The Department of Useless and Ill-Informed Opinions

Greetings from Zurich

Ok, I'm a fucking tool. But at least I know it, right?

But I have an excuse, because I'm on an insanely long layover, and there's no way I can sit and keep drinking (either coffee or beer). I'm already severely over-caffeinated, and it's 11:20am local time. Which of course makes it 5:20am in my brain, and I didn't sleep a wink on the flight from JFK.

So, I got into Zurich around 7:15am today, and with my flight to Munich scheduled for 11:55am, I decided to ask about getting the hell out of here. I went to the information desk, and the lady said that as long as I had my passport and boarding pass, I could leave. And leave I did.

Passport Control barely even looked at my passport, and they didn't even stamp it. I ended up knowing someone on my flight, who was flying to Zurich for work, so she and I shared a cab into the city. She went to crash at her hotel, and I went to roam. It was 8am, I was in a city (let alone a country) that I'd never been in before, and I'm walking around.

And it was nice. Really. I like some time to roam by myself in foreign cities. I spent hours doing it in Lisbon earlier this summer. It's a great way to get to know the non-museum and non-monument aspects of a city.

I was also hoping to score some breakfast, and some coffee. Everything I passed was closed. And the other walkers were sparse. I found a Starbucks, but I eschewed. I get enough of that shit at home.

So, after a half hour of wandering aimlessly I turned a corner and saw two things: a train station, and a cafe that was open. I figured this was fate telling me to get a quick cup and head back to the airport. It's not like I had 5 hours to wander, and I didn't really feel like spending $50 on a cab back to the airport.

Turns out the station was Zurich's Hauptbahnhof, the central station. Once I figured that out, my decision was made. Done and done. And I mean done.

Since all I spent in Zurich proper was an hour or so, I've got nothing at all to report. And no pics. Though I did get a shot of my company's new global ad campaign at the airport on my way back in through Passport Control (where they again gave my passport just a cursory glance; I guess my days of looking shady are behind me).

Anyway, what the hell am I doing blogging at what's now 11:25am when I have a flight in a half hour? Well, after a five hour layover, my flight is delayed. With a non-specified new time. They told us to go to the gate at the correct time, and an announcement will be made. Super-duper.

So yeah, I'm sitting in the Zurich airport blogging.

I'm going to head to the gate, and see what's up. Could take me a few minutes to clear security. Though if the passport screening process is any indication, I suspect I may just be able to roam straight through to my gate without so much as an X-ray. Mmm... Radioactive beams.

With any luck, this is where this ends. But believe me, if I get stuck here for any length of time, this baby's going to have an update tacked right on the bottom of this post. More thrilling airport tales!

I Hate Flying

Not even in that "it's such a pain in the ass and a hassle" sort of way. And not in a scared of it sort of way, though I don't necessarily enjoy the physical sensation. I mean that I just hate it.

See, here's the thing. I tend to be a streaky person, both by force of habit (I tend to get on a lunchtime kick and eat the same thing every weekday until I'm sick as hell of it) and by random coincidence, and air travel is no different for me.

The most notable, and surprisingly positive, streak was a good 3 year period where every flight I was on, probably a total of 25-30 round trips, was on time. Friends and family bitched about how they were always hitting delays, but I was golden. Sure, sometimes we'd get off the ground a few minutes late, but never very much, and I always landed on time (if not early). It was a wonderful run. But like all streaks (thank you Chase Utley for making this a good fantasy baseball year for me), it had to come to an end.

But as they say, when one door closes another opens. Unfortunately the new door contained screaming children.

The current run is now bad luck. Delays galore, and I'm all but guaranteed to have a shrieking infant or toddler within 2 rows of my seat.

This week was no different, and so we enter a new segment here at The Department... Stories about my flights, mostly shitty ones.

