2014:a Newark odyssey

An epic drama of a 4 day travel towards a dream

by Georgi Minkov

introductionby Diana Minkova

My husband originally wrote this story to share it with the participants in the forum of the Bulgarian emigrants in Canada. It is about our travel experience and the first few days we spent in our new home in Quebec City. He wrote it to clear his mind of the stress and the worries we had. Actually, we couldn’t quite overcome the memory of our crazy trip un-til recently (more than 6 months later), when we wrote a complaint to United Airlines explaining how discontented we were with their services and trying to get back the money for the unforeseen expenses. Their re-sponse was satisfactory (you can read about it at the end of the book) but it brought up even more questions about the policies of the airlines, as well as thoughts on

what to do in case your flight is cancelled, especially when you are travelling with two small children.

I know we made some mistakes along the way and we learned from them, but in either case things would have been difficult. I clearly remember my daughter asking me “Mom, is this day scary?” I told her “No, as long as we are safe and sound, it is not.” Then on the next day, when our baby got sick this was no longer the case.

You are probably asking yourself where the title of this story came from. Well, it has a lot to do with my husband’s love for science fiction and his sense of humor, which he implemented in the story, even though the whole experience was painful both physically and mentally. He took on the harder task of trying to get us on a plane after several cancellations. I stayed with the kids, trying to look cheerful, so that I don’t scare our daughter. She also acted very adequately without the usual fussiness.

I am sure there are millions of stories like ours. If you would like to share a story or offer a piece of advice, I would love to hear it. You can write to me at diana.pl.georgieva@gmail.com

2014: a Newark odysseyby Georgi Minkov

I haven’t been able to get much sleep lately, so I decided to write a few lines about our trip to Quebec City. The text is a bit rough. I wrote it in one breath and have barely edited it, so don’t be too critical. I will hardly have any time to fix it the next few weeks, so I will publish it like this. Sorry it’s a bit long, but it is like the story itself - long.

A trip from Sofia to Quebec City. February 12th, 2014.

The date was February 12th. The trip was an important part of our “Immi-gration project” and was given due attention. I chose Lufthansa because I wanted everything to be right. There was no place for mistakes! I decided to fly through New York to avoid encounters with immigration officers during the trip. I could have bought our tickets online but I decided to go to the airport in Sofia and buy them from an officer of the airlines, just to be on the safe side - it cost me some additional 200 leva. The luggage preparation was also given due attention. I thought of everything down to the smallest detail. I even packed a box of my favorite Lavazza coffee and an espresso maker, so that I could spend the first sunny morning in Canada with a cup of my favorite coffee. I sent some additional 100 kg of baggage by air. The shipment was scheduled for delivery a few days after our arrival, so that I have enough time to buy a car and go to Montreal to get the luggage. During this journey I could see only two unknowns

- changing planes in Munich had to be done in 1 hour and 15 minutes, which seemed a bit too quick. The second was the arrival in Quebec. It was scheduled for midnight and I did not know if I would find an awake immigration officer at that time.

So - 12 February, 12:00 am, Sofia airport. Many relatives came to see us off, there were a few tears, like with every goodbye. The flight from Sofia to Munich was normal. At Munich airport a bus took us from the plane to the airport. All we had to do was go up one level and go to the last gate. No problems at all. We even had half an hour to use the restroom. The flight from Munich to New York also went smoothly. I got so impressed by the flight attendants who did their job perfectly. At the end of the flight one of them came over and offered to give us four jars with baby food. She said that they were required to dispose of that food after the flight anyway, so we could keep it. We had taken enough baby food for the flight but we thanked the kind woman and took the jars. Landing in New York was very beautiful! It was a clear dark night and the lights of New York could be seen so clearly! Beauty! The sight reminded me of Kyustendil at night, seen while going down from Konyavo Mountain by the zhiguli.

