June 23, 2017

Once again, it’s time to jump on a plane to the old country.

This year I’m flying Sun Country airlines (which Mr. Cynic started referring to as “Sun Catastrophe Airlines” the minute he discovered the name). It is a newer and smaller company trying to be “hip,” with “humorous” taped messages for things like preflight.  It also follows the new trend of charging for everything.  That said: the flight crew was great, and they have the European style seats with a little extra room for bags. I’d fly them again – making sure to grab a sandwich at the airport.

The obligatory "mountains from plane

window" with a few water/cleaning

fluid stains.

I’m a little disappointed in the PDX flight prep folks today. When Z booked my flights for this trip, she indulged me in the rare window seat (so I thought…she told me when I got to Keszthely that was the leg she couldn’t request seats for.  Thanks for the great seat, Sun Catastrophe folks!). Sadly, the cleaning water was so dirty I’m looking through a window with a monster fingerprint. Either that or it’s an “edgy detail” from Air Catastrophe. Either way, taking photos on this beautiful day is impossible. It’s kind of a shame – it’s beautiful today.

The problem with these long flights is that you can’t set up the computer rig to write music – not enough room. I’m always itchy to get started after a long year of concerting/parading/festivaling and the like, but I’ll have to wait for Palinkaland to get started. I’d probably write crap on a plane anyway.

The real problem, of course, is that you spend a year corrupting the leaders of tomorrow today, you are in a hurry to jump back into having a life with a happy wife again. Not that being sarcastic to high school students is bad, mind you. But I married her – not them. Aww heck, it’s just a 20-hour trip. That’s nothing.

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My favorite of the new “hip” announcements: “The captain has turned on the seat belt sign. Federal regulations require that you return to your seat.” And then, with venom in her little synthetic voice, “So do it, please.” Sounds like they would have preferred “damn it!” in place of the “please,” but knew they probably couldn’t get away with it.

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Another of those wonderful examples of Hungarian being a made-up language. Nyar is a poplar, as in the tree. Nyár is summer. Now come on, this isn’t fair!

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The next leg is on Condor Air, the budget division of Lufthansa. Our crew is based in Germany on this flight, and have good “Klaus” accents. Very friendly, though.

Like everything else in the new discount air travel business, all you used to get for free you now pay for. Premium movies – 8 euro. Premium meals – 14 euro. You get the idea. I don’t care that much, as I would rather read than watch a movie on a midget screen with awful sound.

In this brave new world, dinner is a choice of pasta and…well that’s it. It comes with spicy tomato sauce and cheese. Along with it you get an American roll and cheese.  You also get two pieces of the thin German “sports” bread and butter. The veg is creamy coleslaw. For desert – chocolate pudding. 5,000,000 calories, top. The “premium” meals have an actual protein, a fruit cup, and the bread and accompaniments. Probably not that much healthier, but probably less of a gut bomb. 4 months of dieting blown in one “meal.”

One of the great challenges of international air travel is sleeping in the little seat they give you. You envy the little kids their tiny bodies that can stretch out flat. Adults must get more creative. Do you use the table in front of you and double yourself over? Try to use the dread “sleep doughnut” and injure your neck for weeks? Are you one of the types that finds new and creative ways to use your chair? No kidding, I saw someone sitting upside down once, snoring away.

Of course this swell blanket provided by

Condor made for a swell sleeping

environment!

This last method was my choice for this trip. Not the upside-down thing – okay, I admit to doing that when I younger – but the “creative sitting” model. My choice for this trip involved scrunching down on my left side while simultaneously hooking my legs around the outside of the seat in the isle. I didn’t hear crashing trays or anything, and I actually got about 3 to 4 hours of reasonably good sleep. Could be a new winner!

Breakfast on Condor is a continental plate of cantaloupe and pineapple, with a tired looking piece of ham and more cheese – they must own stock or something – and a roll with butter and jam. As this came with an acceptable cup of coffee, I was not forced to kill anyone (kidding, just kidding. Or am I?).

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My last leg is on Lufthansa – assuming I can find it. I’m here 3 hours before my inter-EU flight, which means that info will be posted for at least an hour. After running no less than 12.4 miles (yes, I’m sure, Frankfurt is a big airport) to get to the gate on my boarding pass, and having had bad experiences with this before, I asked the nice ladies at the counter if this was the right gate.

You all know where this is going, right?

“No, this is gate 56. You need gate 8. It’s way back that way about 12 miles.”

Sigh.

So, I trudged back, bought a pretzel (Hey, I’m in Germany) and found the gate. Where I promptly curled up in the empty lounge on a bench and took a nap.

Most of you know by now that Hungarian is not my first language. But I’ve been around it enough now to know it when I hear it. Strangely, one of those things all that music experience has done for me is making easier to identify Italian than that wacky space-alien language. So upon waking and hearing lots of Italian and not so much Hungarian, I groggily perceived a problem. I know, nothing gets by me.

A check in at the ticket gate quickly rectified the problem. “You need to be at gate 56.” At least he was nice enough to call and double check.

June 14 – 15, 2014, On the road again….

