Departure

On Thursday I shared a cab with Inge to the airport, where we met several other workshop members checking in for their flights. We were too early to check our baggage for our original flights so we were all booked or waitlisted for earlier flights. I was flying out via Milan, and everyone else was flying out via Rome Inge or Jens - I can't remember which, said England always had to be different. At security, people flying to Milan had to queue to enter a different departure lounge to the people flying to Rome, so we all said our goodbyes and joined our repsective queues. After getting through to my departure lounge, I was directed through to where the waitlisted people had to go, which was - you guessed it - in the lounge with all the people going to Rome....

Jens and Inge comparing Swedish and Dutch passports.

I didn't get on my waitlisted flight, and all those that were booked on earlier flights had their flights delayed, so we all ended up being stuck in the departure lounge for somewhat longer than planned. This provided plenty of time for wrestling with the vending machines which didn't seem to accept Euro's, and comparing the attributes of the varous national passports that we had...

Forty minutes after boarding the aircraft (thanks to some traffic control problems in Milan), we finally got into the air.

My early check-in at least got me a window seat..

which afforded an opportunity for a few last views of Etna.

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