Nuremberg; Sunday, 20 December, 2009

For the last couple of years I have been going to Belgium just before Christmas. Thankfully I didn’t this year. The chaos of Eurostar having broken a couple of days previously, and still not working, added to generally appalling weather conditions across most of the UK, Northern France, Belgium, Northern Germany and everywhere in between made it look as though any travel might be difficult.

I set of extra early to make sure that I didn’t get caught up in snow chaos, and consequently found myself at Stansted Airport with three hours to spare, although I needed nearly 45 minutes to get through security, so it was probably a good thing.

Through security and the news looked pretty grim. The Air Berlin flights to Cologne and Dusseldorf were all either “Indefinitely Delayed” or Cancelled, and the Hannover flight that should have left at two in the afternoon was currently estimating a departure closer to 7pm.

As a precaution, in case I was massively early, I had booked myself into the Business lounge at Stansted, so I headed there to take in the free food and drink until either my flight left, or they kicked me out of the airport and into a hotel.

There was one other man in the lounge, he’d been there since lunchtime, trying to get back to Dusseldorf, but the airport was closed, and they couldn’t say when a flight would leave. I felt quite guilty when, 90 minutes later, and bang on time, my flight was announced for boarding.

Just over two hours, and an uneventful flight later, we touched down in Nuremberg, the airport covered in snow, but thankfully the runway still open. Baggage reclaim, customs and a quick U-Bahn ride into town and I found myself at the hotel. After an initial panic because they couldn’t find my booking on the system (the guy was convinced I’d said my surname was Brown!), I checked in and headed to my bed.