First of all I went to Harpenden (a small town about 25 mins by train from London's St Pancras Int. station) for a training/group meeting, since most of my group mates work in the Harpenden office. So it was not for holiday and I would not write a blog on it, if it was not because something that I will tell later :-P It was my first time to Harpenden office and I was so excited (though I just returned from Scotland several days before) to meet some new colleagues who just recently joined our group and also to see Muhammad, Dez, and of course Tony, my boss again.
My flight was at 6:30am (thanks God that I live not so far away from Duesseldorf airport), I woke up around 4am and I managed to catch the bus around 5am. I did the web check in before, so everything was okay and I had quite relaxing time in the airport. We took off and then flew for about 15 mins before the pilot made an announcement that we had to return to Duesseldorf because they had a problem with the windscreen (which reminds me of one episode of NG's Air Crash Investigation program that I have seen before). Thankfully we landed safely in Duess and they decided to fix it and let us waiting on board (you could imagine a lot of people started to call with their cell phone or Blackberry...you name it..most of the passengers traveled for business purpose on that morning flight). I sent a text (since it was still early morning in the UK) to Tony informing that I would not be there at 8am as it was planned.
After 1.5 hrs or so, the mechanics have finished with the repair and we got ready to take off. But before we reached the runway, the pilot made another announcement to inform us...that they still had that windscreen problem. They decided to cancel the flight and transfer us to the next flight of their airline.
So we returned to the terminal building, transferred to another terminal building where the next flight (which was at 10:30am!) supposed to be, and waited. Not to mention that I have to pass the security control again (and took off my boots again, unpacked my laptop again...). We boarded around 10am but finally because of several things, we only took off around 11:30 (well my training supposed to be started at 10am). Finally I landed on England soil (London Stansted) around noon. I was a bit worry about how to get to Harpenden from Stansted, it supposed to be one hour drive and Faye from Harpenden office had ordered someone to pick me up from Stansted to the office, but it was for 7 in the morning and I was 5 hours late. I just started to call Tony to ask him how the best way to get to Harpenden when I saw someone holding a board with my name and my company's name on it. I was so relieved and the guy who picked me up was really waiting for me that long, he almost returned to Harpenden but someone from the office asked him to wait (I said "sorry" to him several times :-P).
I arrived at the office around 1pm and the guys in my group were so nice to wait me for lunch, oh and the view from Stansted to Harpenden was quite nice also. I joined the training for the next half day and after that Tony took us for some drinks in George, a very nice pub in Harpenden.
The next day, we had a group meeting and I headed back for Duesseldorf in the evening...this time everything was so smooth. The funny thing, I met a woman who also took the same flight with me before, she also recognized me and told me that she hopes that it would not be like yesterday again... hehe, well definitely I could not stand for another 5 hrs delay...(it was 8pm already) :-P...
All in all...Harpenden is a nice small town, the guys in my group were great, and we had a good time together. The flight delay just made my first Harpenden trip unforgettable .. I think..
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