It's Time to Leave.....Taina

I am taking advantage of free Airport Internet, awaiting my flight to the Old Country. Hamburg, here I come!

Missing DaFamily already!

I smell like a perfume factory and could do with a drink...

I am so not looking forward to those loooong hours of in-flight entertainment and all the excitement stems from eagerly awaiting the next feed and the suspense of whether or not they are getting the Vegetarian meal order right this time...

Ah well, at least the lovely flight attendants look the part and most of them, so far, had a smile on their face.

DaMan was right: once you enter the corridors of timezones you can relax, as there is nothing left to do other than letting go.

25 minutes late boarding....

Time to board that plane... see ya!

The person issueing my boarding pass was sweet as, but she must have been taking an instant dislike to me when I asked if there was any chance to get the exit aisle... She promptly moved me from an allocated seat I had requested to one that had even less leg room and here comes the absolute hammer: when I got there it had been double booked! Baaaaaaad Karma to that lovely sweet heart, who did me in...little did she know that in the end it would work for the better.

'No kids and no grossly obese people' was the mantra I chanted under my breath, but when I got to my seat. Guess what was sitting in my seat? A three year old! And his mother next to him used one and a half seats.

A quick look at their boarding passes determined that the stewardess had to find me another seat, which happened to be alongside a lovely couple, brand new grand parents in NZ and another daughter giving birth in Lebanon within the week, from Beirut, who turned out to be just wonderful to travel with.
Life's twists are amazing!
....
Right now I am sitting in Dubai at the airport, passing time. It is very busy and people are trying to get a little shut-eye or a moment or two stretched out on the floor. It looks like a refugee camp... not that I've ever been in one, but I guess it's like that without the hunger and the distress.

Of cause I got totally stressed out when I thought that I don't have a boarding pass for the Hamburg leg...I was just too unfocussed to look in the right place. That meant that I had to line up twice to get through Security, of which there is much more since Bangkok.

I feel a little movied out since I've seen several. Iron Man was my favourite and Made of Honour came definate second. Chaos Theory is yet to get finished...

It's 34 degrees outside at 5:15 before the sun even rises here. The airport is huge and I am starting to get used to smelling the smoke again... terrible!

I'll save an hour to go shopping... there is plenty! Just never enough mulah! Here I go...starting to get into the local lingo...

Almost seven more hours flight to get to Hamburg, where I'll collect my luggage and my loving parents will pick me up in their car. Another hour or so and we'll walk the soil I played with in my youth.... bwahahahahaha!

Dubai Airport is in a constant state of flux. It’ s most important ground personnel seem to be their bus drivers, who keep pumping the people to and from its busy hub. Without them there’d be chaos, as it would limit the number of planes that can be serviced on the ground at any one time. Getting to my plane took a good ten minute ride past an enormous hole in the ground that must have been at least five storeys deep and appears to be an additional terminal. Hundreds of people were working in that hole…in the sand.

The shops are brimming with eager customers even before sunrise. I must say that I am glad my parents only ever do business class these days, as they are well looked after in luxurious lounges and catered upon with a smile, whilst we mere mortals have to get cunning as a fox, survival of the fittest, to get what we need: a place to stretch out and not get trodden on. At first I walked along that mile long hall, carrying my (a lot heavier than I first thought) cabin bag until I noticed those little carts and a quick inquisitive look at the handle revealed that these thing fail to be fitted with a chaining device, meaning they are complimentary…somewhere.

My first mission was to hunt me down one of those carts. Logic told me that they must be somewhere near departure lounges and bingo! That’s where I finally found not one, but three! Choice! Well not really…two of them had rubbish in them …whilst there is an army of these, somehow luggage carts seemed rare as hen’s teeth!

The next strategic undertaking was to find myself a seat or even just an empty bit of space. Preferably near my departure gate, so if I was to go to sleep the sudden hussle and bustle would wake me…but that’s of cause what everybody else thought of and so I set out to find the gate with the very next flight departing, as I figured that would be the one that would provide a ‘most people leaving’ situation…it turned out to be a clever move!

Was I glad that I did it that way, as last minute airport changes saw a new gate number announced. There were plenty of people who did not like that at all. Most of them German…funny that, maybe it’s a Hamburg thing, but flexibility did not rate highly on their ‘personal attributes’ list.

subverting the cueing system. Once there was an announcement people started to get up and leave for another, already quite busy departure hall and there it was getting quite congested. This young couple commented on how we are learning how to cue and by the time we get home, we’d be really good at it. I could not help myself and answered…”yet, there is quite some fun to be had by subverting this process”.

That’s when this big Indian dude started to make a move on my spot, in my opinion Indian people have proven themselves being the masters of the subverting game and they do not mind a little too close for my comfort proximity either. By now I was carrying that bag again and maneuvered it just in front of him just in time. He lost. Whoo! The fun one could have here! He ended up sitting in my triple…sleeping all the way.

However, the departure hall filled up quickly and some very loud Danes had the front seats pegged, filled with their brood.

