Wanderung 15

Volksmarching through Germany and a Cruise to get back.

September-November 2007

Saturday, September 29th, 2007 - We arrive in Hamburg.

Bob:

If I never have to spend another night on an airplane squeezing my 6 foot, 2 inch frame into an economy class seat, it will be fine with me! Even with an empty seat between my aisle seat and the young lady in the window seat, I had exactly three positions that I could support my head and try to sleep: bolt upright turned to the left, bolt upright turned to the right, and bolt upright turned to the right with my legs stretched into the empty space in front of the center seat (the young lady curled up across her seat and the center seat, so I couldn't use anything other than the footrest area.). Still, three positions was better than one and I managed to get to nap before dinner and to sleep after dinner maybe 3-4 hours in snatches. I could sleep in snatches of about 20 minutes because every time I started to sleep deeply my entire body would relax and my head would fall off the headrest, waking me up. Monika had even less space and an active 3-year old in her row, so she only managed to doze lightly for a part of the night.

Our stopover in London's Heathrow airport was over three hours long, but as it turned out we really needed 2 hours to exit our aircraft, walk through Terminal 4, take a bus that circled around the airport to Terminal 1, check in through security (yet again), and find our way through a maze of walkways to our departure gate in Terminal 1. We were apparently not the only persons who had found the lengthy debarcation and embarcation process in Heathrow frustrating if not infuriating, because they had signs prominently displayed in all of the waiting areas that warned against attacking the airport personnel! I also noticed that they were spending billions to build a new terminal complex, and I think that is a jolly good idea because if the "open skies" agreement between Europe and the U.S. comes into force and people have more choices of airports in Europe to land in, I can well imagine that based on repeated unpleasant experiences they will avoid Heathrow like the plague. I know I would!

The flight to Hamburg was, thank heavens, short, as we were both suffering from lack of sleep. Even though the plane was an Airbus 319 with basically one cabin and one kind of seat, British Airways had a curtain pulled across the front section to artificially divide the cabin into "First Class" and "All you other riff raff". British Airways follows this class distinction almost like a religion; they had separate First Class queues for checkin in at the gate at Dulles, special treatment for First Class passengers when queueing for the bus between the terminals at Heathrow, separate "Fast Track" queueing for the First Class passengers for security screening, and pretty much special treatment for their First Class passengers for every step in between. Given the history of the British class system, I suppose it is only natural that British Airways really doesn't believe that "All men are created equal". As for myself, I would prefer a one-class airline such as Southwest or ATA airlines in the U.S. to the class conscious airlines like British Airways, United, and many of the other legacy carriers.

When we arrived in Hamburg I immediately encountered some salient cultural differences. Unlike the pervasive class-consciousness of Heathrow airport, the Hamburg airport had only two lines to check passports, the "EU citizen" line and "Everybody Else" line, and even that distinction seemed to be ignored in practice. The Customs guy who stamped our passports was friendly and cheerful, especially when I attempted to speak German with him. Everyplace I have traveled in Germany so far, the folks have uniformly been appreciative of my attempts to communicate in their native language.

Perhaps even more importantly, the bathroom stalls in the Men's room were extraordinarily well-built by American standards. The side walls were solid masonary from top to bottom and the door was a full-sized, solid door with a real dead bolt type of lock on it. Once you throw that dead bolt in a German bathroom, you can rest reassured that no one is going to pop the door open just to check if anyone is there, or peek in over the door. The foot-tapping signals and hands waved underneath the partition favored by folks like Senator Craig would also just not work in a German bathroom stall, thank goodness! Seriously, though, the German bathroom compared very well to the flimsy walls, abbreviated doors, and tinny door latches of most public bathrooms in America, and I really enjoyed the enhanced sense of uninterruptable privacy after having been packed chock-a-block into airplanes for the preceding eight hours or so.

