violist

Started off badly: I can't believe the incompetence
of the counter people who served me this time at BOS:
two proven good agents were flanking the proven bad
one I was directed to; oh, well, I wasn't asking any
special favors, just looking to use an '03 systemwide
on a W fare. Took the agent (young, Asian, female)
and supervisor (older, black, female) 5 min of furious
typing and staring at profile to see that SWU was good
- eventually they gave up, and to retaliate for my
being right, asked for my CC, and when I demurred, as
I've been a 1K for half a decade, was given this guff
about "I've been working here 8 years and have never
heard of such a thing," and "it's only for your
protection, you know," which of course is absolute
bullshot. Time to complain about the attitude in
Boston? I don't know; they're usually okay. But when
I went to the RCC, all the matrons there, including
the male one, were ones I'd had trouble with. Just
the luck of the draw, I guess, and the demographics
of the Saturday employees.

0207 531 BOS ORD 1015 1149 320 2A
Ch9 Y Empower N F 6/12

This was scheduled as a 735, but you get what you
get. Good service with a smile from a somewhat cute
FA. The meal offered was the deli plate or chef's
salad; I passed and just had the nice fresh hot
oatmeal raisin cookie. Dawdled a bit, then it was
time for my much anticipated connection on the
domestic 747 flight -

0207 382 ORD IAD 1315 1607 744 16A
Ch9 N Empower Y; upstairs only 7, didn't check down

We took off at 2:08, thanks to weather, I think, and
landed at 4:30. It was sad to see the upper deck so
empty - I thought how many buffs would have been made
happy had they known that those extraordinarily comfy
seats were essentially there for the asking. Good,
efficient (how can it not have been? with 17 empty
seats) service sans a smile. Oddly, there were four
glum looking clean-cut gentlemen in the aisle seats
in rows 12 and 13, then me in 16, then a fresh upgrade
in 17, and some guy in 18 I think it is, anyway the
last row on the right side. The usual deli plate was
offered, and the FA laughed with an implied irony when
I turned it down. I did ask for the cookie, which this
time was Walker's shortbread, but still better than a
deli plate.

0207 902 IAD MUC 1745 0800 763 6A
Ch9 N Empower Y plane totally full

The plane was totally totally full; they even had a
busted seat in Y that they held the plane for until
some repairman could beat it into shape. Good,
fairly attentive crew.

My seatmate was a lady of perhaps 80 summers who
was clearly not used to biz class. I spent a
considerable amount of time fixing her seat for her
every time she wanted to recline or unrecline or
have her footrest put up or down, which was pretty
frequently. She had about 3 words of English, and
combined with my 43 words of German, we did okay
without undue conversation. And to give her credit,
two of her three words of English were "thank you."

TO BEGIN
Spiced shrimp and Parma ham, cocktail sauce and
fresh lemon

Garden salad, Classic Caesar dressing

MAIN COURSE
Filet mignon with applewood smoked bacon demi-glace,
roasted red potatoes and green beans with yellow
pepper

Coriander-crusted halibut with lemon beurre blanc,
basmati rice with chives, asparagus, and carrot
batonnets

Chicken in Moselwein sauce, mushroom cream sauce,
buttered spaetzle and sauteed spinach

DESSERT
International cheese selection
Stilton and Black Diamond Cheddar cheese

Eli's apple crunch pie

PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
Continental breakfast featuring a fruit appetizer
and yogurt

With visions of schweinshaxe dancing in my head I
decided to be a fairly good boy and passed up the
steak (also, as I've had the halibut recently, I
turned that down as well).

The chicken (a medium-size breast) was done to dust
but still grayish-white; the sauce tasted like cream
of chicken soup (from what I recall, not having had
said soup in at least 30 years) - not bad, but not a
trace of Riesling either. Speaking of which, I ordered
Riesling to drink and was told that it hadn't been
loaded, they had the Leon Beyer Pinot Blanc and the
St. Veran, so I had a glass of each: they were close
to indistinguishable. Should perhaps have had the
Pommery Brut, but I wasn't thinking bubbly. Spaetzle
were soaked in butter, which made most of them go
down okay, but on the other hand they were kind of
dried out and brown. A side of sauteed spinach had
some garlic and thus some redeeming social value.
Shoulda had the steak.

Sadly, the flight attendant seems to have taken a
shine to me and served me an extra-size portion,
with what appeared to be extra gravy, so I felt
obligated to choke it all down. Shoulda had the steak.

The old lady next to me ate most of her spinach
and most of her chicken; she left almost all the
spaetzle, which I think says something about the
spaetzle.

For afters they had the Eli's apple thing, which
I turned down, instead going for my Courvoisier.

Nice flight all around, smooth sailing and with a
pleasant crew. Got in 15 early despite the initial
delay.