During the flight we filled out a customs declaration. In the field “How much money do you intend to spend in the United States” without hesita-tion I wrote $0.00. I will spend nothing in America. I’m not leaving here a dime. I don’t even have American dollars with me. We landed, they took our fingerprints and photographed us. I grinned for a better picture and we went to look for the luggage. At Sofia airport I had asked several times if we were having our luggage delivered straight to Quebec or we would have to look for it ar the airports. The answer was always “Yes, it will be delivered directly to Quebec.” Okay, but it wasn’t; they took it down and we had to transfer it to the new flight. All right, but how to do this? I saw our suitcases immediately as they were wrapped in stretch foil and took them off the carousel and now ... what? I went looking for carts. I found some but I needed coins for them and I had none. On top of that the carts

were small and would not fit four 150 liter suitcases. Moreover, I had three bags of carry on luggage and a baby stroller. So as I was fidgeting and wondering what to do, a nice African American man approached with the question “Are you flying to Quebec?” and offered us his services. I was slightly surprised by the question but there was no time to think about it. Of course I needed help! We quickly loaded the suitcases and he took us through some corridors to the place where we had to drop them off. My wife asked him if we owe him something. He naturally replied “Yes”. How much? As much as you want to give me. Oh no! I hate this answer so much... No, you please tell me how much it is appropriate to give. He answered $10. OK! At this point I was ready to give him even $50. I tell him I have no American dollars. I have only Canadian. Can I give you Ca-nadian dollars? Yes. Okay, I pulled out $20. The man showed us the way to our gate and we soon parted with wide smiles.

We took a shuttle to the terminal and before long we were standing in front of the gate. Things lined up great! We had only one short flight left to get to Canada and... oh heart, stop beating so fast! As I sat down and waited for my flight, my eyes involuntarily stopped at a huge line in front of United Airlines. I noticed that the people were standing there for half an hour and even more, and discussing something with the employees of United. Poor folks! What misery led them to this line! But little do I care. I’ve got only about an hour left to the cherished last flight to Canada. So as I sat and stared around, my wife suddenly said, “I wonder why the screen says our flight is canceled. It says the same over there for the flight to Manchester, but there is no information for the flight to Ottawa. Ugh... how would I know! It is already very late, an employee may have had a drink and messed things up. The weather was great - nice and clear. For the past 10 days I had checked the weather forecast several times a day. There was supposed to be snow on the 13th and wonderful weather on the 12th. As I stood wondering what went wrong, the man at the gate said the flight for Quebec was canceled. Whaaat? How come canceled! Are you crazy?! This is my last flight leading up to my dream! I still couldn’t believe my ears. The only thing that made me think that this was not a

joke was the cry of a group of Quebecers near us. While I was wondering what to do, the people ran out from the gate and lined up so quickly that the line doubled its size from 50 people to about 100. And finally there was me - the 101st person. The line was going horribly slowly. After about two hours of waiting, my daughter who was sitting and waiting, got tired and began crying and asking if we could go back to Sofia. A deeply touch-ing moment of our trip! At that time, about 20 hours had passed from our departure from Sofia. After another hour and a half it was my turn. The flight was canceled. All of the flights would be canceled the next day as well. The airport would be just closed. The earliest plane to Quebec that we could board was the morning of the 14th. All hotels were fully booked. They couldn’t offer us hotel accommodations. But because they were merciful, “not because of us but because of our children” they would give us 9 food vouchers for $7 each. That’s it. Yeah right, but where are we going to sleep until the 14th? Aghh, I don’t know - sleep where you want to sleep.

What a shock! I started to protest. Hey, people, if this was happening only to me I could understand this attitude, but I was here with two little children. What was I supposed to do with them here? How were we going to spend the night at the airport? We were not prepared for this. We had no... At that moment I heard the voice of my wife, who calmly told me in Bulgarian, “Joro, he doesn’t care about that”. I looked at the person... Yes, he could care less. There was no point in talking. After a while, the man went to sleep in a warm place with his family. His shift was over. At that time, already about midnight, snowflakes started fluttering outside and quickly turned into a snowstorm. Where could we go in this weather? Em-ployees were leaving one after another as their shifts were ending. Who cares about us. Before leaving, one of the employees gave us two bottles of cold water and ... that was it. What do we do now? A snowstorm started outside! It was midnight. Our baby was sleeping in the stroller and kept waking up crying every 20 minutes. My daughter had fallen asleep on a chair completely exhausted. We had no phones. The free Wi Fi turned out to be paid. OK, we paid, went through a long registration process, entered

our credit card number and finally... some mistake in some server. I let an employee know there wasn’t even free Wi Fi here, and he replied “There is nothing free in this world!” Yes, later we realized that we were charged $5 for the internet which we couldn’t use when we needed it badly. Later it turned out we had created a subscription and the only way to cancel it was to make a phone call. Well, I decided that without any connection with anyone, we couldn’t go anywhere. We had to sleep at the airport. What did we have? A pillow and a blanket. They had left a bag of pillows. I asked my wife to take some more. Now what? We had a blanket and 4 pillows. And how exactly were we going to spend two nights here with a 10-month old baby and a 4-year old child?

