernails and picked at her cuticle then looked up at me calmly, like, 'anything else?' I pressed my lips together, and figured I prolly couldn't make it out the emergency doors before big black security guard got ahold of me.

"Thank you," I managed. "Shoowah," she fake smiled.

About 30 feet away was a bank of phones. I got on one. Called Austrian Air customer service, who couldn't get ahold of the lost and found for the Airline. "You'll have to go down there," she said. I sighed. Here we are at Terminal 4, and we have to go around this damn airport AGAIN to Terminal One. Well, it wasn't like we had a flight to catch. Back on the bus.

So now we're back on the bus and we go around the airport. Again. We get out at Terminal 1 and ask a security guard for directions to the Austrian Airlines lost and found and he points us to the big "LUFTHANSA" sign. Ah.

We trudged into the Lufthansa/Austrian lost and found. There was an older lady, and a younger guy in there. The guy was on the phone, so the older lady helped us. It took HER an hour to call, get ahold of, and get information from the right people. Turns out our bags were put out on the tarmac. She went and got them, and brought them to us, and you never saw two people so happy to have thier stuff back as us. The nice lady tried to get us flight information to get home. "I don't know if you will find anything, dears, it's Veteran's Day Weekend, you know." I looked at Kelle. Oh shit. It never even crossed our minds. She endorsed our Vegas tickets. "That should help," she said, "this stamp means that Austrian will pay for your ticket to Vegas." We almost cried. "Thanks so much!" "Good luck!" she called as we left with 4 huge bags, one of them falling apart so much that we had to tape it closed, 2 backpacks, jackets, Kelle's pillow, and one very thin piece of paper each that served as our way home, if we could find a seat.

We went to all the counters, stood in all the lines, and after 3 hours it was 8pm. We were tired, hungry, thirsty, scared, stranded and pissed. I left the Delta counter, crying. They all wanted $125 each for each leg of the trip, everything was standby if there was anything at all, and at best, we'd be leaving out of New York at 8am the next morning. They didn't seem to give a shit about Austrian's endorsement. I looked at the bank of phones and called Miah and Sindy, who were staying with the kids. I explained the situation, and they looked on all the websites. There was nothing available, even for full purchase price, out of New York's JFK, LaGuardia, or Newark airports. I sighed and told them we'd be home as soon as we could.