It's the most wonderful time of the year!
Our Christmas trip destination last year was to Budapest and Bratislava. I was particularly excited for the trip because (1) I have been wanting to visit to Budapest and (2) I got a new phone.
Feast your eyes my new iPhone 11 in purple.

Never thought I would go back to using Apple phones but I am really liking it so far! I still occasionally misses my S10 though.
Anyway, our flight to Sofia, Bulgaria was on 21.12.19 - 2am flight. We checked in and arrived at the airport on 20.12.19 but while dropping off our luggages, I noticed that our flight was delayed to 3.10am. We were worried about this delay because we had another flight to catch when we arrived at Doha. Our connecting time was only 1 hour and 40 minutes. With this delay, the connecting time became shorter but we were quite sure that we would still be able to make it.
We made it to our gate and the plane had arrived but for some reason, we did not board the plane until 3.30am. No justification was provided and at this point, my sister and I were very sure that we will miss our connecting flight. We departed Malaysia at 4am (that was a whooping 2 HOURS delay) - as soon as we touched down in Doha - we had about 30 mins to make it to our next flight. The moment we walked into the terminal, we saw various ground staffs holding placards for other connecting flights and one of it was for Sofia. We were waiting for other possible passengers flying the same route (there was another family of 8 and a Bulgarian). After everyone had gathered, the ground staff told us that we did make it to our connecting flight, and the system had automatically re-routed us to the next available flight which was the next morning. She explained that we can either opt to wait for that flight (they would provide us hotel rooms to stay in) or we can choose a different route to fly to Sofia.
All of us walked over to the transfer desk to check what other flights were available for the day. There was one other possible route : Doha - Warsaw - Sofia. My sister and I went for it because we really just want to get to Sofia. We took the flight and truth to be told, I enjoyed the flight very much. It was so much better than our KL - Doha flight. We arrived at Warsaw - Chopin International Airport in which we were quite disappointed with the layout of the airport. There was not much happenings at all. Anyway, we finally made it to Sofia in the evening 5pm local time. By then, my sister and I were both extremely exhausted with 20 hours of travelling time and practically no proper sleep for the past 36 hours. We crossed through 4 different time zones in technically a day and we were just so sick and tired. The worst part? My sister's luggage did not arrive. It was very weird since my luggage arrived with me. However, it was not as bad as the other family. They had 8 luggages altogether and 6 did not arrive and they were already going to leave Sofia the next day.
Thankfully, our flight to Bratislava was on 23.12.19 so we had a one day gap to be fully rested and for the luggage to be found and returned to us.
Conclusion : Both my sister and I have been frequent travellers of Qatar but after this flight experience, I think I would start looking at other airlines for my future travels.

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