It was quite exciting – stressful exciting – getting over here.
It started the night before, realizing our luggage wouldn’t fit in the car – not mine or Mom or Dad’s. Fortunately Aunt Margie was able to step in and lend the ‘rents her SUV – which fit us all perfectly.
At the airport Mom helped us get everything to the counter while Dad sat out with the car. The first obstacle came before we even got in line. It was a man with a scale.
Now I bought a luggage scale in order to weight my bags and make sure they were all under the 50 pound limit. And they were just there – barely under limit – and I was satisfied. Then next day I remember to put my luggage locks on. Those have some heft to them. Enough so that when they were weighed at least 2, and maybe 3, bags were over limit. There were 3 of us standing there looking rather guilty, and to Mom he said – next time, just make it at 50 – and let us pass without extra fees. God Bless him – he made it possible to pay my rent this month!
And then…
As you may know (or not), my visa was issue in time for them to paste it in my passport and get it back to me before our departure. Coral’s was not.
At the airport, SFO, the ticket agent did not want to issue our boarding passes as Coral did not have a visa and only had a one way ticket – she needed a visa or a return ticket. Technicaly you are allowed in the country for 90 days without a visa. Technically there shouldn’t have been a problem Fortunately we got to the airport more than 2 hours before our flight because we must have spent an hour taking care of the issue. It was 7:30 and I was on the phone with the Czech Consulate who was telling me to lie
I tried to explain the situation to him and he kept saying – well, just tell her you haven’t decided which countries to visit yet, tell you you just don’t know which one she’ll fly home from, tell her that someone else is making those arrangements, tell her it’s none of her business, tell her to do her job and issue the tickets because letting you in the country is not her problem, tell her we don’t have a problem with no visa and you’ll be fine. While only the first two examples are lies, and the rest are all true, I thought it so funny that he kept telling me to lie just to get us over there cause Immigration could truly care less…. And he was so right!!!!
Flight details
SFO to O’Hare to Heathrow to Prague.
SFO to Chicago, no problem. We found our transfer with ease and waited. And waited and finally boarded a plane that was running late for no apparent reason whatsoever – which I can so in honesty and without facetiousness as the announcing attendant announced it. I started to stress as we only had 2 hours in Heathrow to make our next flight. We ended up leaving relatively soon after our scheduled time and then making up for the delay in the air.
Up until the end it was a rather uneventful flight – decent sort of comfortable seats with individual screens and the airlines version of on-demand entertainment – it was great! Someone, on our side of the plane, in the section behind us had a medical emergency towards the end and there was a call out for doctors or EMTS or nurses which was quickly responded to and things were taken care of.
Getting off the plane was a bit of a process. We ended up rushing through Heathrow trying to find which terminal to go to – there was a total lack of people who might be able to offer direction. Our next leg was on British Airways which uses 2 terminals for European flights, fortunately we picked the right one off the bat because as is we were cutting it close. We knew we had a ways to go and ended up practically running to catch the tram to the right terminal.
We had to go through a pre-security screening and got pulled out of line as we had some water left over from our earlier flights, and they wanted to see your clear baggie of liquids. Got through that and thought we were done until after following rows and rows of queue tape without anyone in them – which was bein guarded by a man who made sure you didn’t just duck under the tape and walk to where the line actually started – we hit the real security. Coral’s bag triggered something – presumably by the empty water bottle. It was pulled out and put in line and eventually searched by hand. The poor guy had to take out, open, and touch everything with his magic wand, then put it all back – and that thing was packed tight!
By the time he had finished our fight was boarding and we didn’t even have our gate number yet. We got directions – Gate 10, downstairs, right there (pointing at the big yellow sign) and made our way down and right past the exchange desk – which I needed as I was unable to exchange funds at SFO as the flight left from domestic not international – and then found we needed to take more elevators, escalators, and another tram to get to the actual gate location.
Our flight was boarding before we got directions so I was a bit stressed as to whether or not we’d make it. We did.
The served us breakfast. Of sorts. They looked like sandwiches, with a choice of bacon, egg, and sausage or soft cheese. Coral and I both took the BES one and she was rather - well she was grossed out. It was an egg salad sandwich with bacon bits and chunks of sausage. She didn’t eat it and I started to stress – what if she doesn’t like the food in Prague either?!?
Arrival time
When we finally arrived in Prague – nearly 20 hours later – I was dreading going through Immigration and Customs – Coral doesn’t have a passport and we have 4 HUGE suitcases. I managed to screw it up on the first attempt. Coral had the heavy carry-on bags, and I had both passports. When I was next we both approached and he sent us both back – I had to approach on my own. So I did. I handed him my passport, he looked at me, he looked at it, he looked at me really hard, looked at it again, scanned it, then flipped a few pages and put a stamp in it. He never even looked at my visa.
When it was Coral’s turn he looked at her, looked at it, scanned it, then flipped a few pages and stamped it.
We completely skipped – what is the nature of your purpose? Are you carrying…?
I was sort of confused and then thought - hey we haven’t yet cleared customs, that was only Immigration - so we proceeded towards baggage claim and Customs.
We had a total or 4 carry-ons and 4 large suitcases. Three of the suitcases were some of the first off the flight. Then we waited. And waited and waited. Finally after the airport had cleared out we had to acknowledge it wasn’t coming. I found the right counter and put in a claim for lost luggage – the had found it already, sitting in London, and were putting it on a flight to arrive at 6:00.
(Meanwhile I know the taxi has been waiting for nearly an hour.)
We gathered our bags – two trolleys worth – and made our way to the exit and customs.
Czech Customs
I wish I’d taken a picture for you. It is a large exit with yellow highlighting and black writing. On the far right side of the wall is a warning that you must declare goods in excess of a certain value. On the far left is the desk where the agents sit. We approached and then stopped as everyone who had been standing about earlier for Customs, while the people from my flight were leaving, had disappeared or were now at the desk. We paused and they pointed around the corner, where I thought we’d have to answer questions or fill out a form or something because we hadn’t even filled out any paperwork or answered a single question yet.
We walked around the corner and thru the doorway, which apparently was the exit.
Not only did they let Coral in the country, they didn’t care or bother to ask us anything at all about our stay, the visas, or our planned departure date.
Future reference
I did manage to get to an exchange office before we hit Immigration. Don’t do it. If you’re planning on visiting check with you bank, with RCU it’s cheaper to just use your ATM or debit card. I needed lots of cash immediately and so that was not an option. I l0st over 1,000 crowns at the airport exchange desks. I knew better but had gotten so frustrated trying to change my money at home I was just going to use the ATMs until I realized I that today I needed more than my daily limit would allow and so took cash. Advance planning!! Banks in SR do not exchange into Czech crowns – you will need to go out of town to do it, or arrange it online and have your funds delivered. Don’t rely on the airport because you will lose. A lot.
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