Friday evening we taxied to the Chabad house, where I had prepaid for the Shabbos meals on their website through paypal. The meal was very nice and enjoyable, though more of a restaurant’ish experience as opposed to what I’m used to at Chabad houses around the world where it’s more “heimish”. After the meal, one of the gentile workers walked us back to the hotel where I had a 200 CZK waiting for her that I prepared before Shabbos (Disclaimer: Not all situations are the same, so speak to your local Orthodox rabbi).
Shabbos morning I davened at the Altneuschul for the ‘chavaya’ and unfortunately was a bit of a letdown for reasons I won’t go in to. The highlight of the service was the Kiddush the Rabbi sponsored after davening, in celebration of his birthday. The meal at Chabad didn’t go too well either. Although a new, modern building, there was no A/C on this sweltering day. To make things worse, they had supposedly run out of soft drinks and served only room temperature water (and later beer), even though the menu clearly states that they provide “unlimited soft drinks”. While that in itself might have been excusable, the fact that some tables were still able to get while others weren’t ‘zoiche’ is what made me upset. (There’s more to this story, but not appropriate for a public forum). Though the cholent was delicious…
Our flight on motza”sh was scheduled for 12:05am. Being that Shabbos only ended at 9:42pm, we had our stuff mostly packed from before Shabbos. By 10pm, we were already in the taxis on the way to the airport. With the airport located a half hour away, it appeared to be smooth sailing from there.
How wrong I was.
In the taxi ride to the airport, I switched on my phone to check my emails. I had an urgent email from my brother back in Israel who told me that 2 men were caught trying to break into my apartment on Friday night and were chased away. It was not clear if they had succeeded in entering, since the neighbor who had a key was also away for the weekend. So that already put me on edge.
Upon arrival at the airport, I looked at the departures board and could not find my flight. I asked around and was directed to the Travel Service ticketing office that thankfully was still open. They looked at my ticket and flight number and informed me that my flight was at 10:45pm. Apparently, there was a schedule change, and no one notified me. Not the airline and not the agency I booked it through, Israir. There was another flight at 11:20pm, but there were only 2 seats available, and I needed 4.
The agent called the local Czech representative for Israir who asked me, “Can you please explain to me why you arrived at the airport at 10:30 for a 12:05 flight? You had to have been at the airport minimum 2 hours before flight time!” Instead of apologizing for not informing me, he laid the blame completely on my shoulders. Had I arrived at the airport at 10:05, I would have made the 10:45 flight. At least that’s what he said. The earliest flight was the following day, Sunday, at 11pm, but he wasn’t sure he could get us all on. He told me to book 2 rooms at the airport hotel, but couldn’t confirm that he would cover it. I instead opted to go back to the Hilton Old Town, where I had already paid for the second night (it was cheaper to do cash + points for the second night than to do 10pm late checkout).
On Sunday about noon, he called me and told me that the only thing he could do was to put my wife + baby on the Travel Service charter, and I would fly with the 2 older kids on the Czech flight leaving an hour later. With no other option, I accepted his offer.
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