This is where I lost it. I went to the last remaining employee of United and asked her in a not particularly polite tone what she suggested we do with two sleeping kids at midnight at the airport when there was a storm outside? Well, there were no available hotels. Those before us have filled them all up. There are hotels but you have to pay yourself. One night costs $110 before taxes. Well, of course we are going to pay, just tell us which hotel has availability! Horror! And if I had not yelled she would have left and ... So there are rooms at the Howard Johnson Hotel. You can make a reservation by phone. Quickly I waved to my wife to come over. She was with the children. At that point I was in a complete shock and could not tolerate making a reservation by phone. My biggest shock was that in a trip prepared to the smallest detail for months, I was lead to a situation in which I had no control over events and could not find a satisfactory solution. My wife called to get the directions, spelled our names carefully and provided our credit card numbers… Thank God I had two credit cards from Bulgaria! I hate to think what would have happened if I didn’t have them. After lots of explanations, the reservation was finally made. I tried to make a phone call to a friend in Canada who was supposed to be wait-ing for us at the airport but after the third attempt I gave up. There was a German woman next to us who had a very long phone conversation. Later that night we saw her at the reception of the same hotel we were staying at. It turned out that there was no reservation under her name. I

don’t know what happened to that woman. There was another Bulgarian middle-aged woman with us, an American citizen. She chose to sleep at the airport. The next day her children came to pick her up.

Our reservation was made and we had to get to the hotel. My wife knew the route. We took the three heavy pieces of hand baggage, our sleep-ing daughter, the stroller with the sleeping baby and we left.First we took the airport train to station P4 and then the hotel shuttle. The first thing I noticed at the hotel was the scaffold just in front of the entrance, which supported the visor. The next day I saw that they were supporting the rotting wooden trusses of the visor. Luckily, the heavy snow didn’t cause this part of the building to collapse on top of us. After a brief conversa-tion at the reception, we quickly checked into our room and put the kids to bed. We also went to bed. I kept asking myself, how did we get here? Fortunately, the hotel had a “free” Wi-Fi and we finally managed to calm down our relatives telling them we are fine. Actually I don’t know whether they calmed down or got worried even more. The next day went by mo-notonously. We had breakfast in the morning. We stayed in the room watching the weather and trying to relax and recuperate. Unfortunately, it turned out there were only clothes for the children and almost nothing for us in the carryon luggage. I could care less. We struggled with the time difference so we went to bed really early that evening. I don’t know how I woke up at about 7:30pm. I decided to check the flight for the next morning. I looked and ... oh, another surprise! The flight was canceled! Now what? I got up, put on my clothes and headed to the airport. I lined up at the counters of United and waited. I don’t remember exactly how long I waited but I remember clearly the employee who helped me. It was a very nice woman. After a lot of effort she found us a flight for the 15th in the morning but we had to travel through Montreal. Little did I care where we were going through, I just wanted to get there quickly. The woman was very helpful. She gave us another nine $7 vouchers for food. I asked her for a voucher for the hotel. She said she could give me one but only for tonight. Well, I had already paid for the second night. I asked her if she could give it to me anyway and I could probably exchange it at

the hotel for my money. Yes, of course. Which hotel are you staying at? At the Howard Johnson Hotel. Oh sorry, we have no contract with them. Ah, I got it now. That’s why there were vacant rooms there. I went back to the hotel to deliver the “great” news that we had to stay another day and night (third) at the hotel. The next day - the 14th I had to go back to the airport to get the boarding passes for the flight on the 15th. Because there were more than 24 hours left until the flight, they couldn’t issue them in the evening of 13th. So I went again. This time I was helped by an employee ... well, she was very nice and polite but it seemed she was learning how to do her job now ... It took her about an hour to issue the boarding passes. I returned to the hotel.