Here we are again, at Portland International Airport, waiting for our flight to Vienna, via Vancouver B.C (eh?) and Munich.  I put that “International” part in there because I think we are this week.  With Portland, you can never be quite sure from week to week.  The flights will total 18 hours of flying and layover time.  This is to be followed by a two plus hour drive to beautiful Keszthely.  Strangely, we are looking forward to this and can’t wait to get started.

Dave and Zia always look
 happy going on vacation!

As usual, we met a familiar face to hang out with while waiting for our flight at PDX.  It has become so much of a tradition now that we would be disappointed were it not to happen.  This year, we found Hannah M., the Columbia River High School Drum Major, who was on her way to Berkeley, CA for a conference.  We had time for a nice chat before she had to dash off for her flight.

*****

Dear Laurelwood Brewing Company,

A $3.50 bottle of Laurelwood Brewing
Company water.  Times must be
 tight in the brewery business.

Thank you for selling mineral water at the airport.  We really enjoy it, so it is appreciated that you carry it for us.  A couple of things, though:

1.      Seeing as we have all just cleared security, and the requisite emptying of our pockets of everything, including bottle key rings with bottle openers on them, don’t you think it would be a good idea to have twist top bottles?

2.      If not, don’t you think it might be potentially useful if the clerk had a bottle opener at the cash register?

3.      If not, don’t you think it might be useful to tell said cashier where to find one, so that he doesn’t have to spend five minutes looking for one?

And while we’re on the subject –

4.      Don’t you think $3.50 is a little steep for 16 ounces of soda water that can be bought at my local Safeway for less than a buck?

Thanks awfully,

Z tells me that taking pictures of
 your feet at the airport is a thing. 
OK, so here....

Which, of course, brings me to my annual rant.  I’ve been to the Laurelwood Pub on Sandy Boulevard in Portland.  I can guarantee you that they don’t charge $3.50 for a pint of club soda there.  So why the price gouging because we are captives at the airport.  It doesn’t encourage me to visit their restaurant.  I like their beer, but I like lots of beer in Beervana.  It becomes pretty easy to make other choices.  So why do they do it?  Why do they dis the very customer base that they are trying to build?  My thoughts, because they can.

I have written my congress person about this and received no response.  Maybe if you join me in this, we can see a change?

*****

Longtime readers of our blog know that I am a big fan of Airplane TV on international flights.  I love the adventure of seeing how far we have traveled, and the esoteric and sometimes strange names people give their hamlets.  My favorite was always Godthåb, Greenland, which the locals call “Nuuk.”  I became so fascinated by this place that I’ve even looked it up on Google Earth and researched it online.  It’s the capital, you know, and the largest city in Greenland.  And it looks about like you would expect, if your expectation is that it would look about like frontier Alaska. 

The Airplane TV folks were pretty fascinated with the place, too.  It showed up on almost every map except the really close detailed one – and most of those on the way to Europe.  Of course, that was the old Airplane TV.  Lufthansa has a new version of Airplane TV, with 3D views of the plane, genuine simulated views from the cockpit, this really weird thing where you fly into the plane from billions of miles out in space.  They have pretty much done away with the “town view” map except for a little bit when you are leaving and just before you land.

And evidently the good folks of the Visitors and Information Bureau of Godthåb haven’t paid their bills to the new Airplane TV people.  Sadly, I didn’t see them come up even once.

*****

We were entertained on the Munich-Vienna leg of our journey by two good-natured but slightly dense Cal Poly students hitting on a couple of stewardesses that were deadheading it to their digs in Vienna after having worked our Vancouver flight.  We learned from this male brain trust, in no particular order:

·        That Lufthansa stewardesses get paid by the unit for their trips (although the stewardess told him this first thing in their conversation, it took him 5 minutes to put together that they got paid by the unit).

·        That, although he was going to start student teaching in the fall, he had “really no clue” what it entailed (ummm, maybe teaching?)

·        That Cal Poly means, ummm Cal Poly (that would be “California Polytechnic”)

·        A long involved conversation in which he assumed that she was Catholic, although she repeatedly told him she was not

·        That Austria looks nothing like America (well, probably not California – and as we all know, America is California)

·        Upon discovering that she had trained to be a professional opera singer: “we don’t have that in the U.S.”  (I’ll remember to tell that to my friends in the Eugene Opera)

·        The “like” tax would, like, have run him, like, thousands of, like, dollars, like.

·        A long involved conversation about native foods of Austria, schnitzel, palatschinken (crepes), sausages, Kaiserschmarn and the like, and ending with the brain trust asking, “Do you eat as much sauerkraut as the Germans do?” (I hate to break it to you, friend, but the Germans don’t eat that much of it either.  And you should have listened when she tried to explain the Kaiserschmarn, it’s pretty tasty – crepes torn up with raisin-y goodness on top)

To make it through the program at Cal Poly they likely are very book-smart.  But they are pretty naive at the whole life thing.  It’s probably a good thing they are getting out and seeing the world a bit.

And strangely, neither one of them got a phone number.

*****

We were met at the Flughafen Wien by András and Péter and whisked away to Keszthely (if being “whisked away” involves a two and ½ hour car ride), where chilled pálinka and pogácsa awaited, followed by dinner (roasted duck with stuffing, fried squash and roasted sweet potato) and a flat place where we could put our feet up and call it a day.  A happy place, indeed!