The long, long trip from hell!

28 Jun 2009

We left Taraz around 3:30pm on Saturday, June 27th. Wayne still wasn't feeling well, I was starting to feel poorly as well (sore throat, ears hurt)and Ernur's car wasn't feeling well either. I quit counting the number of times we stopped to add water and antifreeze to the radiator. He called Zema to have her tell us what was going on and to make sure we weren't worried about getting to Almaty. Considering our flight didn't leave until 7am the next morning my only concern was not getting stranded on the side of the road in the middle of no where. He finally got the car fixed at the gas station in Kordai. It took 8 hrs with all the stops. He left us at the airport at 11:30pm. We camped out on a bench at the far end of the terminal until it was time to check in for our flight on BMI (the airline from hell!)

They never did post a check-in time so knowing the issues we had in Heathrow we decided to get in line early. The passport check let us through and we headed to the checkin counter. They had an eticket for Wayne but the one for me was locked. The showed we both had reservations but only one ticket. He asked if I had my bording pass stub from the London trip which I happened to still have. It had my name on it but came up as being Wayne. We were about to buy another ticket just to get me on the plane which would have meant I would have to go back out and downstairs to the ticket counter. God was with me and the manager gave the checkin agent permission to print me a new boarding pass and they would work it out with my travel agent later via email. He, however, put me 3 rows back. I guess he couldn't issue my original seat because the ticket was locked (whatever that means). Fortunately the plane wasn't full. We opted to keep our newly assigned seats since it gave us more room. I slept most of the way but Wayne says he wasn't able to sleep very well.

We are currently sitting in Heathrow Airport waiting for our British Airways flight home. We figured since the tickets were purchased through BA we wouldn't have a problem with my boarding pass in London. Wrong! He couldn't locate an eticket for me. Just Wayne. Fortunately I had the receipt from my agent showing I had paid for two round trip tickets. Again a call to a supervisor. God was again with us because she said to go ahead and issue a boarding pass and note a comment in the computer regarding my eticket and they would work it out with my agent later. Eldo is going to be getting a great deal of international calls this week about my ticket.

Fortunately both of us seem to be feeling better although very tired. We have had a bite to eat and rehydrated. I hear the stores calling my name and some British pounds saying they need to be spent because we plan on using Lufthansa for the next trip even if it is more expensive. We don't want to have to deal with these types of issues with Lukas in tow on the next trip.

Time to shop!
Lynda and Wayne

Taraz Revisited

19 Jun 2009

We have made it safe and sound back to Taraz. We haven’t seen Lukas Anton yet but we are once again situated in are old room at the Zhambyl with Quentin and Kara next door.

Our flight from Dulles to Heathrow on British Airways was uneventful. Since we left at 10pm we pretty much slept off and on most of the way. Heathrow has really changed and grown a lot since I last passed through. We arrived early so we unloaded on the tarmac and were bussed to Terminal 5. We then had to take a second bus to Terminal 1 were we picked up BMI Airlines for the second half. I had heard rumors that there were some issues with British Airways and BMI cross ticketing. So I had arrived prepared to have some sort of hiccup in the process. After walking for what seemed forever we finally made it to security. Once we cleared there it was on to the BMI ticket counter to check-in and get our boarding passes. I knew it was a bad sign when he got on the phone. Long story short, the two airlines computer systems are not on speaking terms and depending on who you purchased your tickets from the other airline has problems with getting the system to process the tickets. He could see our reservations but British Airways system had a lock on the e-tickets. The gentleman at the counter was very nice and after about 20 minutes he had resolved the issue, called us back over to the counter and handed us our boarding passes.

In spite of our short layover we still had plenty of time. It was then another jaunt to the gate. BMI is ok service but their jets are small and old. The seats were tight together, no screens in the back of the seat in front and some seats didn’t have access to the screens in the center aisles. It was 6 seats across, 3 on each side. We were 1 hour late leaving Heathrow. First they were missing 4 passengers whose luggage had already been stowed underneath. If the passengers did not board or were not located they were going to take all the bags off in order to remove the bags belonging to the 4 passengers. Once they had that resolved we had another delay because of “2 birds on the runway that they need to clear off”, those were the captain’s words. I kid you not! I don’t know what kind of birds or if they were dead or alive but it was another 15 minute delay. We still managed to arrive only about 15-20 mins behind schedule.

Our trusty drivers were waiting for us outside baggage claim. We headed to the parking lot where we met up with Quentin and Kara. With stops it took us about 7 hours to get to Taraz. The roads are in much better shape and we managed to sleep off and on during the drive.

When we got out of the car in front of the hotel it was like we had never left. Janetta had evidently been by the hotel because they had our keys to our old room all ready for us. Room pretty much looks the same. They have trimmed some of the vines covering the windows back a bit and fixed the tile on the bathroom floor. Wayne checked the AC unit and it seems to be functioning properly and blows out nice cold air.

The weather today is sunny, with a slight breeze and warm. It was actually a bit chilly in the wee hours of the morning as we made our trek from Almaty to Taraz.

I guess that’s all for now. We’ve been to the store and hopefully we will get to see Lukas tomorrow if we don’t go this afternoon.

Getting ready for trip #2

Well, we leave tomorrow evening (Jun 17)to head back to Taraz for our court hearing and to visit with Lukas Anton some more. Since we will only be there for a little more than a week we are packing much lighter this trip. Having been there once already definitely makes it much easier to plan and pack this time. We are flying British Airways through London this time. The second flight is on a subsidiary airline named BMI that we have never heard of before so that will be a little bit of an adventure. We will try and post daily again to keep everyone posted on how Lukas is doing and our court experience. We are not sure at this point what time our court hearing will be on Monday, June 22nd. Although we don't anticipate any problems with getting a positive court ruling we welcome everyone's prayers that day.