Back to Zurich Airport and a dreaded Text message
Older. Yes, Wiser? No.
- Age is a social construct. Frequent flyer programmes, doubly so.
- Morning coaches. Coach Fun and comedies
- British Airways Galleries North Lounge, Heathrow Terminal 5
- BA772 London Heathrow to Zurich (Eurotraveller)
- Into Zurich
- Experiments in photography: The Canon EOS R50
- Back to Zurich Airport and a dreaded Text message
- IC3 Zurich Airport to Basel Hbf
- To EuroAirport Basel and The Queue from Hades
- The Skyview Lounge, EuroAirport Basel
- BA749 Euroairport Basel to London Heathrow (EuroTraveller)
- Little Britain at its worst
- Older yes. Wiser? Dear deity… of course not!
With my time to explore a part of Zurich in the day done, I was in the mood to head back to the airport and watch some aircraft for the next few hours, as I whiled away the time before the flight home.
However, on the train, my phone went off. Fine. Was it Pokemon Go? Nope. It was that Beahoven rumble – indicating a text message had arrived.
That’s never good.
Checking my phone came a message I just groaned at instantly – a flight cancellation and rebooking.
Sigh. Oh hell.
British Airways had decided at short notice to cancel the other daily flight to Zurich. Normally, the airline operates three daily flights, with the very late flight cancelled the day before.
It seems the weather was in full swing, so they decided to mid-afternoon flight to London Heathrow.
As such, I was rebooked to fly from Euroairport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg.
This was NOT in the plan, or what the doctor ordered.
That’s a fair old distance, to put it mildly. Even a quick look at the map gave me an indication I had an 80km journey ahead.
OpenStreetMap between Zurich Airport and Euroairport Basel Mulhouse – Data, OpenStreetMap
I did a bit of pondering as I headed towards Zurich Airport – should I take the Basel re-route, or should I overnight in Zurich instead? A Quick check of the hotel prices in the area said “Eh… Nahhhhhhhh”. I would be travelling that day.
Just a lot further than I had intended.
I would have loved to stretch this out, but… nah.
Reluctantly, I pressed the rebook button to head to Basel. From there, my mind wasn’t exactly in the mood for travel writing – it was in the mood to get out of whatever hot mess I was in right now.
Alas, I was in completely the wrong place in Switzerland – and I needed to get to Basel quickly. At this time, I was heading exactly in the wrong direction – back to Zurich Airport.
Given the flight would be leaving at 17:10 allegedly, I had to high tail it back to Zurich Hbf and then off to Basel Hbf, then work out how to get to the airport.
The timings were going to be tight – to put it mildly.
Arriving at Zurich Airport, I headed back upstairs and towards a ticket machine.
Now, I’ll be honest, I have my moans about ticket machines that rail operators in the UK have, but this machine wasn’t… friendly to use.
It was to the point where I managed to buy a ticket to EuroAirport Basel, but it was in First Class with a 50% Card, which I didn’t have.
I’ll put this up to stress, but I thought I tapped all the buttons in the right sequence – not it seemed. In the end, I had to go to the booking office to get the ticket fixed.
Whilst this was cutting into flexible travel time, I wanted to ensure this was fixed correctly. Thankfully, the ticket agent understood the problem (and looked like they’d seen this happen more than once before).
In total, to get me to EuroAirport Basel, it would cost CHF45 in total – including the train segments and the bus to the airport. Whilst I wasn’t happy about having to dip into my pocket to buy a ticket, I wasn’t exactly in the position to argue at that moment in time.
That would have to be another thing to file over the next few days.
But for now, I had to get my tail moving down back to platform level.
Why?
My luck might have started to turn – there was a train to Basel allegedly departing with three minutes to go.
And behold… one was waiting
NEXT: IC3 Zurich Airport to Basel Hbf – Upper Deck Travels
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