The previous post ended with us sitting in a 2.1-star rated airport in Berlin, enjoying the spring and the uncertainty. To eliminate the latter, we started calling Kiwi.
Good thing I brought a headset with me, because all my boarding passes are on my phone. To get through to a live operator who could solve my issue, I first had to talk to a robot. The robot, that bastard, demanded not only the reservation number, but also the full name of the passenger plus the date of birth.
I had to do all of this more than once throughout this insanely long day. Thank god I stopped being shy about speaking English a long, long time ago, otherwise I have no idea how I'd solve the problem.
I was calling the number listed right in the Kiwi app, which I had prudently downloaded. The number, however, turned out to be American! I said to hell with it, since my phone bill is paid by a megacorporation, but the next time I called a British number that was listed on the guys' printed reservation.
The first operator I got was pretty sharp, and she found a couple of options for me. We'd have to spend the night in Berlin either way, but tomorrow we could get to Faro with a layover, or go directly to Lisbon. The latter didn't seem too convenient at first, but so much changed in the process that in the end it turned out to be a reasonable decision.
The flight to Lisbon turned out to be at 6 (sic) in the morning, which struck me with primal terror. For those who are somehow still unaware, I am sick, and any movement brings me agony. Waking up at 3 AM to get to the airport early could exacerbate the agony so much that I might just pop open the emergency exit and jump out into the unknown.
However, all these plans were up in the air anyway, because the operator, Petra K., informed me that they would send me an offer within 4 hours. That's their policy. In reality, they sent it quickly, but it had another option in it — fly to Lisbon at six in the morning, and then at four! in the afternoon fly from Lisbon to Faro. You could make that trip by train in the same amount of time, considering the check-ins and security at the airport. I wasn't thrilled about that prospect, especially since my companions were flying with a kid, and it wasn't convenient for them either.
Nevertheless, it seemed there was no way out; the guys were seemingly promised the same thing at first, and Andrey told me to hit "agree". Literally a few minutes later, they sent him an option much better than mine — a flight to Lisbon at 12:50. Lisbon suited us because we could pick up our rental car there too, and driving to Faro doesn't take that long, so to hell with it.
However, the new problem was that we completely failed to think of merging our reservations into one case, i.e., telling the operator to do so. As a result, only two got merged — Andrey's with his family and Vika's, but they couldn't attach mine, reasoning that I had already approved a different option.
I tried to fix the situation, but with every new call the operators became less and less competent, and a resolution grew more and more distant. They kept stringing us along, promising they'd send everything to our email. At the same time, I was having some kind of nonsense going on with my email where I couldn't see fresh messages and could only find them via search, which just added to the hellishness of what was happening.
Eventually we said screw it and went to the hotel where they supposedly (sic) were meant to put the guys up. My hotel, meanwhile, was on the complete opposite end of Berlin, next to the other airport where my 6 AM flight was supposed to depart from.
Although Kiwi was supposed to give us 100 euros for transport and food, the weather was nice, it didn't seem too far to walk, so we stomped off on foot, despite the considerable number of bags.
What with the baby stroller, the bag wrapped in electrical tape, the hippie dresses, and the dreads, we looked like refugees from Africa searching for a better life. The only things that traitorously gave us away were our extremely white skin, and, if you looked closely, the super-cool off-road stroller for the kid.
Because there were six of us and we couldn't agree on things quickly, we ended up walking slightly in circles, but in the end we made it to the hotel anyway, cramming the whole lobby with our stuff. This happened past nine in the evening, but no real news had come from Kiwi. Attempts to talk to an operator led to the realization that they didn't differ much from a robot: they act according to a script, and their spiel ends with the excuse that the resolution will be sent to our email.
For lack of better options, we just sat down to dine on pizza and pasta — the only options at the hotel bar.
Between the dinner and the exhaustion we weren't stressing as much over this whole whirlwind, but the idea that night was falling and we had neither a hotel nor plane tickets still made us tense up.
Time passed, and the resolution still wasn't being sent. I had almost decided to say to hell with it all and buy a hotel and tickets for the nearest convenient flight with my own money, but around eleven o'clock Kiwi finally gave birth to a solution, at least for me and my friend.
What it was, what else we had to endure, and when and where we ultimately flew off to — you will find out in the next part.