More children!

And these were not well behaved! I love my ipod! It drowned out almost everything…

I’ve been very lucky with my next seat. Perrrrfect! Until a nice Asian/German family approached. A little eight month old bouncy baby in their arms. My ipod drowned out their question as they waved a couple of boarding passes in my face. I looked at one and saw that he was in the wrong section of the same row, so I proceeded to send him off in the right direction. Only then I got my hearing back and he asked again…could we swap, please? My wife and I would like to sit together...
Of cause!
I wondered if that was a stupid move, but soon realised that it was the window seat in front of the bunkhead to business class… with additional legspace to boot. Not bad!

That’s were I met Donna from SriLanka, an English teacher who is on her way to Kiel. In under two hours she managed to convince me to do SriLanka sometimes soon.

Upon arrival I expected rain, especially since the cloud cover increased the further North we flew, but the forecast was for late in the day and the sun shone upon a lush, green and largely happy Sunday city.

I could not believe that my father missed my arrival and I had to seek him out. Our meeting was very sweet and as we made our way through the airport there were about 300+ Punks and Heavy Metal fans all over the place. They’ve attended the largest Heavy Metal concert in Europe with 80 something bands playing on several stages. Most of them looked alike with very little variation on the ‘uniform’. Sad, actually… Things were soooo different in my day…there was at least a sense of individuality and creativity…but then, they were able to afford the plane ticket… but there was one, I assumed it was a band member… he wore the best Demonia boots I’ve seen in a long time…

Finding our way from the airport was interesting. Things looked different…and not only to me, but also to Dad-the-driver… Since I’ve got my new glasses, I am ahead of the game and I was able to read the sign that pointed to ‘City North’.

We got to the city abode in no time at all (‘time’ is relative after travelling thus far!) and even parking was no problem. Finding the right key for the lock took longer than finding a parking spot. Climbing five long sets of stairs with two impaired elders was like listening to a steam train arriving. I-think-I-can….
Our mission was to find those wedding pictures I failed to locate at the house in Oz. We did not find the exact one, but we ended up carting just about five or six large plastic shopping bags stuffed full of albums and envelopes and boxes and things back to the car.
And we even found MONEY!!!!!!!!!
There was only one small problem with that….it was Australian alright, but those were one and two dollar notes. Shame they are no longer legal tender…

…and then there was that candy apple red security box!

It was securely locked with no key in sight. Dad turned up with an ice cream container full of keys. The weight of it was surprising. It took him half an hour, but he located the key. Persistence… a quality that I am in need of aquiring… perhaps it comes for free with age.

The flat seemed really small and so did the streets. Somehow there was an air of quaintness that I had not experienced for a while. Man, it’s good to drive through the streets I used to roam in! Everything has changed, but every now and then there is that glimpse, that momentary recognition…delving into past pleasures and past emotional deluges.

On our way South to the summerhouse we saw loads of motorcycles everywhere. Most of them ‘naked’, most of them returning around five o’clock, back to the city. A good proportion seemed to be women too, which is a nice change from my ‘good’ old days in this city, when we just happen to know of each other’s existence; specially during the time I worked at Kawasaki.

When we got to the summer house I finally got to see my fabulous two land turtles named Bessy. They were exactly the same size as they were when I first bought them for a fiver fourtyfive years ago and they did exactly the same things as I had seen them do for years. Eat, try to escape, find the warmest spot available to them and attempting to have sex with each other. As it happens, both of them are male. That means I own two gay turtles and a gay dog… I am proud! There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, except that the one that climbs on top always tries to chomp the other after it attempts to get away.

I’ve taking footage…turtle pron.



The food and beverages over here are just simply gooooood! Black Beer, Potato pancakes, have some plum wine, some proper asparagus and freshly dug up potatoes. Icecream, cakes, strawberries, blueberries…
Blueberries!
Oma served me a bowl of blueberries with sugar and cream. It was at least three times the volume of those little punnets we get in Australia costing us six bucks each. Delicious!
How am I going to fit in the gear I want to wear on Friday when they feed me all that nice stuff????!
Oooh and I devoured the smoked belly of a Dornhai, a type of shark that just tastes devine… it’s called Schillerlocken and I had it for brecky.

It was high time to have a look at the venue today and it is sooo cute! Gemuetlich

After I took a picture of them in front of the substantial building, right from the middle of a busy main road pedestrian island, I almost stepped out …straight in front of a semi trailer. Instinct saved my hide. Right hand drive means just that! I did not look to the right…with both my mother and father looking on… that would have been a most traumatic moment.

My dad went to a funeral today. Acquaintances of theirs were going to celebrate their golden Wedding Anniversary on the same day, the eighth of August, but they decided to party on Saturday Night instead (wise decision if you’d ask me!). A few days ago the wife passed away quite unexpectedly. Tragic! So close!

Life’s twists…

Tonight, a gunshot right on dusk at 9:30. No one moves, no one acknowledges it. The hunter is nigh…







And this one...

Mmmmh!