I know what you're thinking, because I'm thinking it too... You hate that co-worker who comes back from a trip and bitches about how awful the flights were, on and fucking on. It's just boring to listen to. I'm going to try so hard not to be that guy, believe me.

While my flight down to Florida was generally uneventful, the flight home was right in the norm. I knew it was a pretty crowded flight, since I tend to check out the seat maps shortly before a flight to see if I can move my window seats to a row farther back where there are no passengers slated to sit next to me. In fact, an hour or so before I left for the airport I bumped myself back a row, from 26F to 27F, since 26D/E were occupied, but in Row 27 only D (aisle) was. Just trying to avoid cramming my ass in 3 deep whenever possible.

Now, as it turns out, that was a lucky little bit of fate, since 26D/E ended up being taken by a young mother and her 3-ish year old son. But it's not like this kid was going to allow something as insignificant as a high-backed airline seat stop him from harassing the shit out of me.

The minute they sat down this kid was at it. If he wasn't chattering on he was screaming. If he wasn't screaming he was shrieking. If he wasn't shrieking he was crying. And if he wasn't doing any of those he was climbing all over the seat, treating it as his personal jungle gym. This kid was loud enough that it didn't matter what I put on my iPod, nothing was drowning this little bastard out.

And it's not like I was the only one to notice it, since his sheer volume level kept most of the plane awake. More than a few of my fellow passengers shot my sympathetic looks as they walked back towards the bathrooms, and there were a couple who looked downright apologetic at the baggage claim back at LaGuardia. This child had kept me awake for the entire flight, and I was coming off of a serious bender-esque night.

And speaking of Benders, I had the pleasure of watching some good old fashioned satellite TV on the flight, being Delta and all. Not much is on at 10:30 on a Monday night, so I gladly turned to Adult Swim for a Futurama fix. But a bump that ran coming back from a commercial break, and had something to do with one of their anime shows or whatever, talked about what to expect this Saturday. It says calmly in their usual point size to tune in on Saturday, blah blah blah. Then it changes cards for what to look for, and it says something along the lines of:

SCHOOLGIRLS IN UNDERWEAR
Fucking fantastic. The elderly gentleman sitting behind me, who was already confused as to why a grown man was watching cartoons, must have been thrilled.

Having left on time, even though there were storms moving around the mid-Atlantic area, we were moving well and on schedule and all that good stuff. Until the pilot came on and told us that there was massive lightning storms over the entire region, and there was no way through. We'd have to circle in a counter-clockwise pattern while they waited for DC Air Traffic Control to try and map a clear path for us to shoot through. The other option, of course, was landing in Ohio or something for the night. So we circled and circled for a good hour, until a brief hole opened up and we shot for it.

Here's the interesting part though... Have you ever seen lightning from above, in a plane? It's a sight to behold, truly. While I like to consider myself an environmentalist, in the general sense of the word, I don't get awed by nature-type stuff. The only other time I can remember it was when flying from Vancouver to Kamloops and flying directly over snow-capped mountains. Anyway, lightning, not snow-capped mountains in BC. The bolts light up the clouds from within, causing them to flicker and glow entirely. And then you'll periodically see the bolts leap across the surfaces, presumably before striking downwards (though I'm no weatherman, so I've got no real clue what they do). Outstanding stuff. I was wishing I'd had my digital camera with me, but alas, I'd left it behind in NYC. Makes me think maybe I'll always be sure to bring it along on trips, even weekends to visit the family in FL.

By the point of the lightning, the Devil Spawn in Row 26 was asleep, for at least a little while, and I sat there staring more out the window at the clouds than at the toons in front of my face.

Incidentally, we did eventually get that hole we'd been hoping for, and we ended up shooting it, going only very slightly above and directly over some major lightning. That was when it went from cool and ethereal to downright fucking spooky. I felt like John Lithgow in the Twilight Zone movie (and yes, I know it was all re-done bits from the series, but my Twilight Zone memories consist of the movie, which came out when I was 7).