Musical seats

Day 14

14 June 2012

Ah, to sleep in on the day you have to leave. I think of all the poor souls who had to get up at 4 am for their 6 am transfer. After my experience in Moscow (tour ending at 11:30 pm and awake for my transfer at 2 am), 

I`ll never have an early departure if it can be helped.

I was up at 6:30 and took the time to do some computer stuff and pack some more. Then one of my tourmates came to my door and asked if I wanted another tour of the buffet. I said absolutely.

Some of the 10:30 transfer crowd decided to do the buffet around 8:30. So, she showed me the smoked salmon, the nuts, the pancakes with maple syrup and all the other selections in what was, without a doubt, the best breakfast selection on this tour.

The pancakes with maple syrup were delicious. Not a strong syrup which I like.

By 9:30, it was time to retrieve my luggage. The cats were already gone. Their transfer was at 9 for their charter A380 directly home. They`ll be home a full day before me.

I hope I left enough litter out.

We all meet up at 10 am for the transfer and the bus driver comes in and says he`s been waiting an hour. No problem. The sooner we get to the airport, the better. I`ll have about 2 hours before I my flight leaves.

So I haul my luggage out to the bus and throw it aboard and I stand there thinking that I suddenly feel a bit light.

OMG. I had left my knapsack on the coffee table in the lobby.

Well, you want to see a Newfie with bad knees run.

Turns out two people were surfing the web at the couches, so no one touched the bag (thinking it might be theirs). You want to talk about the heart doing a flip. Everything was in there including my passport.

So, I haul it on and get aboard the bus. It`s 10:15. Perfect. We should get there with more than 2 hours to spare. We leave the hotel and drive for about 20 or so minutes when I realize we seem to be going in the opposite direction to what we were 10 minutes earlier. Then Gasper notes that we have to drop one of the solos off at the train station as she`s getting a train to Slovenia. And as we approach the train station, the buildings looked awfully familiar, including the opera house which was just around the corner from the hotel.

We`re not sure what happened. I know in Athens, the bus used to have to drive for 20 minutes to find the one-way streets to the hotel and Gasper said that we had to go out of our way for that, but we`re a curious bunch. Did someone forget her? LOL We drop off the solo and get back on the highway we were on earlier and drive the half hour to the airport. It`s 11:15 by the time we get there, but mercifully, the airport hasn`t changed much since I was there in 94. It`s still tiny. Only 12 gates and no ramps. All buses and stairs.

I get through the check in pretty quickly and go straight to my gate. There`s no one in line at security or immigration. I get my passport stamped and walk down into the international departures area. It has barely changed in 20 years. I think the chairs are the same. The only difference is there a bar with snacks and a duty free store. In 94, I sat for 9 hours in this same room and there wasn`t a store, a shop or even a vending machine to be had. 

The flight is Lufthansa and leaves on time. There was something about an A380 getting delayed over a lack of gushy food but apparently it was sorted out.

We take off at 1:10 and get into Munich on time. Again, it`s stairs and buses to the terminal in Munich. By the time I quickly get through security and get up to H area, I have less than a half hour before my flight leaves. Not enough time to figure out how to log on to their 30 minute free internet. I get my Kuna changed to Euro since I can`t get the Kuna changed in Canada and I pick up a fridge magnet and a cat figurine (it`s one of those specialty Goebel ones…cost 20 Euro for a little one).

The gate starts to board and there`s no call for row number, so that means only one thing. We`re busing it out to our A330.

I take my seat in my favorite inside left aisle seat. I always pre-select a D seat since my old shoulder injury prefers the aisle armrest (because if there’s someone sitting to my left and I can’t support the arm on the armrest, it can put strain on the arthritic joints there).

So, I get settled in and this young woman crosses the other seats and stands in the seat next to me facing backwards. I glance back and see her husband pointing at me. I know immediately that he wants her to ask me for my seat, but there’s something about the way he does it that bugs me. It feels like he’s ordering her to do something she doesn’t want to do.

She eventually, and shyly, asks me for my seat.

