The task was an easy one: get to Grenoble and back to Hamburg within three days. What I didn't know was that the devil himself had his fingers in this, so it turned out a little different...

The "to" part had been easy, although tiresome. But I managed to get to Grenoble in the evening and even met my scandics colleagues L., D. and R. who were having a beer in town. The beer wasn't what we expected it to be, but that's already another story.

The next day was filled with SEO, SEO and some SEO of course and in the evening we had a very nice meaty dinner - very much to D's discomfort, as he only had two vegetarian courses to chose from, but hey, that's France!

My flight back home went at 15:15 on Wednesday, which made me leave early from the workshops. And here's where the devil started sneaking in.

At first my taxi wouldn't come. The scheduled 12:20 were overstepped by a mere 20 minutes, and only with J.'s help I finally managed to jump out of the cab at 12:57 and run for the bus that was already standing there, waiting to bring us to Lyon St. Exupéry Airport.

The next glitch in my time schedule was the announcement that we'd be around 15 minutes late. Oh well, I thought, whatever... So when we finally took off, I forgot about the smelly neighbour and the unmovable back rest in the last row and fell asleep. I was waken by an urgent need, so I stepped into the tiny closet, not long before I heard the familiar "Bing!" and the stewardess' voice saying that we would soon begin our way down. "What the..." I thought, we've been only flying for half an hour, we we're not even halfway there! It was so odd that I decided that some prankster had pushed the wrong button and returned calmly to my seat. Turbulences, I thought, it must be the turbulences.

But I soon was to discover the truth. My neighbour taught me that we indeed were on our way down. "Down where to?" I asked. "Back to Lyon", he answered. "There's a technical defect, we have to return". Now I've been flying a lot in my life, but this has never happened before. Nevertheless I stayed calm and didn't think too much about it.

After a very hastily landing we were brought into a cold and drafty hall, were we had to stay put and wait for news. News that weren't in a hurry to come to us, it seemed. After something like half an hour the stewardess told us... that she had no news for us. Another half hour passed by, I was jumping up and down by now in order to keep myself warm, while people around me were talking to family, friends and business partners on their mobile phones, when she announced that our flight had definitely been cancelled. Until then, the option of arriving in Hamburg with the originally designated plane had still been in the air.

The next surprise came in small pieces: gathered around the freshly returned chief stewardess we heard that at first they had planned to put us on the flight to Munich, but that flight was "cancelled due to technical problems". Then they wanted to book us on the Frankfurt machine, but that one was "cancelled due to technical problems". Slapstick? I started looking for the hidden camera. The new idea now was to put us on the Copenhagen flight. There would be a connecting flight from Copenhagen, so that we'd be in Hamburg shortly before 10 PM. A little later than originally planned, but hey, I had no real hurry.

Now things started to get hectic. The SAS only confirmed 10 passengers to be booked on the Copenhagen flight, one of which I was lucky to be. We went down to get the suitcases. At the counter we were issued boarding passes, but sadly only until Copenhagen. Don't ask me why, because of the hectic, because the person in charge was in a bad mood, because the computer wouldn't work... I don't know. Fact is that out of the 10 people only four had boarding cards for Hamburg. This time I wasn't so lucky.

We managed to get on the purser's nerves in the plane, so she gave us the passengers list issued by the Air France and phoned the Hamburg flight, so that they would wait for us when we got to Copenhagen. Useless to say that time was not really on our side.

The only funny thing about this part was that I met my scandinavian colleagues on the plane. Always expect the unexpected ;-)

When we arrived at the SAS counter in Copenhagen, we were told that only 2 seats were available. So we had to either draw lots or agree on who would get on the plane. We agreed that the most business-like looking and behaving people should get a chance, so it was only naturally that I... stayed and had to spend the night in the danish capital.

After a short night in a very spartanian room I was back in the office the next morning at 10.30, with a lot to tell and a burning need for a decent coffee.

I'm really glad that the Icelandic volcano wasn't also involved...