The baby food we had with us was already over, so we had an emergency. At the airport they carried diapers but no baby food. Now where can we buy baby food? The receptionist offered to call us a taxi to Walmart. Okay, great! I thought it would be an ordinary taxi. It turned out it was a taxi compny that is contracted with the hotel. Going to the store cost us $50 + 20% tip. It took more than half an hour. We bought diapers, baby food, tooth brushes, toothpaste and various other essentials. Ooh, how happy I was to brush my teeth! The return to the hotel which lasted less than 10 minutes (!) also cost $50 but this time only + 15% tip. I didn’t like the way the driver, a young woman, was chitchatting on the phone in Spanish the whole time. The price we payed for that taxi was a shock. Later we complained at the hotel reception. They called the lady and she claimed to have told us in advance about the cost, but this was not true. Her accent was so strong that we couldn’t understand everything she was saying. It was obvious though that she was talking about other subjects.

We returned to the hotel relieved that we now had food for the baby. Our relief, however, was short-lived. We found out that the baby had a fever. What could we do now? We were tourists here. We had no insurance, nothing at all. Of course, we took all sorts of medicines, thermometers, even an inhaler but all of those items were in our suitcases. In the hand

luggage we had nothing. After half an hour filled with stressful emotions we found out the names of the medicines we needed - infant Advil or Tyle-nol, and we needed them urgently. Having them both was better. I went to the reception desk and asked where we could find this medication. They had them in the gift shop but only for adults. Nothing for babies. Super! “What should we do in this situation?”, “Well go to the emergency of the nearest hospital, but first ask whether United can provide you with medi-cal care.” With the speed of a boar I rushed back to the airport. This time, I had an employee with an ice cold expression. I explained to her that we have already had two cancelled flights and our son got sick. What should we do? Well I can call a paramedic for you. Right, we’ll call, but who is going to pay? No reply. Once again, who will pay for the paramedic? No reply. Well, in the long run who is going to take care of this expense? It is obvious? – You will! You are the father, you call- you will pay. Well right, but we have some insurance with the tickets we bought, does it not cover paramedic? Are you implying that it is our fault that your son got sick? Yes, I think he got sick because of your cancellations. Of course you aren’t to blame for the storm, but we aren’t to blame too! But you think it is our fault, we canceled the flight and your son got sick. Yes, I think so. And once again the same question and the same answer. (I think I was wrong. In the first flight from Sofia to Munich we traveled with a relative who had an 18-month old boy. He got sick at exactly the same time and had exactly the same symptoms as our son. Both children were infected with a virus on the first flight. This was brought to my attention later. But we had medical insurance for Canada and now we could have been there!) Well, sir, continued the ice queen, I can call someone else you can argue with, not with me. Blah blah, I’m sick of you already! I don’t want to talk with anyone anymore! I only ask because I’m stupid and don’t understand.

I turned around and went looking for medicines. It turned out that only terminal C had a kiosk offering such drugs but they carried only Advil. I bought it. Do you have a thermometer? No, we don’t. Geez, what an airport! They sell everything here, but you cannot find baby food and a simple thermometer. Well, do you know where I could find here a ther-

