Zurich — A Taste of Misadventure

My first stop — an 8 hour layover in Zurich, Switzerland. Having been to the city multiple times in the past I decided to just get some sleep at the airport which was surprisingly comfortable.

In the morning I slowly crossed the airport to the gate where I would take my next flight to Abu Dhabi. I saw the usual queue form in front of the gate while I drank my coffee. Usually I'd be happy to wait for the queue to dwindle before making my way to the gate, but on that day I luckily joined the queue sooner.

The flight attendants opened the gate and asked everybody to put on their masks. Ups, I didn't have any mask on me. I asked one of the attendants if they had masks and he annoyingly told me to go out looking for one in the terminal. I left running with my heart pumping.

After an erratic sprint I found masks being sold at a nearby kiosk and came back running to the end of the queue. Breathless and 3 francs poorer. In front of me a big family walked through the gate totally oblivious of the mask requirements. When the very same flight attended asked them to put on their masks they just shrugged and said they didn't have any, to which the attendant took a few from a hidden pile and handed it over to them. I was livid.

But things were about to get worse. Once I got to the front of the gate the grumpy attendant asked me to prove I had a ticket out of Indonesia. I knew it was one of the Indonesian tourist visa requirements, but I was still caught off guard as I thought I'd be asked in Abu Dhabi, my last stop before Indonesia, not in Zurich.

I excused myself and started to frantically search Skyscanner for possible destinations out of Indonesia. If the sprint hadn't been enough to get my heart pumping, the prospect of losing my flight to Jakarta certainly was. I did my best to keep calm while seeing the queue getting shorter and shorter. Maybe 5 minutes was all I had to make a decision that was likely to shape the rest of my travels. I settled on a flight from Bali to Kuala Lumpur and just like that my fate was sealed. After a long minute of repeatedly refreshing my email I was able to show my fresh ticket to the cranky flight attendant who allowed me to board the plane just as the boarding was coming to an end. And off I went to Abu Dhabi.Read more