Our Fun with the Budapest Airport Strike

We're in Denver right now - we were able to make our flights on Friday, but just barely.

I wrote on Wednesday about the strike at the Budapest airport, which was causing flights to be canceled and delayed. We weren't sure if we were going to be able to fly out on Friday.
On Thursday we checked the website, and the airport reported that "all flights were departing on schedule." Although that is true, what they weren't saying was that although all flights are departing on schedule - many of them are flying out without passengers!
When we arrived at the airport on Friday, there was a line of at least a thousand people waiting to go through security (they are the ones on strike); people were fighting and yelling. There were cops walking around carrying AK-47s, with the big banana clips on them. It was crazy.
The other airport in Budapest was closed and only one terminal was working at the main one - so everyone had to go through this terminal - but no one could go through security until 8am, because of the strike.

We went to check in, and they told us that there was no chance we would make our flight to London at 8:30, because waiting in the security line would take 4 or 5 hrs, and the flight would leave at 8:30, with whoever was standing at the gate at that moment.
They told us that we could take a later flight to London, but then we would miss our connection to Denver, and since it flies only once a day, we would be stuck in London, and the next flight with a free seat would only be on Monday, and on top of that, British Airways wouldn't pay for us to stay in a hotel, because the BP airport strike isn't their problem.
The other option was to come back on Monday, but then it would probably be the exact same situation all over again.
So our only chance was to get on the 8:30 flight by trying to push our way through the security line. We decided that Rosemary and Nate should go, and I would take the later flight and sleep in London until I could get a connection to Denver.
Rosemary started crying - for real - and begged the security guards to let her through so she wouldn't have to sleep for days in an airport with the baby. They decided to let all 3 of us through, and we were able to make the flight on time and get to Denver.

A few other cool things happened; one of our bags was way overweight, but they didn't charge us, because there were so many people waiting, and the other is that in the airport we ran into a guy who used to live in Eger and come to our church who is a professional wrestler (not WWF style!) in Germany.

So, praise the Lord for these things. We feel greatly blessed that were able to make it. It would have been really bad if it hadn't worked out, but the Lord took care of us.
Nate earned his stay once again by getting us to the front of the security line! He's worth his weight in gold :)