You may recall my earlier suspicion that the railway fairy must have a sister. If you feel the need to catch up at this point, you can do so here. I also continue to believe that her connections extend not only to the federal government details here but to the entire European Parliament. After all, I spent the time before my return flight on election weekend doing something sensible: election training.

I was trying to catch my flight from Berlin to Karlsruhe. Admittedly, the flight fairy had largely ignored me up to this point. I suspect that the relatively short passenger list for the flight to Baden-Baden finally drew her attention to me.

That day, I had made a firm decision to end my customer appointment extremely punctually in order to arrive at the airport well in time. Against my usual habits, I didn’t even print a ticket. After all, thanks to my generously stocked frequent-flyer account, I had taken advantage of the offered seat reservation.

Well. Long story short: I didn’t manage to leave the customer on time after all.

I rushed to find an available taxi. I don’t think I need to explain the role of the Berlin taxi fairy, who had chosen precisely that moment to distribute all taxis across all radio dead zones of the city. At the very last second, I snatched a paid vehicle from under the nose of a Guatemalan-looking woman. To be honest, I believe this incident triggered everything that followed. Perhaps she placed an ancient Aztec travel curse on my evening.

I arrived at the airport and found myself standing in front of a closed counter for holders of gold and silver airline cards. “Alright,” it slowly dawned on me, “you’ll have to join the loooong line of early check-in passengers.”

After just twenty minutes, a friendly and remarkably cheerful Air Berlin employee waved me to her counter. The first thing she discovered—or rather, her data-processing machine discovered—was that my name could not be associated with any current flight.

After I corrected her spelling, we moved on to the next problem: my no-longer-existent seat reservation. I had reserved a window seat. She offered me a cozy middle seat instead, which I politely declined, referring to my reservation. We eventually agreed on an aisle seat in row 22.

I proceeded to security. I now had ten minutes left until boarding.

At this point, I once again learned that shoes with metal inserts in the soles are utterly unsuitable for speedy flight processing. Go barefoot instead. My shoes triggered a violent squealing from the security system. Off they came, and they were subjected to X-ray screening. The verdict: traditionally made shoes, and “they’ve always put a bit of metal in them.”

My remaining time dropped to five minutes, and the planned drink drifted aeronautically to about ten kilometers above sea level, while remaining flavor-wise well below it.

I entered the departure hall, curious to see which gate the plane home had wandered to this time. Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden, 7:00 p.m., Gate 43. Excellent.

When I arrived, the boarding display had just gone dark and switched to Stuttgart. Fine. Nothing new. I returned to the main departures board and read, in horror:

“Karlsruhe BAD – cancelled.”

I was just about to vent my frustration when I spotted another monitor at the far end of the hall displaying “Karlsruhe BAD.” Unfortunately, the flight number and departure time didn’t match. Still, there was my destination.

So I lined up courageously and asked the airport employee stationed there. He snatched my ticket from my hand and, before I could even form my question, shouted at me irritably:

“Yeah, yeah, that’s the right flight. Says right there it’s going to Karlsruhe.”

I was clearly not the first passenger to ask questions that day. Without a word, I took my torn boarding pass and walked toward the rear entrance of the aircraft.

When I reached my seat in row 22, an elderly gentleman was already sitting there. This put me in yet another awkward position, so I politely asked whether he might be sitting in the correct seat. He admitted he hadn’t really been paying attention and rummaged for his boarding pass.

Seat 22C.

Just as I was about to leap screaming from the aircraft, a voice came from the cabin ceiling:

“Due to the spontaneous unification of two flights, you are free to choose your seat today. I repeat: you may sit wherever you like.”

Did the flight fairy know that I had already cast my European vote, sealed and mailed?

It didn’t matter.

After all, I had a choice.