The best upgrade thread is lots of fun. Travel can be bad and gets TV shows made about he horrible stuff, but it can be wonderful and unexpected.
We were at the Dead Sea in Jordan and talked to the life gauds at the beach. I think it would be impossible to sink enough to drown, their main job is to have lots of bottled water for when you get salt in your eyes. With not much happening we were having a great chat about Jordan and New Zealand, when one of them disappeared and came back with a kilo of Dead Sea Mud, carefully wrapped for us to take home.
We thankfully took it with us to the next hotel in Petra. We found one of the staff who understood that we couldn't take mud through Europe for another 3 weeks and certainly couldn't bring it back to New Zealand. He assured us his wife would be very happy.
We also had a few days in Aman. The taxi driver who got us from the airport seemed agreeable, so we asked if he could take us on a few day trips. When he took us back to the airport he have us local Omani Power Authority windscreen shades and coffee cups. We could carry those home.
These weren't huge gifts, but stick in our minds as the fun side of travel.
Make of this what you will.....but please do read to the end of the story for the coup de grace
It was in Melbourne, at the start of 1989 that my wife and I decided to start a family.
Months later, when nothing seemed to be 'producing results', we booked a visit to her GP who simply told us to just relax, chill out and to take our minds off it maybe just book a long holiday somewhere.
So we did and booked a long trip to visit family and friends in the UK, Europe and Eastern Europe.
You guessed it, booking the holiday for later that year did the trick, my dear wife fell pregnant in no time at all.
Three months later - when getting the results of her first ultrasound, my wife rang me at my work to announce the news that not only was she pregnant but that she was carrying mono-zygotic twins.
Great news, that presented us with a dilemma, i.e. shouldn't we now cancel our trip.
My wife made an appointment with her specialist to seek her advice - who advised her not to cancel the trip but to perhaps shorten it and avoid any overexertion in any particular part of the itinerary.
When my wife mentioned that we had planned to also visit the Soviet Union, Moscow in particular, her advisor said that having personally participated in an official tour in recent times, that she saw no reason for us not to go.
So having taken her advice and having discussed it with me, my wife decided that yes we should still go but sensibly shorten the trip. So we contacted our travel agent and presented them with a new, shorter itinerary and the insurance policy charge was adjusted accordingly. Months later but still before our departure, we watched news reports of protests in Tiananmen Square and commented to each other that surely this must mark the beginning of the end.
Fast forward some months now, we are now on our trip and having been to the UK and Europe, we boarded the train in Paris that was to take us to Moscow. We were going to Riga in Latvia but via Moscow.
We had a great time in both Moscow and in Riga and were on the very last day of our trip, packed ready to start the return leg home when my wife took ill - what then took place was a nightmare. It seems that there were two health systems - one for the party members and one for the masses. Our relations managed to talk our way into an ambulance and the hospital only to find us stopped in admissions, the stretcher with my wife placed on the floor and a huge argument ensue - none of which we could understand save for the fact that we weren't party officials and weren't allowed in this class of facility. Developments however took place at such a pace that they had no option but to admit my wife.
It must be kept in mind that at this time the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapsing politically. That night whilst waiting, the doctors (who incidentally in this crazy communist word were paid the lowest wages in their system) presented me with news that I might not have a wife by the end of that night. In an operating room that resembled an abattoir, they did their best with very basic tools. My wife survived the episode but miscarried and over the next 4 weeks we survived through the generosity of our relations who daily worked their social networks to get my wife some of the basics through the black market. None of which included sanitary products or syringes - why syringes, well the ward nurse who seemed to be re using needles and when we asked about HIV, someone resembling Nurse Ratched from One flew over the Cuckoo' Nest, that there wasn't any HIV in the Soviet Union as it was illegal and no good communist would do that kind of thing, share needles etc. At this point in the story, do not ask me about what happened or more precisely didn't happen with our very high profile Australian travel insurance company. Suffice to say it was a life lesson learned that I never forgot.
My wife was eventually discharged from hospital some weeks later and we then spent time with relations. After two months of being in Riga, we managed to buy tickets to exit via train to East Germany. It was an emotional farewell and and an experience that bonded our families like nothing before. We arrived by train into East Berlin with a plan to cross over into West Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie. Forget what we said earlier about trouble in China, it was the Soviet system that was unravelling, and quickly. We did cross the border but by just walking through without being stopped, such was the disarray.
Having put our USSR problems behind us, we simply got ourselves into another pickle. For neither love nor money, could we get a plane ticket out, a hire car or a hotel bedroom. Turns out in amongst of the political turmoil, that there was an exhibition grid iron game scheduled and the amenities were stretched to the max with players, officials, US armed forces stationed in Europe and anyone else keen to catch the game. We faced a night sleeping rough. Standing at the Zoogarten railway station very late at night, staring at the neon sign and handset with a matrix of hotels listed, I rang every single one - all told me 'no rooms available' - in what seems now like a Harry Potter moment, the top left panel blinked several times and I rang it immediately - they had had a last minute cancellation. I grabbed the opportunity without asking anything else and we turned up at what I think might have been the towns' most expensive hotel. My recollection is that the fee was $600 US for the night just for the room, nothing else.
So perhaps at this point if you are still reading my story, you might be asking, where in amongst this is the unexpected gift?
Well it's about to be revealed now....
My Amex credit card survived possibly it's worst ever hammering in a 24 hour time frame, we watched the Berlin wall being torn/chipped down. Then we made some tight connections that saw us arrive at Charles De Gaulle airport just before the boarding was due to start on our carrier Thai Airways. We presented ourselves at their check in counter with our full fare return economy tickets, admittedly both out of date now and asked could we be checked in to what we understood was to be the last flight back to Australia that week. The counter attendant, a very petite polite Thai lady said that she couldn't check us in, even though the flight wasn't full; that that call could only be made/authorized by her supervisors in the Paris office, which was now closed due to the late hour of the evening and that we would have to wait for the weekend to pass until Monday mid morning to try and see what they could do.
At this point my wife broke down crying and I now started to tell the Thai employee what events had been responsible up until this point in time for our out of date tickets. She moved us away from the counter professionally and politely, as I began to plead our case. All three of us were now oblivious to what was happening around us, a sizeable crowd had now assembled, leaning in and listening in to our tale of woe. The Thai lady was clear, she said was beyond her authority level.
At this point a tall American male possibly in his late 20's early thirties moved from the edge of the crowd to us in the centre. In a polite and quiet manner, he apologized that he had been listening along with everyone else in the crowd. He said something along the lines of the following...'' I happen to work here for United Airlines, I can understand completely and respect what this Thai Airlines employee is saying BUT he said, I am so moved by what has happened to you that I have here in my hand a book of inter airlines ticket/vouchers?? I will personally authorize for both of you, two tickets that should all else fail, will be fully underwritten cost wise by United Airlines. With that statement to everyone in the even bigger by now crowd, and the approval of the Thai Airways employee, he duly signed the two chits and handed them her. With that simple gesture, we then proceeded to board the plane for the flight back to Australia.
That folks, is one simple kind gesture I will never forget.
