塞翁失马, 焉知非福

The Chinese idiom refers to an ancient tale of a man who lost his horse, but gained when his horse returned a few days later with another horse. The moral of the story is that misfortune may actually be a blessing. This was my case when I was stuck at the Geneva airport on the late night of Tuesday, August 14th.

(Rewind to a month ago. Sorry for the delay in sharing!)

My original return ticket from Geneva to Abu Dhabi was a booked ticket for Sept 11th, and since I wanted to return early (4 weeks was already quite along away from Q and new home!), I tried my luck with stand-by ticket on August 14th. I don't know how many of you have had similar experience, but now I've done it, I have to say it can cause a great deal of anxiety and excitement and if you are unlucky like I was, disappointment. I was told that the flight was overbooked, but following Q's advice, I stayed at the gate till the plane took off, and boy was I upset when I was told to go home. It means I was stuck at Geneva for at least two days before trying again with the next outbound flight.

Lucky for me, my couchsurfing host Karine let me crash at her apartment again! Very bummed I arrived at Karine's almost near midnight, but very quickly we came to the idea of going to Interlaken for some adrenaline rush! The next morning we were well on our way to some world-class white-water rafting and parachuting! Needless to say, we had an awesome time! For your viewing pleasure, here is a series of action photos from the rafting trip (click to open, I'm the front-left paddler):


here is a video clip of Karine and her parachute pilot during take-off:


And here is a clip of my parachute during landing:


Later that night we arrived back at Karine's to the good news of a confirmed flight ticket for the following day. All of sudden, missing previous day's flight didn't seem so bad! Two days later, I came back to Abu Dhabi safely with just a few more travel stories. Love it!