
On 03rd June 2025, it was that time of the year again when we departed for the annual Fedora Project community conference, Flock To Fedora 2025. Waking up at 05:00AM Indian Standard Time, I was soon on my way to the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport (CCU) after some quick breakfast bites from my aunt. It roughly took around twenty minutes for me to make it to the airport with my luggage, where I met up with Sumantro Mukherjee, who was waiting for me at around 06:30AM Indian Standard Time. We got ourselves checked in at the Emirates counter for the flight EK0571 to Dubai International Airport (DXB) and headed towards the lightly populated immigration queue. Weirdly enough, I was held back for some superficial questioning at the security queue, but it was nothing to worry about as we were quite ahead of the schedule for the flight.

We were at the departure gates by 07:30AM Indian Standard Time, which was a little under three hours from the estimated departure time for the Emirates EK0571 flight. After connecting with my friends and family about having made it to the departure gates, Sumantro and I had conversations about a bunch of things. Starting from community affairs and agile implementation, it was fun catching up with Sumantro after FOSDEM 2025. The time until the boarding passed quite quickly, and we soon made it inside the flight, capturing the painstakingly booked window seats of Zone E, with me seated at 29K and Sumantro seated at 30K. The first flight from Kolkata (CCU) to Dubai (DXB) was expected to be around five hours long, so I decided to spend time watching a couple of movies, namely Unthinkable (2010) and Despicable Me 4 (2024) from the seat display.

At around 11:45AM Indian Standard Time, the breakfast was served, and I decided to catch some sleep after I was done with the food. The seemingly short sleep did help reduce the apparent duration of the flight because at around 04:00PM Gulf Standard Time, the flight started landing at the Dubai International Airport (DXB). As our next flight, Emirates EK0125 towards Airport Flughafen Wien-Schwechat (VIE), was departing from the same terminal, we had some time in our hands to traverse through the gates. Sumantro and I had to catch a subway that would take us from the A Gates to the B Gates after we passed through a crowded security queue. In about thirty minutes, we found ourselves at the departure Gate B20, from where our flight was designated to depart. We went around browsing the Duty Free stores as we waited for the boarding announcement to be made.

Of course, we kept ourselves from purchasing goodies from the stores, and the boarding announcement that was made some time later helped fortify our resolve. As Sumantro was planning on traveling ahead with his partner from DevConf.CZ 2025 and I was planning on doing loads of shopping in Prague, it made little sense to get encumbered there. Just like the previous flight, we were seated at the window seats, with me on 39K and Sumantro on 40K on this flight. An odd event ended up changing that arrangement as the passengers traveling beside Sumantro wanted us to switch seats for the window seats that we had coordinated and selected well in advance from the web check-in. In the end, I was seated beside Sumantro on an aisle seat, 40I, while Sumantro retained his seat, 40K, as the two belligerent passengers went somewhere else after some arrangements were made.

While not dwelling much on this uncomfortable encounter with some entitled passengers, I decided to watch Fast X (2023) from the in-flight entertainment system as the flight took off. Sumantro decided to catch up on some assignments and finish preparing his slide decks, as this was supposed to be a longer flight of around six hours. We were looking into the renewed Test Days application, which was recently deployed in the Fedora Infrastructure, and we ended up finding various bugs and oversights with the production deployment. I decided to watch Inglourious Basterds (2009) after having lunch, but I found myself dozing off every now and then. I decided to use the time to catch up on some sleep, as both Sumantro and I had to travel on an overnight bus from Airport Flughafen Wien-Schwechat (VIE) to Prague Central Station and finish the movie at a later time.

The next time I opened my eyes - I was gifted with the wonderful vistas of the country skyline as the flight was slowly descending into Airport Flughafen Wien-Schwechat (VIE). It was around 08:30PM Central European Summer Time then, and the sun was barely setting in summertime Vienna. We got off the flight at around 09:00PM Central European Summer Time and made our way into the crowded immigration queue before picking up our checked-in luggage from the belts. I wished that our onward journey had ended there, as the time zone shift and the lack of sleep were taking a toll on my body. The one silver lining that kept us going was that the bus taking us from Airport Flughafen Wien-Schwechat (VIE) to Prague Central Station departed from the arrival gates at around 11:00PM Central European Summer Time, so we did not have to rush anywhere anymore.

After sharing some conversations with friends and family back at home and from the Fedora Project, we kicked around at the arrival gates. The waiting was most certainly easier said than done, but I would much rather be in a situation where I was ahead of the schedule than one where I was running behind. Sumantro and I discussed just how long we would have been active by the time we ended up getting to the hotel, and the calculation did help keep us from getting bored. At around 10:50PM Central European Summer Time, a bus #N60 operated by Flixbus arrived at Station #04 for the pickup. After getting our passports checked before boarding the bus, we decided to keep ourselves to the bottom deck of the double-decker bus. It would have been fun visiting the top deck, but at the twenty-fourth hour of being active, all we wanted was to get some sleep at the hotel.

We had a couple of stops before making it to Prague Central Station, so we were seated near the gates for convenience. While the evening started off with some pretty mild temperatures and normal humidity, the temperature started falling and the humidity started rising as the night grew darker. I knew for a fact that I would doze off as soon as I found a soft seat to place myself on, so I decided to schedule some alarms for 03:30AM Central European Summer Time, which was still over three hours away from then. It was just as important to schedule multiple alarms in the rare occurrence of one not being enough, and the last thing that we wanted to do then was end up in Berlin, where the bus was actually headed. We soon found ourselves at our stop after a combination of looking into the darkness from the window and failing miserably to catch some well deserved slumber.

Prague Central Station welcomed us with 14 degrees Celsius and 75% humidity on the early morning of 04th June 2025. Sumantro booked an Uber for us, and after an uneventful yet swift fifteen minutes, we found ourselves at the entrance of the Ibis Praha Mala Strana hotel. Thankfully, we had the reservation done from the day before, so we could easily find ourselves a bed to rest on and not wait until the scheduled check-in time of 03:00PM Central European Summer Time. Sumantro had some issues with the inclusion of breakfast in his booking, but we decided that it was for the best that he took it up with Julia Bley the next day. Thanks to the Red Hat Corporate Card that we were provided with weeks before the commencement of our journey, Sumantro and I were able to retire to rooms #239 and #225 at around 04:00AM Central European Summer Time, ending the onward journey.
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