OAMC Chorus member Denny Nutter sent this travel note on Friday, June 2:
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| Delta's City in the Air |
OAMC's Mission to Romania and Ukraine has officially begun. An enthusiastic beginning certainly has the devil's attention as our trip began. For those of us on Delta's flight from Portland to Amsterdam, the adventure began early!
Our initial flight was delayed 45 minutes due to the cleaning necessary, thanks to the passengers just arriving from Amsterdam. That was our first hint of a challenge as we knew there was a long walk from Delta's terminal to KLM's flight from Amsterdam to Bucharest with an original one-hour turn around time.
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| Boarding in Bucharest |
Whew! We made it just in time with sweat dripping from the foreheads and necks of some of the harried sprinters. We quickly settled into a very warm plane anxious to get moving and have the plane's air conditioning kick on. Instead, we hung our heads from an announcement stating that the crew had determined that there was a problem with the plane that needed to be fixed before flight. They then announced that we should gather our belongings and deplane and return to Gate D23 to re-board in two hours. Doing so gave the airlines the time needed and we were on our way to Bucharest.
What was to have been a nice little break in Bucharest to find the plane that would take some of us on a 50-minute domestic flight from Bucharest to Iasi, where our Romanian Reunion Concert is to be, now made us wonder if we would make it to THAT flight at all. That concern grew even greater as we discovered after waiting and watching luggage belts go round and round for 45 minutes that our baggage had evidently not made the same flight as we had, and therefore we would have to notify lost and found where to direct it once it was located.
We looked at our watches. The current time was also the boarding time for the Blue Air flight that was supposed take some of us from Bucharest to Iasi. Dave Schmidt was the only one fortunate to catch that 5 o'clock flight. Cotterman''s and I (Denny) found each other and were able to purchase tickets for the 8 p.m. flight, as the one we missed was "non-refundable" and did not qualify for rebooking.
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| Transportation to Iasi |
Ben Purvis, our Director, had the same misfortune as he was making his way from Phoenix, but was certainly glad when he found some familiar faces that could show him the ropes for rebooking the plane that he had also missed. What an adventure!
Then it was "hurry up and wait" as we waited to board buses that would shuttle us out to the far reaches of a secondary domestic flights runway.
Whether it was the devil in the details or Murphy's law, we knew that we had arrived when Alin's cousin met us at the Iasi airport to take us to the familiar surrounding of the Old West, where we were welcomed to the Little Texas hotel.
After 36 hours of travel, and more for some, we had finally arrived to join our Romanian brothers to celebrate the Romanian Adventist Men's Chorus 10-year anniversary with praise in the Iasi Concert Hall.
