Blogging my way to Prague

Well, I'm on my way to Prague on business. I used to get terribly excited every time I got to go to Europe on business, now I'm just annoyed that I won't be at home during the World Cup to watch all the matches in High-Definition. I guess I've become pretty jaded about all this. I understand Prague is an amazing city and I really can't wait to see some of it. Unfortunately, I arrive Monday morning 90 minutes before my business conference starts and they have us programmed about 14 hours a day every day I'm there (save one free evening).

The adventure started at the airport when I realized that one leg of my airline ticket was missing from the paper ticket my travel agent issued. I hate paper tickets and still don't understand why sometimes they still issue them, but nevertheless, I was a bit concerned that I was going to get to Brussels and get stuck without a ticket to Praha. A quick call to my company's emergency 24 hour travel agency (glad I programmed that into speed dial) confirmed that I did in fact have a ticket, but that one leg (of the 6 I'm flying roundtrip) was issued as an E-Ticket (go figure).

I missed the first 80 minutes of the England v. Ecuador match this morning while I was in the air to Chicago. As soon as we were off an active runway at O'Hare I was texting my buddy Jonathan asking for the score. As I de-planed, I noticed that one of the video terminals that normally shows arrivals and departures had the match on so I stood in the middle of Concourse G creating a traffic obstruction (with about a dozen others) and watched the last 10 minutes of the match.

Now, I'm killing time on my 5 hour layover (the joys of trying to get a good connection out of Greenville-Spartanburg, near where I had to be Saturday for my cousin's wedding). The good news is that boarding for my flight to Brussels should start at just about the same time as the Holland-Portugal match will be wrapping up. I've already staked out a spot at the bar across from the gate to watch the match!

Since I know I won't have a lot of free time, I've hardly spent any time planning anything to do. Thanks to the WiFi in O'Hare though, at least I was able to download a few wikipedia pages on Prague and fire off an email to an Aussie ex-pat group in the Czech Republic asking for a good spot to watch them humble the Italians tomorrow night (fingers crossed).