mometer? I don’t think you can find one here at the airport. Great! I went back to the hotel the fastest possible way. Our baby’s temperatue was higher. We gave him the medicine. Now we could only pray that his condition doesn’t get worse. If we had to, we would call a paramedic. We would pay for it. We would do anything for our son. The day was about to end. I checked again the next day’s flights. Everything was OK. We went to bed. The night was terrible! The baby was waking up crying constantly. His temperature was rising. Around 4 am we woke up and gave him medi-cine. I don’t know why but my wife said, “Are they going to cancel this flight too?” No way!? I checked a few hours ago and it was ok. I’ll check again; anyway we cannot sleep. I am checking and… Oh no! The flight was canceled! Horror! Now what do we do? Well, I cannot stay here knowing that the flight was canceled. I’m going back to the airport. I will go, all right, but I had washed my only pair of underwear and socks that I had been wearing for several days now. I tried to dry them with the hair dryer but they were still wet. The pants would quickly dry on my butt but how about the socks? It is not wise to go out with wet socks in the winter. If I get sick too we’ll be in real trouble. Then my wife said, “Well, take mine... the pink ones?” What? I say to my woman: “Do you realize what you are saying – to put on your pink socks!” Well then, put on the black ones. Come on, no way I would wear your socks! Am I a man or not?! All right, is it better to get sick? No, no, I will put on my own socks. I put one, I be-gan to put on the other ... wow damn sock, it was very wet! Ughh.. I gave it a second thought ... Well, give me the black ones. I put on my wife’s socks, which turned out to be black only on the foot and the rest was pink, orange, red and.... and I went back to the airport. At 4:30 I was at an-other line at the counters of United. It was not long.There were only about 10-15 people but there was only one employee working, so the line was virtually not moving. My turn came about three hours later. At that point, there was additional staff and I was called by a friendly African American employee. I told him that we had already three canceled flights, that my son fell ill and we urgently needed to get to Canada, where at least we had health insurance. The man kept checking and checking... and finally said he was going to Air Canada, and asked me to wait. I waited and waited

but I was all aches and pains. I sat where they checked in the baggage facing the huge queue and stared dully towards the bright future. The officer came back, continued to check something again and went to Air Canada, and I sat down again. After about an hour, he said that there is a possibility of flying to Montreal today and then to Quebec with the Ca-nadian airlines, but we have to go to the airport in New York. United will pay for the taxi. What do you mean by New York, aren’t we in New York?! Ah yes, of course, this is not New York but New Jersey and we are at the Newark Airport, and have to go to New York LaGuardia Airport and catch a flight with Canadian Airlines.

The plan was simple: from here to P4 by train, from there by shuttle to the hotel, take the family back to Newark Airport Terminal B, take a taxi from there to LaGuardia Airport. From there fly to Montreal and from there flight to Quebec and, voila, we would be at home. There were only two weak points in this plan. That we had to do all this with a sick baby and that according to the weather forecast, a new snowstorm was ex-pected. What would we do in LaGuardia if Air Canada canceled its flights too? But it was the only plan we had. I thanked the man. God bless him and all his family for sending us to Air Canada! I went to P4. Involuntarily, my eyes fell on the black socks that I borrowed from my wife. They were actually very colorful and I laughed to myself, especially when I imagined how I had looked like while I was sitting in front of the United line with my pant legs above my ankles. But who cares! That was the only moment in the entire day when I felt like laughing. I went back to the hotel and my family. They had just woken up from the long and difficult night. Our first flight was at about 18:00 but I wanted us to leave as soon as pos-sible. The hours spent in front of the United counters had already showed me that everything here happened at a deadly slow speed. Besides the moment when United canceled our first flight and we were left alone in the empty waiting room at the airport, this was the second awful point in this journey. We were supposed to take our sick baby out in the cold and go somewhere without knowing how far we were going to get. God help us! At that moment I remembered we had luggage. What are we doing

with those four large suitcases that contained almost all our stuff? They will remain in Newark! Well, who cares about the luggage! Now the most important thing is to get to Canada! I don’t care about the luggage. We collected our hand luggage, took the kids and left. The driver of the shut-tle decided that this was the perfect moment to talk with his relatives in Egypt (or some other country in that area) and started shouting so loud that he made the baby cry. I asked him several times to speak more qui-etly but he ignored me. He finished his call and asked where we wanted to go. To terminal B, at the taxi stand, said my wife. I didn’t even look at him. After we got off, he said, “What about a tip?” He was totally wrong! What tip!? He didn’t deserve it plus I had given all my euros for my previ-ous trips which were so many. I had only a few metal Bulgarian lev left in the back pocket of my jeans. I pulled them out and gave him one lev. I told him that it was worth about a dollar. The driver almost threw up.