Landed to find a nice new terminal that's LH and
Star-specific (spotless bathrooms, a Hofbrauhaus
branch upstairs, miles of chrome-and-glass corridor,
usw.) but the signage is dreadful, with at least one
arrivals sign that points to the departure area. I
couldn't immediately find the bus stop, so I went to
the train station (you go through the atrium behind
Terminal 1, which is now covered by a roof that leaks!)
and got a day pass (cost factor: day pass E9; single
ticket next day E8, vs. round-trip bus E14.5 plus day
pass for downtown E4.5). But I soon found out that the
train service downtown was crippled this weekend, and
the S8 terminated at Ostbahnhof, from which one had to
take the U-bahn someplace or another and then a bus
shuttle ... I decided to take the S1 to Hauptbahnhof
and hoof it to Marienplatz from there: I don't know if
that was a mistake or not, as it took over an hour
(several lengthy unexplained stops) - we ended up
taking a disused-looking side track that ran right up
against a church and into the very last platform of
the station. Then a quarter-mile hike through a very
windy downtown, and, hello! It appeared that the
Augustiner beer hall on the Neuhauserstrasse mall
was open and had people in it. So in I went and asked
for the famed pork shank, which, the waiter said, he'd
find out about but he didn't think was ready. (Now
that I think about it, I think he was hoping I'd go for
the E14.44 all-you-can-eat buffet brunch, the perfect
combination of gluttony for me and laziness for the
staff, but I figured no, I had pork in my future, if
not there then someplace). He checked with the kitchen:
the haxen wouldn't be cooked until 11. So that was
out. I asked for soup. Soup wasn't ready. Goulash,
stew, anything? No, just sausages and cheese. So I
had the leberkas, which did the trick. It's about
half a pound of baloney-type stuff served with
honey mustard. Pretty heavy going, but I'd been ready
for a pork shank, so who am I to complain about heavy
going? That and a couple pints of dunkel filled me
right up and made me wish for a nap, especially as
it was starting to rain heavily. So I napped.

Got up and wandered the town. Only five stops on the
U6 from the Renaissance to Odeonsplatz. It's a sleepy
sort of place on Sunday in the snow; the rain had
turned to a gloppy and unpleasant snow that didn't
last too long on the pavements but stuck on the lawns
and gardens and, worse, soaked through my parka. I
should have had brought rain gear, but my best rain
thing is at Carol's house. Tried to get to the Palais
Keller for lunch, but the whole area was cordoned
off, with dozens of vansful of polizei around and
helicopters overhead making a racket. That combined
with the S-bahn closure gave the city not only a
sleepy atmosphere, but also a nightmarish one, with
the wind howling and howling ominously. So back to
Residenzstrasse, where I poked my nose into the
weinstube at the Residenz, where it turned out the
wine wasn't any cheaper than the room minibar, and
the selection didn't appear much better, and the
food on offer mid-Sunday afternoon was only the
usual wursts. So down the street to Spaten Haus,
where my dollars were welcomed with open arms and
an English menu (this place, which seems to have a
sizable tourist constituency, from the look and
sound of the people at adjacent tables, has waiters
who speak English and who are attuned to our ways;
at Augustiner, there wasn't anyone there who had
or admitted to having a word of that language, and
I had to ask for the speisekarte auf Englisch to get
one (warning: the Augustiner English menu has only
about 1/2 of the things that the real menu has; at
Spaten Haus it's complete)). Not that I needed a menu.

The half pork shank was about the biggest thing I've
ever seen on a plate, excepting the 72 oz steak that
I'd been given on the occasion that I'm convinced
triggered my cardiac problems! Some of you may know
the 2 1/2 lb bone-in pork shank they serve at Smith
and Wollensky. This was nearly as big a serving - and
boneless. I'd say 2 lb of meat, not counting the fat
(discarded - I don't want my cardiologist to fire me)
and cracklings (eaten with pleasure - I don't want my
gourmand friends to fire me, either). Came with two
baseball-size potato dumplings and dishes of red and
white cabbage. The dumplings were sufficiently yummy,
having been soaked in butter and then topped with
browned bread crumbs, that I ate 1 1/2 of them. An
interesting thing: in the middle of each dumpling
there is a little cube of bread; kind of cute. The
red cabbage was the usual thing, sweet-and-sour; the
white, however, was delicious, dressed with vinegar
and chock full of tiny dice of ham. I ate all my
vegetables. As for the schweinshaxe, it ran the gamut
from tender dark meat to lean white meat to fatty
in-between meat, surrounded by layers of sweet white
fat and delicious brown crackling. Before roasting
it had been coated in a caraway-and-pepper crust,
and it was absolutely the most delicious thing around.
Along with another two pints of dunkel (Spaten is
sweeter and less yeasty than the Augustiner, but still
palatable), I think I made up for the two deli plates
and breakfast that I'd turned down from United. It
took me quite a while to get all this food down: by
the time I toddled back to the hotel it was almost 6,
or dinnertime by my watch. Thought about dinner.
Thought about attending a concert. The Philharmonic
was performing a Luigi Nono program; though I was
intrigued by his Monteverdi adaptations, I found it
easy enough to say no no to all that. The Symphony
was doing a Russian program, with the Tchaikovsky
violin concerto and then Pictures at an Exhibition,
and that sounded kind of heavy itself - that wasn't
until 8, though, so I had a good hour to nap, and
when I got up I could decide concert or dinner or
both. Back to bed.

