I Hate Alitalia

You know, the Italian national airline. First of all, the concept of a national airline is pretty ridiculous to me (despite my occasional left-leaning tendancies, capitalism does still have its merits). Second of all, they suck. In fact, they suck so much that when I put in my travel request for this trip to Copenhagen, I told the travel office at work, "hey, if you're going to be flying me on a carrier out of Rome, DON'T fly me from Naples to Rome. I'll take the train instead, and it'll be cheaper for the Navy, and even though I'll have to haul my luggage up and it'll take a little longer, I won't have to deal with Alitalia OR the Naples airport, so it's worth it to me."

So of course, rather than listen to me and save the government a hundred bucks, they book me on an Alitalia flight from Naples to Rome so I can catch my SwissAir flight from Rome to Zurich to Copenhagen.

So of course when I arrive in Copenhagen at 8:00 p.m., my luggage doesn't show up. And when I go to the lost luggage counter, I find out it's still on the ground in Rome. And by the time I get through all that, it's 9:00 at night. Guess how many clothing stores in Copenhagen are open after 9 p.m.? (Hint: it's less than 1, and it's a non-negative integer.) Guess how many clothing stores in Copenhagen open before my 8:30 a.m. suit-and-tie meeting tomorrow morning? (Hint: same answer as the previous question.) Guess what I'll be wearing instead of a suit and tie? (Hint: looks a lot like the wrinkled sweater and cargo pants I got off the airplane wearing tonight.)

I should have realized this was going to happen when I got to work this morning. We have this super high-tech electronic padlock that we lock our office door with at night or when nobody is in the room. The lock was broken when we got there, so we were all locked out for the first half-hour of work. As you can see, the day didn't progress much from there.

On the bright side, this is the coolest hotel room I've seen in Europe. Pictures to follow.