We found the taxi stands and caught a taxi to LaGuardia. The taxi was dirty. One of the devices on the board was ripped off and wires were hanging. The windows had half peeled off dirty stickers on them. God, I don’t care anymore, just take us to LaGuardia and turn down the air con-ditioner blowing right into our sick baby. We passed through Chinatown, then over a bridge - some local landmark. I was in New York for the first time. In other circumstances I would have been impressed at least by the brigde but I didn’t even remember its name. My only concern at that time was the increasing snowfall and the realization of my worst nightmares. The driver made two laps until he found the entrance to Air Canada, and stopped right in front of it which earned him a well deserved 20 Canadian dollar tip. It seemed that from the moment we saw the Canadian flag waving in front of Air Canada the sun began to rise on our street. The lines there had nothing to do with those in front of United. Our turn came quickly. The employee couldn’t believe that our boarding passes were wrong, just like those of the other passengers coming from United. She fixed our boarding passes and told us to go to the gate to Montreal and be ready. I was surprised! Our flight was at 6:00 pm. There was a lot of time left. In front of the luggage check point there was a long line but when the

employees saw us with a baby, they immediately directed us to another corridor with fewer people. My daughter hadn’t eaten and was hungry and the last employee of United had given me another 10 meal vouchers, which topped up the pile of canceled boarding passes and other vouchers from the previous days. I tried to get her something to eat but I couldn’t. They called us immediately for the flight to Montreal. Outside there was a heavy snowfall but they spread something on the wings and took off. It’s hard to describe the thoughts and feelings during the last two flights. It was hard to realize that this is the end of a nearly four-year long saga to getting the visas, and the ending of a four-day long trip. From here on, everything went smoothly. We landed in Montreal. We passed the immi-gration services. The flights to Quebec were very busy that night. They even announced that they would provide two buses to accommodate all the passengers. Somehow, however, they managed to put us on a flight early and we landed in Quebec at 9 o’clock instead of 1 o’clock after mid-night. In the long run our flight was: Sofia - Munich - New Jersey - (taxi to) New York - Montreal - Quebec and lasted four days.

Even the pain from this terrible journey was not able to mar my joy of landing on Canadian soil. We reported our lost luggage. It was an advan-tage that I had wrapped it in foil and I had put a note with my name and address in Quebec. Most of the suitcases aren’t wrapped and those who are, are easily noticed and located. Thanks to our friends in Quebec we had everything we needed in the apartment. I thought that the baggage will be delayed 1 or 2 weeks but it was delivered the next night. Incred-ibly nice surprise! The baby, however, continued to have a fever. On the fifth day from the beginning of the fever we totally lost patience and took him to the doctor. How did we get to the right hospital, by foot, with the two kids, at minus temperatures in a snowstorm is whole separate story. It was good that a woman, which we stopped to ask for directions, drove my wife and the baby to a hospital. Not knowing exactly where they went, my daughter and me started looking for them at the medical cent-ers in the neighborhood. I even tried to detect where they were with an application for finding stolen I-pad ... well ... it’s a tale of woe! With no

preparation, without a phone and without a car at the beginning even the easiest things are terribly difficult. Meanwhile our friend had seen my message on Skype and came to help me. My wife had also managed to call a neighbor from the hospital. The whole waiting and the examinations at the emergency took us 10 hours and $1400. We had made a health insurance for the first three months but it turned out, however, that we first have to pay and then be reimbursed. It turned out that the baby had flu and the doctors expected him to recover in few days. And so it hap-pened. I quickly had to buy a car now. The luggage, unlike us, had arrived on time and was already waiting for me in Montreal. I found one in Kijiji. My friend here helped me again! I will be forever grateful. The car was decent but the owner was a Canadian from Congo and the car smelled like Congo dishes. Maybe until I get around to wash it, it will lose its smell. The man was in a hurry to sell the car because he had sent a container to Congo and had to quickly go there and free it. And my luggage was wait-ing at the airport in Montreal and I quickly had to go there and take it. So, we both were in a hurry and … good things happen quickly. I bought the car. They fooled me a bit with the first car insurance but never mind - I stepped on the gass towards Montreal. Some employees in the office of Raiffeisen bank in Bulgaria were not able to increase the daily limit on one of the credit cards and we never managed to order the furniture from Ikea, which we have had carefully chosen long before. Apart from the luggage I also needed to buy some furniture. No problem, the car is big and has room for everything. I did all that in Saturday. On Sunday I put together the table and chairs and, wow, it felt incredible not to be eating while standing right next to the sink! A new week started. The baby was already recovered. Now we can go to fix the documents. We got up, had breakfast as white people sitting at a new table and new chairs... oh my, now everything is in my hands and I can start dealing with health insur-ance cards, social insurance numbers... The health card in the first place because the end of the month is approaching. The children and my wife are getting ready and I get off to warm up the car a little, the baby ... the baby must be protected from the cold. As I was thinking about the day, I stepped on the street and ... ah? Where’s the car? The car is gone! The

