My Sentiments Exactly

This would be a party where I charge for drinks, my guests are sometimes crabby and impolite, I am criticized for not considering their dietary restrictions , sometimes I hate my 'co-hosts' and three people that want all the credit for the party stay behind a locked door .....yet everyone thanks them for the great party when they leave!!

Celebrities, Strange Reading Material and Bad Hearts

I just returned home from Denver, my new home away from home. What a very strange trip it was. On the way to Denver we had Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame in first class. While he is missing the sweatband around his head and the 80s attire I picture him in ( circa Money for Nothing) he was so damned nice I almost wanted to be a groupie. Yes, he was a bit jowly and nearly hairless, but he was so damned nice even before I knew who he was I was digging him. An old man......Boy am I getting old. Especially when some of the crew had no idea who the Dire Straits were. I am sure my singing their songs only hurt their chances of recognition.

When at the layover hotel, my bedside lamps would not work. After changing the bulbs and realizing that was not the problem, I decided to move the night table to make certain they were plugged in. BIG mistake. I looked down at the floor area and there was a friggin mountain of porn there. Literally 2 inches tall of "Club" magazine, apparently stuffed with pages from other magazines. Gross. Years ago when we stayed in an all crew hotel in San Francisco,our pilots usually got the corner rooms. There was ALWAYS porn in the dressers, they would apparently leave it for the next lonely,sad pilot. There are 2 airlines that layover in our Denver hotel, Which airline pilots are the guilty porn hoarders?? I had visions of a pilot checking in after me and getting angry that room 1063 was not vacant.

On the flight home a man told the crew 10 minutes before landing he thought he was having a heart attack. Indeed he was. Luckily all airports have emergency staff at the ready, we were met by paramedics who likely saved the mans life. I am sending good thoughts his way.

Working for an airline, low pay and sometimes low morale but never boring!

I've Got A Crush On.....Denver

I never saw this coming. It hit me out of the blue. I am really loving flying to Denver. No I do not have a fever! The Denver from my domestic flying days was filled with 12 hour layovers at hotels you could see Stapleton airport from. Room service and a shuttle bus to the airport were the highlights of the trip. The plane was filled with people in flannel shirts and cowboy boots with too much facial hair and they only spoke in grunts. "Coors" , "trash" and "coffee" were the only words I heard from them.



When the heck did things change? Laying over downtown is affording me a chance to explore a new city. Yummy food at Cuba Cuba, browsing the fabulous independent bookstore the Tattered Cover and going on the rides at Elitch Gardens is filling my layovers. The locals also seem to have small town friendliness, which is a bit shocking as I am so used to the big city big hurry ways of London and San Francisco.



In spite of all the good, Denver seems to have its share of quirks as well. The photo below, advertises a certain type of business. Any guesses???

Partenkirchen, The Little Sister

Everyone knows families that have two sisters in them. Invariably one is prettier and more popular, you have to be reminded of the other ones name. Before I travelled there, that was the case with Partenkirchen. Hell, I speak German and always mumbled the city as Garmisch-somethingsomething. But no more. It is Garmisch-Partenkirchen .

Getting there was supposed to be so easy. A quick flight from Zurich, using a standby ticket on Swiss International. Heck, I even got a seat when I checked in, which if you travel standby means the Gods are smiling upon you. Hah!! Boarding card in hand I waited for my gate to be announced, noticing that MANY flights were cancelling that day. Then the words of terror appeared on the departure monitor 'annuliert'. Cancelled . Crap!!! The weather meant that nothing was getting to Munich that day by air, flights were being sent to Frankfurt .After a quick retrieval of my luggage ( thank the Swiss for their efficiency in returning my luggage, my carrier would have laughed or snarled if I requested this as a standby) I headed down to the bahnhof in the airports basement.

Train ticket in hand, and one hundred Euros lighter, I waited for my train to Munich. The train which broke down just over the border of Germany. 2 hours at one station while they repaired some engine part ( my German does not know mechanical words). Thank God for the paperback and iPod! At 9 pm, 12 hours after I arrived at the airport in Zurich and 2 train rides later, I was in Partenkirchen. Home for a week of snowboarding and airline employee partying and mingling.

Until 1936, Garmisch and Partenkirchen were merely towns that were side by side. Friendly neighbors perhaps but minding their own business. The 1936 Olympics required that towns that hosted events have a certain number of hotel rooms, Garmisch did not have enough.What to do? With the waive of his hand , Hitler put the towns together as the mouthful we know today, Garmisch- Partenkirchen. (Okay I took a little artistic license with the hand waiving, but he did put them together, Hitler seems like a hand waiver to me, in addition to a desk pounder).

Partenkirchen is definitely not the party nexus of the ski resort area, and that is fine with me. It is the quieter part, where you can walk down the middle of most streets,there are stores devoted to the selling of dirndl skirts ( closed for the winter in little Partenkirchen, but big sister keeps hers open), Marzipan shops and many a foot doctor. Germans are obsessed with foot health...Dr. Scholls, Birkenstocks,etc.

