Au secours...Imdat...Hilfe for I am surrounded by Bavarians
Munich Airport Aug 2nd...Lufthansa lounge....it is about 70 degrees and clouds and after Dubai's wretched air and awful heat I feel that God smiles on the world even if it IS Bavaria!
More about Dubai; The opulent vulgarity of the Bellagio like Taj Palace being the high point, everything else was heinous. The airport is unbelievable...and not just the policy of having to pay baksheesh to get through passport control quickly...it having taken me 1 hour and 18 minutes surrounded by bad air conditioning and much deodorant failure....one walks and walks...goes inexplicably up stairs and down others...yes there are escalators and moving sidewalks but it is like boarding mechanical devices to get through a maze.....departure is worse....there was no snorkel for my airbus so a full complement of passnegers had to cram into a bus and then sit here and there broiling for 20 odd minutes....whereupon, at the arrival of the plane, those A type Bavarians knock one out of the way to reach the steps.
Emirates is badly overrated...the airbus used on most flights to Europe has a very cramed 2 3 2 seating in business....as opposed to everyone else's 2 2 2.,...first class has 8 seats and everyone sitting up there was of the "more equal than others" crowd....the menu looked good, the nice steward whom I think was Egyptian TRIED but the food had little taste....more for show.....even though a lobster tail is daring airline food....and the cheeses were first rate....the champagne was from an unknown house though it WAS champers....acidy tasting....the reds were C minus....I can hardly wait to spread the word about ego mad Emirates.
CHANGING planes in 'Dubai might not be horrid...but a couple of guys I talked to said that Emirates had a lousy lost bag record and these guys are stuck with flying it often.
It was a fine flight from a viewers point: Baghdad off to the right in a haze of dust-sand...Aleppo, maybe the oldest city in the world, I place I like enormously, sitting in its natural bowl in the semi desert...then the fabulously wild Taurus Mts of Turkey....east of Ankara and over the Black Sea...then Transylvania looking green and cool. Vienna looking bright and ravishing in the sun....and now to Munich to its new and physically imposing and especially workable airport, arguably now the best in Europe. The Kempinski, cool and Teutonic with a sort of take of mock-modern-biedermeier furniture, very decent. It's the best airport hotel I know other than 'Vancouver' Grand Fairmont....all right in the world.
Again I puzzled at the people who didn't look from the plane window...even over Iraq.....maybe they think they're over Chad.....Off to Gdansk in an hour and knowing that the people will be ever so much more sympathetic than these Putzi Hanfstaengls who surround me now.....
-FRED
More about Dubai; The opulent vulgarity of the Bellagio like Taj Palace being the high point, everything else was heinous. The airport is unbelievable...and not just the policy of having to pay baksheesh to get through passport control quickly...it having taken me 1 hour and 18 minutes surrounded by bad air conditioning and much deodorant failure....one walks and walks...goes inexplicably up stairs and down others...yes there are escalators and moving sidewalks but it is like boarding mechanical devices to get through a maze.....departure is worse....there was no snorkel for my airbus so a full complement of passnegers had to cram into a bus and then sit here and there broiling for 20 odd minutes....whereupon, at the arrival of the plane, those A type Bavarians knock one out of the way to reach the steps.
Emirates is badly overrated...the airbus used on most flights to Europe has a very cramed 2 3 2 seating in business....as opposed to everyone else's 2 2 2.,...first class has 8 seats and everyone sitting up there was of the "more equal than others" crowd....the menu looked good, the nice steward whom I think was Egyptian TRIED but the food had little taste....more for show.....even though a lobster tail is daring airline food....and the cheeses were first rate....the champagne was from an unknown house though it WAS champers....acidy tasting....the reds were C minus....I can hardly wait to spread the word about ego mad Emirates.
CHANGING planes in 'Dubai might not be horrid...but a couple of guys I talked to said that Emirates had a lousy lost bag record and these guys are stuck with flying it often.
It was a fine flight from a viewers point: Baghdad off to the right in a haze of dust-sand...Aleppo, maybe the oldest city in the world, I place I like enormously, sitting in its natural bowl in the semi desert...then the fabulously wild Taurus Mts of Turkey....east of Ankara and over the Black Sea...then Transylvania looking green and cool. Vienna looking bright and ravishing in the sun....and now to Munich to its new and physically imposing and especially workable airport, arguably now the best in Europe. The Kempinski, cool and Teutonic with a sort of take of mock-modern-biedermeier furniture, very decent. It's the best airport hotel I know other than 'Vancouver' Grand Fairmont....all right in the world.
Again I puzzled at the people who didn't look from the plane window...even over Iraq.....maybe they think they're over Chad.....Off to Gdansk in an hour and knowing that the people will be ever so much more sympathetic than these Putzi Hanfstaengls who surround me now.....
-FRED
posted by ultimatetraveler at 6:38 AM
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