street was so clean and nice! Like swept. One could watch with pleasure. Absolute delight! But where is my car, my new old car? I noticed that the other cars were gone too! So here, they either steal cars, all the cars of the neighborhood at once or they have picked them up and drove them who knows where, because they have cleaned the street from snow. I know that there are some flashing lights that should be carefully observed whether they are flashing or not (the newcomer has nothing else to do but watch the lights). The light didn’t blink, but apparently while I was sleeping they began blinking and ... My friend helped again in this very difficult situation. They have transported the car a few blocks away into a dull street. As I was wondering with whom I have to deal with to take it, I saw a note at the wipers. Ah, yes! All is written here. Nobody to deal with, they have written it - $126 or $ 136 I don’t remember. I started up my car and went for the health cards. I’ll have to go and pay my fine these days at the municipality. Good that I was going to see where it is. After that I followed them on Twitter and I started getting e-mails to know which streets were going to be cleaned.

So, this is the way our trip and our first days here passed. We got a bit thinner but quickly started gaining weight. And the most important con-clusion? - The most important conclusion is: “Never go on a flight without at least one spare pair of socks in the hand luggage!”

THE END

epilogueby Diana Minkova

In September 2014, more than 6 months after our travel we wrote a let-

ter of complaint to United Airlines and we requested a reimbursement for the unforeseen hotel expenses that we ended up having. In their answer they explained that although their goal is to provide on-time departures, the safety of their customers and crew was always a foremost priority. Thay apologized for the dissatisfaction we had expressed and added that they do not provide overnight accommodations or transportation vouch-ers when a flight is cancelled as a result of weather or other circumstances beyond their control. However, we received an electronic travel certifi-cate, which gave eache one of us a 100$ reduction of the price for a next flight. Later I checked out the United Airline Cancellation Policies. It was all there:

Delays or cancellations that are not within United’s control

For issues not within United’s control, such as inclement weather or air traffic control problems, the following amenities may be offered, depend-ing on the length of delay:

• Depending upon the duration of the delay, we may offer food and bever-ages where available. Snack or meal vouchers may be offered in locations where a beverage cart is not available.

• If you have to stay overnight, we may be able to give you a distressed passenger rate voucher for a nearby hotel. These discounted rates, when available, will often be lower than those you would receive if you were to contact the hotel directly. Your accommodations will be at your own ex-pense.

Well, if we were not at the end of the line we could have had a hotel ar-ranged for us, even if it was at our own expense. I consider that oversight a mistake. I also wanted to find out why didn’t they transfere us to an-other airport and airline earlier.

Sometimes, the next available United flight may not be for several hours or even days. When your trip is severely delayed, these al-ternatives may be available to you:

• Stand by for flights. When you’ve been rebooked on a later flight be-cause no seats are available on the next flight, you may request to stand by on that earlier flight for no charge. If seats become available, we’ll be-gin clearing standby customers approximately 15 minutes before depar-ture. If you do not get a seat, please allow time for the flight to depart. At that time, you will be placed on the standby list for the next flight or you may request additional assistance.

• Using another airport. Flights into or out of nearby airports may be available. Although typically we won’t be able to provide ground transpor-tation or re-route your checked bags, switching to another airport could reduce your delay.

• Using another airline. When United has delayed or canceled a flight due to reasons such as certain mechanical problems, and you are going to be delayed more than two hours, we will try to book you on another airline with which we have an agreement for rebooking. When the delay or can-cellation is due to something beyond our control, such as weather or air traffic control problems, we typically do not rebook customers on other airlines.

• Rescheduling your trip. If your flight is delayed two hours or more, and you’d rather postpone or cancel, please let us know, and we may waive any change penalties that may apply to your ticket.

Not being informed about our rights, options and obligations and assum-ing that everithing will be fine was a mistake. Our lack of information added a lot to the stress.