Cloud, Meet Silver Lining...

Warning - this post is being written from Frankfurt airport - some slightly non-standard German expressions may accidentally slip into it.

We're off! Up at 3.15am to get a Lufthansa flight back to Frankfurt so we could get to Noo Yoik. Our flight had to wait 50 minutes for the skies over Frankfurt to clear, so our 90-minute connection was always going to be tight, but the airport staff lady manning the (absolutely hopelessly slow) security check assured all of us that all onward flights would wait for us. She lied. LIAR! SCHEISSENTALKEN! 20 metres further on we were told our flight was gone. ACH! GOTT IN HIMMEL!

Then we had the runaround as various airport and Lufthansa personnel pointed us to different desks and Lufthansa personnel, before finally a smiley Lufthansa man gave us boarding passes for a flight a couple of hours later. Only upon arriving at the gate did it become apparent that these were Standby tickets (or in my new-found German, der waitenseeticketen).

We then enjoyed a nice long wait in Frankfurt's battery-hen-farm-inspired airport, watching in amazement as Lufthansa staff ignored enormous queues of fuming passengers-to-be in order to belt seven shades of scheissen out of innocent barrier gates, four staff standing around watching a woman computer operator going the kick.

But then, a major twist in the tale. The time drew near for our standby tickets to be called out. We knew from peeking at the gate lady's computer screen (das greenscreenklunkenboxen) that we were pretty close to the top of the (Schindler's) list - but were we close enough?

Agonisingly, we heard names called, and watched lucky punters grab their tickets and gleefully scramble aboard. It seemed like we'd missed out by a whisker, until the gate lady (die fatekontroller) did one last pass to see if there were any seats left. There were - two. And they were for us. Hooray! But the good news didn't stop there. As the gate lady handed us our golden tickets she whispered "You're in luck. They are in business class".