One piece of German technology that did not work, however, were the "smoking kiosks" scattered around the terminal. Smokers did in fact congregate around these circular areas with kind of a clear plastic umbrella roof over them, but the air circulation system must not have worked very well because we could clearly smell the reek of cigarette smoke from 50 feet away while walking throught the terminal. Still, Germany has clearly taken steps to try to isolate the bad effects of cigarette smoking, and that made me very curious to see if those street-corner cigarette vending machines were still near the major bus stops or train stations. What I soon found out was that the vending machines were still there but had been altered after January 1st of 2007 to require the insertion of a driver's license or government ID card that proved the customer was 18 or over before the sale could be completed. Certainly that makes it more difficult for the children to buy cigarettes, but I imagine they simply borrow an older kid's license or ID card to allow them to purchase packs from the vending machines. The curious hit-or-miss anti-smoking campaign in Germany was corroborated by the fact that although the main Altona train station complex was legally smoke-free (and that rule seemed to be obeyed as far as I could tell), the main Hamburg train station still allowed smoking and really reeked of cigarette smoke. However, on this trip we were in fact able to find non-smoking hotel rooms in most, but not all of the bed and breakfasts we stayed in. So in many ways it looked to me like Germany is about where the U.S. was in the middle of our big anti-smoking campaign in the 1980s and 1990s.

In any case, after collecting our luggage we met up with Heinke and Gustl, who drove us back to their place and fed us a very nice Mittagessen (major noon meal). After the meal we took a long walk around the nearby Ohlsdorf Cemetery and ran into a heavy thunderstorm. That put our new raincoats to the acid test, and fortunately they came through with flying colors so we only got soaked from the waist down. After changing and having yet another nice meal, we walked over to the Famila food store so that Heinke could do a bit of shopping. That activity helped keep us awake a bit longer, but finally by 8:30 we were really crashing and we turned in for the night.

Monika:

Part B of "The Cunning Plan" started on Friday, September 29th. Expedia kept reminding me that we still had an open itinerary, but would not let me select seats for our trip back to Germany. So we decided to get to the airport well ahead of our 6:55 departure time. Of course, we were packed the day before. All other "to do's" had been crossed off my list, so we decided to call for the Super Shuttle at 1:00PM and were ready and waiting. However, the shuttle did not arrive until about 1:45, and we decided, a taxi would be well worth the extra $10 or so. However, when we got to the Britisch Airways counter at Dulles Airport, they did not actually open until 2:30. We got our hoped for aisle seats across from each other, checked our two suitcases and waited until it was time to board.

Bob had hoped to immediately settle down for a nap. He was on the window side of the aisle, and the middle seat was actually empty, so he had a tad more space and movement options than normally. The nap thing, however, did not turn out to be easy, with stewardesses moving to hand out drinks, collect empty glasses, hand out food (first for us special foods folk-low fat in our case--then the meals for everyone else) and then collect the dirty dishes. But finally everything was cleared away and we both tried to settle down. I had a family with a 3 year old next to me. The kid decided to fall asleep immediately after boarding, awake in the middle of the night, and then go back to sleep as we were preparing to land. He was not really noisy, but definitely awake and kept me up. I did close my eyes for about an hour and hopefully slept a little, but that was about all.

We got into Heathrow around 6:15 and stopped on the tarmac and were bused to terminal 4. Busing about 240 passengers from a 747 takes a while and we were one of the last ones out. Once in Terminal 4 we got into another queue to take another bus to Terminal 1 where our connecting flight was going to be. In Terminal 1 we had to go through security and were reminded of Disney World with lines being directed around and around. Unlike Disney world, unfortunately, they did not tell us about how long it would be to the end of the line. But we did get there, went safely through security and finally found some seats in the communal waiting hall. It had been over 2 hours since our plane landed and I was only glad that we had plenty of time for our connection. Warning to all and sundry, when connecting at Heathrow allow a minimum of 2 hours!

The flight to Hamburg was quick and relaxing. In Hamburg we went through immigration and then had to wait for our luggage, since it seemed to have been a FILO queue (First-In-Last-Out queue, or just another way of punishing people who check their bags early). But Heinke and Gustl were waiting for us. We admired their new car and went home. Mittagessen was quickly prepared by Heinke and after that we opted for a walk rather than a nap to reset our internal clocks.

It looked threatening when we left but was not actually raining, so Bob and I donned our new raincoats hoping they would stand up to the worst weather Hamburg would throw at them. And indeed once we started walking in the large cemetery that is close to Heinke and Gustls it started raining in earnest and really coming down in buckets. But once we got back, we found out that all of our raincoats worked like advertised, only our pants were wet. Oh well. After that it was a matter of trying to stay awake. The meals coming every two hours (Kaffeetrinken and Abendessen) and a quick walk to the local grocery store helped. And at 8:30 we were finally allowed to go to bed. It had only been about 30 hours, since we got up on Friday morning.

Copyright 2008 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
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