Watson made it!

continuation of the revisit of our departure day for Prague...

At 2pm on Friday, Prague time of course, I left with Misa (the relocation assistant) and our driver for the cargo center at the airport to pick up Watson.

Quick aside from the sleep department: we went to bad a little after midnight on Wednesday night (last minute preparations), waking up shortly after 6am, went to the airport, waited, flew for 7 hours, sat in the airport in Germay for two hours, flew an hour and arrived in Prague at 9am local time, so now at 2pm we're about 26 hours since our short night sleep before the flight.

Misa hadn't done this thing either so neither of us really knew what to do but she is Czech so at least we had the language issue settled. First stop was at the cargo terminal to check on Watson. Turns out his flight was delayed an hour so we had some waiting to do. An hour or so later, we had killed some time by briefly detouring to the new mall built near the airport so I could see that, a woman told us Watson had arrived and gave us papers to bring to the veterinary clinic at the cargo center.

Back in the car and a bit of driving around the cargo area to find the poorly marked office, followed by a short wait had us in the vet's office. There were was signing and stamping of documents, I parted with more money and we were given documents to bring back to the cargo office and to the customs house to pay any required fees.

Back in the car to the cargo terminal office I had to pay some additional fees. Misa had asked previously I was supposed to owe 600 Kr (about $27). I was told I owed 1200 Kr. The explanation was that it was doubled because the pet was delivered alive. I was unaware this was an option and feel quite lucky I didn't mistakenly miss a check-box on a form saying "Deliver animal alive." I, of course, handed over the money. In all honesty the cargo operation in Prague was much better than Boston so I can't complain too much.

Back in the car, more driving to place much harder to find than the vet's we were in customs about half an hour before closing. Ten minutes trying to figure out the computer system to generate a waiting number (we were the only ones in line) and we were in front of a customs official. More stamping, more signing, more money, more documents to bring to the next stop.

Back in the car to finally get Watson! We pulled into the vet clinic and buzzed the door. After confirming that no, we were not there to pick up the fish we showed our documents and finally, after about three hours of this process Watson came out in his crate. He slowly began the tail wagging and when the door to his crate was opened he was a tornado of happy fur. The well placed lawn nearby provided Watson some (extended) relief and we were in the car headed back to our apartment.

The whole process had, in my head, a long list of items to be checked off a list: get to airport, drop off Watson, board plane, fly to Frankfurt, layover, fly to Prague, get bags, find driver, get to apartment, get Watson. Once those things were done we'd really be in Prague. And so here we are.