Here’s the thing though.
I needn’t have warmed you up with all those airport stories because this time I didn’t even bloody make it that far. Budapest, I wanted to get to this weekend – well, ultimately, anyway – but in the short term I was just aiming for Dortmund, since that’s where my plane was off from.

But having arrived at Aachen in the still dark this morning, my clear run to the airport was thwarted by Deustche Bahn train drivers moaning about their pay. Hundreds of stranded passengers milled about on account of the strike with nothing for it but to start smoking again.

I joined the throngs of disgruntled passengers and we all swarmed about the platforms, heaving forward as one mass in the rare event a train would pull up, launching ourselves onboard and urging it forward with revolutionary will, only to find it parked stoically and permanently at a halt.

One train, unhappily, puttered forward a bit and wheezed to halt at Wuppertal, a useless town with no connection to Dortmund airport on the best of days, then slunk back to Aachen under threat of riot.

Not that there were any better options from Aachen. The taxi queue, which in all honesty probably can’t be called a queue on account of lacking an essential element – forward propulsion – stood at about 400 man strong. I gave up hovering about the back of the line once my nose froze solid enough for me to snap it off and store it in my pocket, and went marching about town trying to cut in on a taxi there, to no avail. Not because there was no one to cut in on but because there were no taxis to cut in on into.

At this point I’d never have made it to the airport on time even had my sister, who works in foreign affairs and therefore should ostensibly be able to do so, sent the required military gyrocopter. I gave up. And went somewhere else instead.

Hamburg.