Israel 1: How did we get from Wrocław to Tel Aviv through Odessa?

The weekend before our departure to Israel was oddly beautiful for that year’s autumn. It should have given us a hint. But it didn’t, so we were heavily surprised when our flight from Wrocław to Tel Aviv got redirected to Warsaw due to the dense fog which covered this part of the country. 


We didn’t lose hope though and we arrived at the airport before dawn and managed to check in. It already smelled like holidays, yet after some fuzzy announcements the flight got cancelled. The only available tickets for a flight to Tel Aviv were for 2 days ahead and a part of passengers decided to rebook the tickets. We insisted on LOT, the airline we were travelling with, and finally were offered a flight through... Odessa. From Warsaw. We didn’t have anything to lose but a couple of days, so we took the car which we earlier left at the airport parking lot and were supposed to pick up after 10 days, and we headed to Warsaw. 

We made it through a labyrinth of connecting roads and local parking lots to Okęcie airport and we successfully checked in for the flight to Odessa. On our way, I failed to remember anything about the history of the city which I associated with quite decadent stay of a Polish great poet, Adam Mickiewicz, during his exile, and with his sonnets. And I was probably still thinking about them when the first thing I saw after we touched the surface (very, very uneven) of the runaway were the planes grounded nearby. 


THOSE planes:

We looked at them in horror and we asked ourselves: “Are we really gonna get on board of THIS???” And it was not an unjustified worry, because we were supposed to fly to Tel Aviv with Ukrainian airline.
At that time, we were asked to enter the overcrowded bus and driven to a brand-new terminal with barely nobody inside, except the border guards. We had to pass through some of their posts and repeat our story about the fog which amused the guards who were, by the way, very kind. 

There was no information displayed at the airport and after passing through the control we stayed in an almost empty arrivals hall. Other passengers were leaving the building in a hurry, dragging the luggage behind, when finally, one of them decided to help us out. He advised us to go to the old station where the planes depart as the new terminal serviced only arriving flights. 

The clerk at the Warsaw airport reassured us that our luggage would be sent to Tel Aviv, so we quickly headed in the given direction and hoped to find there a cosy café or at least a local fast food restaurant. We stopped halfway to observe the encounter of the new and the old: on one side a modern airport building: and on the other...

And on the other... a reminiscence of communism in Poland, as my husband called it:

This turned out to be more than symbolic.
We entered a quite creepy hall, probably smaller than the old Starachowice airport. An old bench of socialist realism aesthetics was illuminated by already capitalist neon signs.

Innate pessimism, or well-preserved memories from communism in Poland, pushed us to look for an information point. At the first floor we found a small office of LOT and asked if there was anything to worry about (I didn’t dare to ask about those wrecks on the runaway, believing in the Providence). 

A very kind lady made a couple of calls and the news broke. It turned out that in the new terminal they were frantically searching for some mysterious passengers from Poland who abandoned their suitcases and disappeared. So, we headed there immediately, but the closed door stopped us. Luckily, someone appeared shortly. 

We found the right room and a panicked customer service employee who almost cried of happiness when she saw us. She glossed over our papers and we had our suitcases back. We thanked the heritage of communism, as in any other normal airport nobody would care about the abandoned luggage but rather instructed its disposal.
We had once again made our way to the old station, this time with our luggage, and we laid down on some old benches, totally ignoring sanitary issues. After we cooled down, we started to investigate if we needed to check in again. It turned out that the information we received in Warsaw was not precise and Odessa was not a transfer airport. We had to check in once again. But... where? We were advised to check in using the machines located at the first floor.  

We left the luggage under supervision of our children, as pulling the suitcases up and down the stairs didn’t seem a good idea. After entering our data: from our birth dates to passport numbers and any other information about the flight, we printed our four big sheets of papers - our boarding passes. 

We went back to our benches, yet this time we had to start the search for a place to eat rather than relax. The station started to fill up with passengers, and the service personnel placed two big machines at the door and installed two enormous plastic foil rolls inside them. We soon discovered why. The passengers approached the machines and left their luggage to have it wrapped with plastic foil. The personnel wrapped the suitcases really tightly: all of them, not only those which might get damaged. 

The time was passing, and we started to nervously look at the suitcases leaving the machine, wrapped up like babies by their overprotective mothers. And we didn’t withstand the pressure. After all, we still remembered, due to our old age, those dark times, so we could imagine our gutted suitcases laying somewhere in a dark airport warehouse easily. We exchanged zlotys to hryvnias and spent a small fortune on wrapping our suitcases.

Afterwards, embarrassed by our own stupidity, we registered them on time.
After passing through the control, we spend another two hours waiting for the flight in a crowded hall, which turned out to be heavily delayed. We had to investigate on our own, as there was no information provided at all. Other passengers seemed to remain unbothered and observing the variety of their personalities kept us entertained until the late-night flight.

We were so exhausted that even the wrecks we had seen while landing didn’t scare us anymore. Luckily, the plane was huge and new. 
Three hours later, we were at airport:

And also, as empty as the previous airport, yet this time due to the very late, or rather early, hours. Dead tired, we managed to pick up the reserved car and after 22 hours since leaving home, we finally arrived at our hosts’ place in Ra’anana.