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  Marinette, Wisconsin, United States
Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Finally made it home.  I have traveled home from Bucharest before.  Each time I swear never again.  let me explain it to you.  First of all, all the connecting flights to Europe's hub airports, be it Frankfurt, heathrow, Paris or Amsterdam leave at the crack of dawn...allowing you to catch mid-day connecting flights anywhere in the world.  Classic hub and spoke airline system.  So STEP 1:  Wake at 3:30 in the morning after 1 or 2 hours of sleep (because you NEVER go to bed early your last night in Europe).  Remember...3:30 AM is 7:30 PM local time in Wisconsin.  Quickly shower and leave for the airport at 4 to catch a 6AM flight.  Otopeni airport is about 15 miles from downtown Bucharest, but even at 4 in the morning the traffic is unreliable...so you MUST leave by 4..and that is pushing it...rookies should leave by 3.  So leave at 4...arrive airport at 5 or earlier...wait in line forever as the airport is packed with flights to all over Europe leaving between 6 and 7.  Make your way through dodgy customs and passport control.  Then usually take a bus to the plane.  Then fly to your Europe hub...for me this time it is a 2.5 hour flight to Amsterdam and a 3 hour layover there.  KLM stewardesses not so nice (no one is at 6AM).  Bumble around Schiphol airport for a while.  Too early for a beer, and don't want any caffeine to keep me from sleeping on the flight to the US.  The airport is HUGE, and of course my gates are as far apart as physically possible (my poor feet and knees).  Then through customs (again) and onto my Northwest Airlines flight to Minneapolis.  Ugh.  I had flown European airlines now 4 or 5 times since my last US air carrier flight and I forgot how crummy they are by comparison.  The plane was an Airbus, which are usually nice, but too many seats packed inside.  Squished into a seat for 8.5 hours :(.  The food was surprisingly OK though.  And the service was decent for a US carrier.  This is how it goes.  You take off...you sleep two hours.  You eat something, you watch a movie (The Counterfeiters - GOOD MOVIE), you sleep a little..then you wake up.  Still 4 hours left?!?!?!  UGH>you watch another movie (Solaris...so and so, but I like Clooney so it was OK), eat again...still 2 hours left.  Read and sleep until the ordeal is over....all the time limiting yourself to only 1 bathroom break at the halfway point because you have to crawl over everyone to get out.  The you Land at Detroit for another 3 hour layover.  I confess...the first thing I did after landing at Detroit after getting my luggage, clearing customs, and rechecking my luggage (did I mention I was running on 2 hours of sleep plus bad sitting-up airplane sleep) was head to Burger King.  I loathe fast food and haven't had burger King in a year, but I got me a Whopper - it just tastes like home.  That's the last beef I will eat for a while.  I also experienced a nice episode in Detroit customs, as the customs agent saw me tired after the long walk from the gate and pulled me out of line and put me into the Express line, in front...where a stewardess asked "Aren't you going to let the flight crew go first?" in a snotty voice.  The customs agent told her, "I'm in charge here and the crew can wait.  This gentleman goes first."  NICE!  There are not many forms of life lower than a customs agent, but a (US Carrier) stewardess is one of them.  Nice to see one getting put in her place.  Not to go off on a rant here, but remember when they were all sweet young girls in the 60's thru 80's?  the job didn't pay well, but you got some travel perks and was not that hard and was a bit glamorous.  Then the unions took over.  Now the senior attendants make almost as much as the pilots.  no wonder the airlines are all going under.  The job isn't that tough, the training program is 6 weeks of school, and you want to get $100K a year?  They claim to be part of the "flight crew" but they aren't exactly taking over the plane if the pilot has a stroke.  They are bad waitresses who know CPR in a bad restaurant at 30,000 feet.  Is there anything meaner than the 55 year old Delta stewardess on the LAX to Cleveland route...never married a pilot, bad feet and slinging peanuts for a living?   Mean as a pit viper!  Anyway, I have said my piece as a pretty seasoned traveler.  Actually this trip put me over 60 airports I have flown into or out of worldwide...I think that is pretty cool.  Now on to step 3.     STEP 3:  Detroit to Green Bay - only a 1 hour flight in a mini plane.  Squished.   STEP 4:  Then drive the 1 hour from green bay to Marinette.  Arrival time:  7:30 PM. 24 hours from when I woke and 23.5 hours of travel.  Thanks to Stephanie for collecting my car from the airport at Green Bay and saving me $150 in parking fees.  Parking scoundrels.

A great trip all in alll. Met a lot of great people.  Apartment managers, businessmen, scoundrels, bankers, two pilots, chocolatiers, brewers, beer lovers, football fans of all nations, taxi drivers, even a pretty gypsy princess!  But after all that, nice to sleep in my own bed.  Nice to be able to speak without trying to decipher an accent or use another language.  Sooo nice to be cool.  Fun to drive a car again after two weeks.  A lot of travel...maybe 13 cities in 8 countries in 18 days...exhausting.  Anyway...I will load all the pics from the trip this week and post a link here.  I write these blogs somewhat for me, to print them out and have a memory of the trip years down the road, but also to let friends and family know where I am and what i am up to (although if you just assume I am in a pub somewhere hoisting a great European beer and ogling girls way out of my league then you will likely be right).  Thanks to Suze and the Harrisons for leaving a comment or two and letting me know I'm not playing to an empty room.  The toggle says that the blog has been accessed 400 times, so I know someone is reading it.  if i talk to you in the coming weeks, let me know you took a look.  Thanks again to Richard, Chris and Joe...we didn't always do it right, but you guys were great to travel with (sorry about the snoring in Zurich and Barcelona and sorry about moving so slow).  Thanks to Wayne C...my boss, Stephanie, Cubby, Quigley, AnaMaria, Alex, Paula, Chistian, PJ, and especially Laura (Pea!) for helping out along the way.  See ya again in two years for World Cup 2010 in South Africa!!!!!

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