Yes, that's what I'm wondering. So I'm concerned that your DNS lookups were/are poisoned and that's why you couldn't connect. Your system was resolving
de3.vpn.airdns.org
to
127.124.0.3
according to the log. That's totally wrong.
You definitely need a VPN to avoid whatever DNS your system was/is using but also change to a trusted, secure DNS for when you aren't using VPN.