One beach after another, not a real beach with sand and ocean, but being stranded several times traveling from Indiana in the US to small town in Germany at the border to France.

Leaving Indiana and traveling to Chicago O’Hare was the easy leg of this travel. The plane from Chicago to Paris Charles de Gaulle had a defect and after two hours it was fixed, everybody on this plane was happy, the flight was not cancelled and we arrived with a two hour delay in Paris Charles de Gaulle.

The information desk at Charles de Gaulle tells me the train company employees are on strike and best to take a taxi for €55,- to Gare de l’Est. I take a taxi, the driver ask me to pay €180,- no wonder the meter was not visible, which is illegal.

The TGV speed train to Germany then gets cancelled after a 5 hour wait and the only available connection ends in Metz, far away from my final destination. The substitute bus doesn’t serve all destinations, and some passengers are stranded in Metz. After another expensive taxi ride, the fully automated check-in at the B&B hotel doesn’t print a receipt with the room number and access code. It cannot be retrieved since the reservation now is no longer accessable at the hotel terminal. To retrieve the code an Email is send somewhere but not to me, how stupid.

So I, a master of computer science, sit in the lobby of a fully automated hotel after 48 hours of non stop travel and wonder what a bullshit world, we the computer scientist, have created.

Other guests let me into the lobby and they use their phone to call customer service around midnight. Finally I get the access code for my room.

Next time I stay at home with my household robot, ups, I mean with my handsom husband.

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