If it had been a parent looking for my pre-selected comfy seat to sit next to a child, no problem. I’ve done that twice in the past even though the replacement seats weren’t better. But an obviously intimidated young wife and an overbearing husband. No way. The seat they want me to take is farther back and next to the window seat and the overheads are full. No thanks. I’m not stuffing my carryon under my feet for a guy that won’t even say please. I told her if it’s a D seat nearby, no problem, but that I had pre-selected the seat for a reason.

I’ve never seen a husband go through so much trouble to get his wife to sit next to him. I’ve seen spouses separated on flights all the time – including longer flights than this. I’ll see them look and ask and if they can’t get two together, they just shrug and visit each other during the flight. Even the woman in front of me was separated from her husband and he was in the next compartment. He came back to chat from time to time.

It’s a day time flight and only 8 hours yet this poor young woman’s husband went to the stewardesses, had them ask me and the man in the window seat to move and both of us said no. He was pacing the aisles as everyone got aboard looking for seats. I really got the sense that he was a bit of a bully.

The flight was overbooked and there’s only one seat left on the plane. It’s behind him, across the aisle and one seat in and he makes her move there after we take off even though she’s actually closer in this seat (but on the other side of the compartment). I really feel sorry for her and even though it sounds mean that I didn’t give up my seat, his attitude made didn’t make me feel the least bit guilty for keeping them separate.

As they say. You can get more with honey than vinegar. This guy was vinegar.

And I have to wonder if the flight attendant is peeved that I wouldn’t move. I now had the only empty seat in the plane next to me and the woman in the next seat spreads out on the seat and I put my bag from the overhead to under the seat. We’re both pretty comfy. Then about 3 hours into the flight, the same flight attendant says she has a passenger whose video screen doesn’t work and wants to move him to the empty seat.

I don’t care but the other woman has to go through a lot of trouble to move back to her own seat. Then the man sits in the seats, turns on the maps and goes to sleep listening to his own Walkman.

A little strange given that the maps are up on the screen on the wall.

The man gets up just after the last meal and goes back to his seat. I look at the woman next to me and we both shrug at the same time. She leans over and says “What was all that about?”

No idea.

The funniest part was that after he sat down and turned on the maps, he tried to adjust the volume (remember, he is listening to a Walkman) and the woman and I look around for his controls. Mine are at my right and hers are at her left and we know they are our controls. We look back and forth. The three internal arms have controls, the aisle ones don’t. We look at each other and say “what’s up with this?”

Then she looks back and pulls down another armrest. There are two in the middle of the four seat section and his armrest was up.

Well, did we laugh? Even the women across the aisle were in stitches.

Dinner on the flight was chicken and rice with a nice raspberry cheesecake dessert. The end flight meal was a burrito. Not too bad. The movie selection wasn’t as good as Air Canada’s. I watched Haywire and John Carter, but spent the four hours in between typing up the last couple days and sorting through the photos.

We land ahead of schedule and the customs process is really swift in Montreal. Canadians go to the automated passport terminals and non-Canadians go to the human officers. (Though, the woman in front of me got selected for screening. A randomized thing). I find the hotel shuttles and it’s only a ten minute wait for my Crowne Plaza shuttle. By the time I’m in my room, it’s almost 2 am in Zagreb.

Oh, I’m so happy I choose to stop here for the night. 

Otherwise, the next flight to Newfoundland would have been about a four hour wait plus the flight time and time getting home. I would have been up till after dawn in Zagreb with only a short time on the flight to nap.

Now, after sleeping fairly soundly for 8 hours, I feel caught up on jet lag. A couple more early bedtimes and I should be good to go.

The flights home the next day were about the most uneventful legs home from Montreal to Halifax to St. John’s. Two different flights but the same plane and the same staff.

Walking outside into 7 degrees was an eye-opener.

And in short sleeves, you could say I got chicken skin.

I took a taxi home where I had left my car only to realize that I had left the keys with the cats at my sister’s place. She picked me up and I got the cats home.

That night, one of them left me a nice present. A hairball next to my pillow.

Could have been worse. They left my sister a mouse by her door.