The pension we stayed in was the lovely Gasthof Fraundorfer, run by the inimitable Barbara. She is a lady that wears her dirndl while conversing in about half a dozen languages , all making her guests at home. The food here is I swear to God so good that I wanted to eat every meal there. Never have I felt this way about hotel food before. I am not the only one as the restaurant is JAMMED at dinner, even guests need to make reservations. The accordion and oompahpah dancing and singing really set the mood.The Gasthof is on the photo below, I heard a tour group stopping in front one morning and the guide explained that the hotel/restaurant was a place where newlyweds stopped off after their marriage and the art on the front of the building was in the plaster, put there while it was wet, so it does not chip or fade. So many of the buildings in the area had artwork, mostly of a religious nature, you can still see the staunch Catholicism here.

Below is a view from the hotel balcony. You cannot beat waking up to see the snowy Alps at your feet....and a telephoto lens.
The snow in these photos reveal that, yes, this holiday was in March.....
The little flag waiver below was above our room. The pilot staying above us hung one of our airlines baseball caps on him for much of the week.

Political correctness has not yet made its way to Southern Germany. The hairdressers shop with the limp wristed mascot, surprisingly employed no limp wristed men.....

The little Arabesque Sambo below advertised......ice cream.....Not sure how he effectively does that, but he does.
In spite of the cringe worthy advertising, the town is a real jewel. Walkable, delicious food wherever you go ( fast food lovers head to Garmisch for McDs and Pizza Hut) , friendly people including old timers that still wear the traditional dress and lots of snow!!

Coming up- the Zugspitze . Before next month I swear......

I'm Back

Sorry to be so very neglectful of you, my little blog. After spending time at my father's ( dial up, need i say more?) coupled with a punishing 12 days straight of flying and the current 'aviation woes' my heart has not been with you.

But now I am back and will update you on travels of months past. We will go back in time to march, when fuel was cheaper, there was no typhoon in Burma and earthquake in China. We will laugh about my trip to Garmisch. Then we can reminisce about the family obligation tour and the pow wow I attended ( no I am not Indian). We can also ooh and aah at the flowers in bloom in the English gardens, little blog.

The times we will have, starting tomorrow. I swear.....The first post after a time away is always the hardest...

A Bowl Full of Crazy

I just landed this morning in London, back from my family obligation tour 2008. The most memorable part of the three week holiday was sitting behind the second craziest individual I have encountered on a plane. Well, maybe the third, the girl that literally thought she was a rabbit mid flight was far crazier but in a gentler way. (Clearly a blog entry about the really crazy passengers needs to be forthcoming)!

I was lucky enough to score a seat in First Class for my flight home, with a fabulous crew working the flight. I get on the plane and a loud woman is in my assigned seat. As she seems settled in, I agree to take her assigned seat to minimize hassle. This woman was really really loud on her mobile phone during boarding, and seemed really young and scruffy to sit in First class. Clearly she had family money as neither her looks pr personality had earned her the income to pay that much for a ticket, and she was too shabbily dressed to be a non- rev( airline employee).

I happily settled into (her) my new seat, which was actually better than the original one , but tragically behind Miss One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. The crew should have known something was up when she said she wanted vodka for dinner. The next hint that the elevator did not go up to the top would have been RIGHT after takeoff when she started dancing in front of her seat, the kind of dancing you can only see Jay Kay doing in a Jamiroquai video circa 1998, or at a rave after ingesting large amounts of party drugs.

She drank a few drinks before dinner, then started calling the steward a fucking poof. Nice. She was also shrieking at the female crew member, calling her Mrs. She couldn't figure out how to get out of her seat without throwing all of her linens and plates on the floor, not could she figure out where the toilet was, ever. When she was cut off ( discretely, only my Bionic Woman hearing overheard this) the hell began.

Talking to herself about the crew in language that would make a sailor blush, throwing things, and intermittent dancing ensued,. When she was given her meal she tossed it into the galley as she could not wash it down with vodka. Mid flight she put her jacket on and seriously expected to be let off. I am sure were we on a 727 with air stairs they would have lowered them a la D.B. Cooper and let her off.

Finally she passed out in exhaustion, the crew were all honestly afraid to see what would happen when she woke up. Luckily not too much, other than bitching that she lost her iPod ( karma!) and snapped at the crew when they suggested she turn on her light to look for it.

We got an encore of her dancing stylings while we waited for a gate. While we waited at baggage claim,one of the other passengers witness to her antics asked me if she was a celebrity, but he thought not as she had a face like a smacked ass ( I love those British sayings!). We decided we got a little dinner theatre with the price of our tickets!

A Very Unphotogenic Holiday

I am in the middle of three weeks off. No glam travel destinations, frothy drink in hand, dipping my toe in a pool. No... I am at my brothers house on the first leg of the 'Family Obligation Tour 2008'. The brother that has twin babies and 2 dogs. Thrilling times, cleaning up dog poop, baby poop, walking dogs and feeding babies who would rather wear the food than eat it. I would not miss spending time with them for the world but there is not much to snap photos of here in suburbia, the only culture is a civil war battle site up the road. (Monocacy if you are curious).

At least my brother lives in the year 2008. My father lives in a town that has not changed since the Waltons and I can prove that with a photo of the school crossing sign where the children are wearing knee length shorts ( knickers?)

So the blog is a little quiet, not due to lack of interest but due to lack of excitement. When the flying returns, so will I!!!