Wedding in Belgium

What an interesting week I spent in Europe as my really good friend Steven (not me) was getting married. Since I travel around the world a lot this friend and I have something unique in that over the last 5 years we have seen each other and kept in touch regularly which is very rare for him and me. But we both lived in Thailand and ended up working in the same ecommerce company, so even when I moved over to Singapore it was easy enough to get back to Thailand and say hi.

So my friends wedding was on Saturday and I arrived Monday so I got the joy of helping plan and setup for the wedding, makes me rethink doing it for myself. But before I could even arrive in Belgium I had issues and almost didn’t make it to Europe at all.

What happened was I went to check in at the airport as I had booked the flight Toronto to London to Brussels but when I gave my passport to the lady at the counter she looked at it, asked if I had any other passports with me (I said I don’t) and then she walked off. I was like WTF is going on she just took my passport and left. A few minute later she comes back and says due to the condition of my passport I can’t fly to London. My passport had been washed 4 years ago, but over those 4 years I have flown around the world without issue so I was surprised that this lady at Air Canada was telling me I can’t fly because of it.

Now she sent me over to her supervisor who then talked to there supervisor who said no to going to London but yes to going to any place else in Europe. So now all they had to do is find a route to Brussels that didn’t land me in London and still got me there on Monday. They did end up finding me a flight via Germany and while it was still in business class the plane didn’t have the cocoon seats that my other flight had and was something I was really looking forward to trying out. But oh well at this point was just happy to get on a freaking plane.

My friends wedding was small mostly just family and the ceremony was kept just to the city hall event as they didn’t want to have a big event in a church. It was really nice to sit there and see too people make such a big commitment to each other, since I had known them both for a few years I was really happy that they are together and further connected in this way.

During my time in Belgium I didn’t really do much other then some brief shopping trips and sleeping in till 2 everyday. I hope to get back to Europe again and see some other friends in Germany and UK, but will get a new passport before I attempt any travel back to Europe actually will get a new passport this next month as I only have 1 page left for visa’s and I don’t really want to be told by some underpaid over worked Air Canada staff member that I can’t get on a plane because they don’t think its pretty enough.