Okay, so “horror” might be just a tad dramatic. But it was pretty terrible. I noticed was my Norwegian app was showing my ticket as having a Hamburg destination instead of our flight booked to Berlin…odd. So, I called; as is all too common with customer service lines, I was on hold for far too long. At .36€/min I had to hang up, resigning to deal with it at the airport, since all other indications pointed to a mere typo on the app.
I was so very wrong.
Despite receiving no email notification (though they clearly were aware of the issue over 12 hours prior, when I saw the the app oddity), our flight was rerouted due to the ground crew strike at the Berlin airports. Thanks for the heads up, Norwegian.
We boarded our flight to Hamburg, with the promise of a bus to Berlin. Well, this technically was what happened, but not so simply.
As we left the airport in a group, it became clear that there was going to be no reception, no Norwegian employee tasked to direct us, and seemingly no bus after all. We found our way to a bus by the luck of the pack containing one person familiar with Hamburg airport, and two others who spoke German. Without them, we might still be in damn Hamburg.
The bus driver first didn’t believe we were in fact the Copenhagen flight (really?), then he told us to wait outside, then on the bus, then for others to come (oh, they did… About 45 minutes after us). Only then, packed to the gills with luggage and drunk Irish folk, at 10:15pm we made our way out of Hamburg towards Berlin. Four long hours later, including the “break” during which our driver took an opportunity to smoke while still sitting on the bus, we were finally in Berlin. The race to the taxis began. We snagged the fifth or so, and made it to our Alexanderplatz hotel by ~2:30 am, just 2.5 hours before the strike ended.
It was dark, late, and I was cranky. No pictures were taken.