Business Travel

Did i mentioned so far, that i start to hate the FTL lounge in Dresden. Lost to many hours in this lounge. When you meeting ends on 12 or 13 o´clock you have at sit at least 3.5 to 2.5 hours waiting for your aircraft. Because of the even worser train connections to Hamburg, you are much later in at home, even when you give the train a 3-4 hours headstart. However: the DRS lounge is especially boring you can´t even look out of the window on the runway ... and even then: There aren´t many starting or landing flights here ...

I saw several referers from translating engines for the last two entries. Just to make it short: I had an especially bad day today. From the beginning to the end. This day was not only used, and there was left ony a little bit luck in it. It was an empty day, 100% luck free.

I´m sitting in the plane at the moment. And just to see a little microscopic bright spot in this day: I can add a new type of plane to my list. It's a Dornier 328 in the JET variant. Same chassis as the turboprob, but two jet turbines adjactent to the wings. At least it´s a fast plane: 45 minutes instead of 55 minutes and it accelerated like a sports car on the tarmac.

But that doesn't count much, when the take off is just three hours late. It was scheduled for an 19:45 take off. But it was more like 22:45. Boarding. By the way: It was a damaged plane ... it was the airport in Hamburg again. At least the first officer told us this subterfuge a few minutes ago. Dear Airport Hamburg, snow is a reality. Get over it and start to make decent plans for such situation.

PS: The text was written in the aircraft, but i had to be at home to send it. It´s now almost 00:30 of the next day. I´m finally at home. Good night.

Es ist alles nur Fassade. Staffage. Einfach nur ein äusserer Schein. Jene höchstens wenige Milimeter dicke Schicht verschiedener Gewebe, die wir auf unserer Haut tragen. Darunter sind wir alle nackt. Und so wie wie man sehr schnell aus dieser Kleidung schlüpfen kann, so kann man noch schneller die Rolle verlassen, die mit der Kleidung einhergeht. In vielen teuren Anzügen samt der teuren Schuhe und pastellfarbenen Hemden , in vielen Businesskostümen mit schwarzen Nylons und hochhackigen Schuhen, steckt doch letztlich nur ein Rüpel ohne Benehmen. Es reicht der kleinste Anlass um das schlechte Benehmen hervorzuholen, und sei es nur eine Schlange bei der Sicherheitskontrolle. Oder ist es nötig zu Drängeln, ueber Absperrungen zu krabbeln nur um einige wenige Momente schneller zu sein.

Only 45 flights this year ... thus it was a little bit harder to requalify for FTL. At the end it was the last flight of the year in conjunction with a retroactively submitted boarding pass. Reached it with the margin of a whisker. Now i´m FTL until 2012 ...



But i have no idea how to get 93.261 miles in just two days to reach Star Alliance Gold status .... Well, first class to New York and back should do it ... but that´s a little bit expensive for an airline status with dubious real benefit. But i assume, it´s impolite to write that into the message beneath the actual value.

Okay ... the headline was my yearly "vast understatement". I´m really pissed off. I got out of bed at 04:30. Walked to my urban train station to airport at 05:15. There is a new train line to airport ... really nice. But: The quick checkin system told me: Your flight is delayed ... not for 10 minutes ... not for an hour. The delay is 2 hours! At least i don´t have to sit around in the plane as at my last flight. Fsck!

Another word for special security screeeing? A TSA massage ...

I was in the mood for back-biting myself for the fact, that i tried to save some money for Sun. This meant: As there was no economy class seat in the plane from Dresde to Hamburg i had the opportunity to choose between Business Class (1h flight time) for hefty 400 Euros or the train in the second class for 48 Euros (5:50 ride time)

After not really thinking a lot about it, i´ve choosed the later option. But after holding a presentation i thought a little bit different about sitting five hours in a train.(I´m not really sure if this is cheaper, as i´m at home at 20:00 pm instead of 17:30pm, but that´s a different question)ö But one fact made this a little bit better for me: Leipzig has a Starbucks now. It´s in a few minutes walking distance to the main station. So i was able to indulge my spleen: I was able gather my 16th Starbucks mug now

I was really relieved about the fact, that weather forecasting is a rather unprecise science ... no thunderstorms, just turbulences and a hole in the air when the aircraft went through the clouds.

The weather forecast reports thunderstorms in the afternoon for Hamburg . Sh... will be an interesting approach on the flight back from Dresden ...

Gestern London, heute Rostock, morgen Fluch ... aeh ... Flug fuer Dresden buchen ... ich bin zuviel unterwegs ..

I´m visiting friends in Toulouse at the moment. With the flight of Toulouse the distance of the flight since 2005 (plus a few flights before my fear of flying) adds up to the equivalent of traveling four times around the earth.

But that wasn´t the interesting part of the flight. I worked for the nordwest.net some years ago. Today i stood at the baggage claim and a blonde woman greets me: Sabine, the team assistant from the nordwest.net. Some kind of luck, as i´m traveling not that often to Toulouse (to be exact: it´s the first trip to TLS) and Sabine collected her parents-in-law from the Airport as she lives in Toulouse for some years now. What a small world!

Man weiss, das man mit den Gedanken wieder ganz wo anders war, wenn man den Teebeutel aufreisst und in die Tasse streut, danach den Zuckerbeutel ins heisse Wasser legt und sich dann wundert warum der Tee irgendwie komisch schmeckt. Hinschauen soll helfen ...

... when you want to board a plane: Transformers shirt gets jet ban:

He thought the boss would "see sense" — but he backed up the decision and threatened him with ARREST. Aussie-born Brad said: "My mate set off the alarms and was searched.
"But then the guy told me to stop and said ‘you cannot get on the plane because there is a gun on your T-shirt’."

Ich bin ja letztes Jahr ueber Zuerich zu einem Kunden nach Sueddeutschland geflogen. Ich habe hier gerade einen Beitrag auf N.24 ueber die Tempokontrollen in der Schweiz in der Schweiz gesehen. Irgendwie kann ich da nur sagen : Glueck gehabt. Und ich muss mich wohl bei dem bedanken, der mich ausdruecklich vor zu eiliger Fahrweise gewarnt hat... ich frage mich gerade ob die dort die Strafe mit der Tachonadelabweichung nach oben in Bogenminuten mal 50 Rappen errechnen

Well, let´s call this a somewhat tough week. My virtualisation preso today was really good. Many good questions and good feedback. I´m sitting in the FTL lounge in MUC now ... batteries empty. Need a weekend. Thank god it´s friday. Normal blog operations will resume on monday ...