You Don't Have To Be Blind...

to love this wine... I found it incredibly to be serving a french red wine with a label that also had braille on it. What a fantastic thing!! The winery was Belleruche.

Crime and Punishment

Above looks like an innocent cart break, but truly, the more I work in the galley, they are becoming the bane of my right shoes existence...
These poor inflights are less than two months old and already the right shoe looks like I drag it behind me as I walk. If someone could invent some sort of clear toe cover for the brake foot, I would be mighty appreciative...

We used to have carts which moved by pushing the top of the cart, crews called them knucklebusters..At least the knucklebusters didn't lighten my wallet so...Polishing them after every trip and still they look like this... *le sigh*...

Merges and Messes and Meals

Merge ahead... wow. I think this is a good thing and am actually excited and hopeful about the future of our combined companies. Heck, as long as I get a new uniform and the paychecks still clear, what is not to be happy about??

The photo above is the remnants of the messiest passenger I have ever seen on an aircraft, bar none. The photo makes the pile appear far smaller than it was, which was close to 9 inches high. Medicine containers, used Kleenex, torn newspaper contributed to this archaeological dig. Curiously, in person he was quite polite and rather tidy. I can only wonder what his home looks like.
This is the level of 'fanciness' of my usual crew meal. Eaten quickly, usually while standing with a can of caffeine nearby. (No, I am not really sure what I was eating either...)
Behold the table my French colleague Stephane sets up every flight. He fills the wine glass with water and makes every meal special. I would not have expected this from a former shepherd. ( I asked , and no, they are not issued a crook to herd the sheep, nor do they wear a fancy hat).

A Very Random Flight

A typical day in the life...working a flight to Washington DC from Frankfurt...

After the crew briefing, where we see who we are flying with, how full the flight is ( a face in every window and an a** in every seat) we pick our proverbial poison and decide where to work. Business class galley for me please.

Head to security, where a beep as I pass through the metal detector gets me more groping from the female security staffer than I allow men to get on a date. Usually people buy me dinner before that sort of thing.

Lug bags down to bus, which takes to aircraft. Lug bags up airstairs, cursing my decision to pack hardcover books in my tote bag.

Do safety checks, get galley ready for flight, catch up on miscellaneous gossip with crew over tea and coffee, board passengers.

Passenger asks if it alright if he swaps seats with another passenger. I explain, if they do not mind, it is fine with us. (Please remember this for later, it comes into play).

Walk up to first class where a boarding passenger tries to tear me a new one for the fact he has to walk up stairs.. I want to ask him if Singapore girls carry him up the stairs on their backs, but I bite my tongue..

Flight proceeds smoothly, until a passenger comes into the galley and faints in my arms. Well, he was heavy so admittedly he was only in my arms for a second before he hit the floor. After half an hour of TLC, he was alright to return to his seat.

Crew rest, where I use a galley bin, a hot water bottle and and eye mask in a futile effort to rest for 90 minutes next to a twitching colleague. Wake feeling like I have been pulled behind a train for 20 miles.

Notice mother with a sickly toddler had been in toilet for a very long time, while the child is making the sounds of a caged animal. They come out and she explains the child had a virus and was sick all over the toilet. To her credit , she tried to clean it, but ......

Time to glove up and get out my can of Lysol... ugh, not a pretty 15 minutes but the lav is soon clean enough...

Start the second meal service and practice my acting and persuasion skills selling the less popular meal choice to passengers ... The Oscar goes to ...

Getting ready for landing, a woman NOW decides to tell us how unhappy she was that a family made her change seats without asking.. This was the man I spoke to during boarding, apparently he decided he really didn't need to ask them at all...

Flight ends, get into immigration and see the Saudia and Iberia crews in front of us, waiting to be processed. Time to pull out the book, as it will be a long wait ( Note to self, research Global Entry program..)

Make way through horde in customs hall, wedge self onto tiny crew bus, where we are packed tighter than economy ( sitting next to the tiny crew members is always a good choice ).

Get change for 5 dollars as at this point it is 2 am for my body clock, and the vending machine in the basement of the hotel is more appealing than getting changed and going to the grocery store or out to dinner...( One bag of skittles and one of Doritos is my sad meal tonight).

Collapse in a heap in my bed.

Glamor....not there today...

No I Have Not Died

Sorry for the silence. New base ( sort of), commuting from one country to the other, exercising my somewhat rusty German and dating a certain aviator that lives in Miami have kept me distracted.

Luckily I have had more than my share of crazies on the plane, both in the form of passengers and crew. Sometimes they converge on the same flight. On a recent all night flight we had crazies both in the front and back end of the plane. The economy crazy, I could have watched forever, but preferably with some sort of one way mirror between us.

The first clue to his mental state was when he boarded and asked if he had to bring his passport with him on the plane. Yes sir, if you want to enter a foreign country, that is your proverbial ticket in. So, he asked, I can't leave it on the jetway, I have to bring it on the plane? Yes....

He kept his Elmer Fudd hat on, askew so only one eye was visible. Busy he was, asking for 5 cans of Coke at a time. They were his "family" he told me. Hell , everyone's family has its share of kooks....

The family was busy watching him type his memoirs ( yes you know I had to ask what he was typing) in the air, fingers flying. You know maybe his crazy was not so much, for he managed to clear out a row for himself, on a mostly full flight. Maybe he was crazy like a fox....

The front end crazy was only a fiscal fool. He rapidly got drunk and told us how he was one of the richest expats living in Moscow. He took a shine to the black gal working first class aisle and told her she could buy herself a little prezzie out of the duty free cart. One 400.00 purse later, he cracked out another card and told her the whole crew could get something, that he would spend 1000 Euros on us. Our crew proceeded to melt the plastic rapidly. He bought one guy a watch, another a Montblanc pen. Somehow those of us that were on break got the shaft, the purser was mum that this whole giftapalooza had gone on. The rest of the crew busted her, somehow out 'gifts' were in her bag. She dug them out, and we ended up having to share coffrets of perfume. Curiously all the brands she wore. I swear if nothing had been said, we 3 would have got squat. Its not enough I have to work with her, now I have to smell like her...

My Dear Readers

I love comments, all bloggers do. But comments in Chinese, Japanese, Russian ( yes I can read Russian and NO I will not publish THAT comment) , Portuguese and poor English advertising websites for Viagra, cheap electronics and naked women will not be published. These perpetual attempts at using my blog as a link to your crap site have made me avoid Blogger recently. Game over jerks!!

Tipper

I love wacky old people, I truly do. Perhaps because I am pretty sure that is my future I have a soft spot for them. I had a humongous soft spot for an 82 year old passenger that was traveling with her little dog Tipper, on my last flight.

Tipper was traveling in style in a soft sided duffel bag carrier, so she could fit under the seat for take off and landing. She had the sweetest little blanket and toy with her. Did I mention Tipper was a toy dog?? Not a toy poodle, but a mechanical dog that barked. Truly.

My sweet old passenger explained that her real life dog died , she replaced her with the mechanical dog to keep her company. I suspect the real dog was killed by secondhand smoke, based on the passengers bag filled with cigarettes and her Kool menthol scent, but was not about to tell her that. I brought some cookies for Tipper to snack on, it seemed the right thing to do.

Apparently if you are wacky in any way, or could appear in a Tennessee Williams novel or be a family member of David Sedaris, I will be charmed by you on the flight. Kooks of the world I fly from Washington to Frankfurt tonight, please schedule yourselves accordingly.