Friday, September 23rd will be one of my most memorable days on the Joseph S. Bruno trip for a number of reasons. My friend Morgan and I planned a weekend trip to Geneva, Switzerland starting on the 23rd and ending on Sunday the 25th. We started our day off in good spirits as we toted our bags to catch the train to Rome. After arriving in Rome we had a great lunch at a restaurant in the train station called WOK that makes great Asian stir fry. We bought our train tickets to Fiumincino Airport and headed on our way.
We arrived at the airport about 2 hours before our departure time and decided to explore the shops a little before going to our gate. After walking around, we went to our gate and sat for about an hour and a half while waiting to board. They started to board the plane about fifteen minutes late and only called people with disabilities and priority boarding to get in line. For about twenty minutes there was a consistent line of people boarding the plane and they still had not called for our section to board. It was getting pretty close to time for the plane to take off so we were getting a little worried. We finally stood up and got in line, but we noticed that the screen at our gate had changed to another flight and both of the airline workers were gone. After running to the nearest information desk, we were informed that we had missed our flight, and were sent to the airline ticket desk.
At this point, we were shocked and very upset. We spoke to at least three people at the ticket booth and they were all very rude and short with us and told us there was no way we could get our money back. Of course, this made us even more upset, and it didn’t help that we were all alone in a foreign country that we’ve only been in for a few weeks. After calling our parents and the airline’s customer service line, we decided to talk to one more person at the ticket booth. We finally got the answer we were hoping for and were told that we could submit a claim online to try and get our money back.
By the end of the day we were so over the entire mess that we couldn’t help but laugh about it on the way back to Ariccia. We even decided to stop and get some of our favorite gelato in Albano on our walk back to the palace. This day was definitely a learning experience for me and I will certainly never forget it.
-Noa Amundson