Clara's Travel Tales: The Bookworm Edition

For my first post for the 15-for-15 challenge, I thought I'd write about the mishap that almost befell me two weekends ago.

The "Alakoba" Book

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As I may have mentioned a few hundred times on this blog, I LOVE reading. This has unfortunately got me into trouble many times, but today we're going to focus on those of the Ajala kind.

I once missed my flight to Stockholm although I was on-time and already checked in, because I was focused on the book I had with me. I remember the airline attendant looking at me bizarrely, once she noticed that I had been sitting next to the counter all along,  and asking me how I could possibly have missed all the announcements calling for me. She sha looked upon my innocent baby-face, felt sorry for me and booked me onto the next flight, free of charge.  I knew I was lucky that day, and since then have been very vigilant about reading in airports. That is until 2 weeks ago, Friday the 16th of January to be precise...

I was scheduled to spend the weekend in Vienna with T whom I hadn't seen since just after Christmas, and was really looking forward to leaving Brussels for a few days. So as a bona fide OCD-er, I made sure that I was at the airport on time and at the gate at least 1hour before boarding was meant to commence.

However, in spite of my best efforts, I got bored and pulled out the interesting but not-so-well-written book I had been trying to finish. And that my dears was when the bookworm demon struck! I started reading, and got so into it that I didn't notice the time passing, hear the announcements for boarding, or even see people around me moving. As in I was gone! I was far far away in India, Delhi where the story was taking place.  By the special grace of a God that said I would see T that weekend, I felt a pain in my neck, looked up and noticed that the area around me was empty. Panicking slightly, I looked around, saw a line forming just ahead, and kia kia joined it.

Imagine my surprise when the airline attendant told me that, that flight was headed for Warsaw in Poland. Olorun lo yo mi, I could have ended up on the other side of Europe! The man sha saw my confusion, took pity on me and directed me to my own gate which was just behind me. There, I was lucky enough to meet another kind attendant who checked my documents quickly and literally ran down with me to the plane. I was the very last person to board, and had to do the walk of shame down to my seat. Still thank the gods of long distance relationships who were up there, looking out for T and I.