Oh, yes, the Renaissance: they gave me a corner room,
smallish but with a big useless balcony. Useless cuz
it was freezing cold out and there were no chairs on
it anyhow. Quite comfy bed. Perhaps too comfy.

Woke up, having decided to have dinner back at the
Augustiner. My tummy had nicely contracted back to
its normal state of ravenousness. One problem only.
I looked at the clock in the TV. It was 0130 - I'd
gotten almost a full night's sleep, and there was
no question any more of dinner. The hotel bar closes
at 2, with an 0130 last call. Oh well, I didn't need
all those calories.

Turns out the temperature had been set to 20C, perfect
for postprandial comatose behavior. Belatedly I reset
it to 17.5, my approximate usual. The damage had been
done: I eyed the incredibly expensive nuts and cheap
but uninspiring blauburgunder at the minibar and
decided instead to read Bill Marriott's autobiography.
Within twenty or thirty pages, I was out again for my
second night's sleep in one night. Wake-up call.
7:45 am. Bounded out of bed, showered, dressed, out of
there, skipping the (included) breakfast buffet. Out
to the Lufthansa bus, which stops 1 block away on the
NE side of the U-bahn stop. E9, well spent. The new
LH terminal's departure level is no easier to negotiate
than the arrivals area: the signs, however, are all
consistently wrong. Took a while to find the UA area,
which it turns out is right near the US Air area.

Check-in took 5 minutes, counting 4 minutes of staring
into the hard eyes of a teutonic beauty who asked me
increasingly urgent questions about my hand luggage.

Then to the security check, which, despite my having
to go back and take my laptop out, was quick and easy.

Signs for the LH lounge. Went there, and another hard-
eyed young lady told me that I was in altogether the
wrong place, I had to go to the lounge after the
border checkpoint. I'll bet good hard American dollars
that these lounges were nicer than the one I was being
directed to. I'll also bet that if the good hard
American dollar were still good and hard, I'd have
been welcome at the downstairs lounge as well. The guy
at the passport control spent I thought an inordinate
amount of time trying to delaminate my passport, but
after many seconds of futile poking and scraping gave
it back with a reluctant "ok." So. Off to the lounge:
they pointed me, as usual, to the Business lounge, and
I didn't complain this time but instead went in to
a wretched room (smoking area in front, of all places)
with wretched food and drink - none of those amusing
fatty sausages or cold meat cakes, just peanuts,
gummis, and (eventually, after half an hour) cookies.
The Lowenbrau is sweet and cloying; the no-name
Riesling and no-name Shiraz likewise. Interesting
tv stuff, though, with a news channel and a sort of
Good Morning, Deutschland channel on, with wireless
headsets (wired to the places, who knows what those
United passengers will steal next) tunable to either
those or various other channels. The first headset
I tried sputtered and fussed and then attempted to
blow my eardrums out; the second was perfect, with
good-quality audio - I watched some blond guy teaching
the German public how to make a stir-fry of beef,
mushrooms, and green, red, and yellow peppers. I was
hoping for black, red, and yellow peppers, myself.

The business lounge got mighty old mighty quick, and
FT was boring, so out to the shopping mall, where I
found Airbrau beer at E2 for a pint. Also found
chile-pepper chocolate from Leydensieffer and a bottle
of Enzian, which I'd been looking for for years, ever
since my friend Nicholas told me that it was the
worst-tasting liquor he'd ever had, and he'd like to
prove that to me, only it probably wasn't made any
more. Moseyed down to the gate, passed another
security check (shoes AND laptop), another grilling
about where my stuff had been, and then aboard, where
the same crew greeted me like old friends.

0209 UA903 MUC IAD 1130 1525 763 5A

I was the first person in my neighborhood to board,
but when I got there my overhead was crammed full.
What gives with that? So I stuffed my stuff across
the aisle. Just before the door closed, a youngish
Asian guy (30s I'd say) got on and looked in vain
for overhead space: found one a couple rows back.
I remarked that that's what he got for boarding so
late; he answered that his connection had been
delayed out of Geneva; grumbled mildly that with
all the possible connections, why did he take this
one? I guessed: the miles.

We took off 45 late owing to congestion and a stay
on the deicing pad. The captain promised to try to
make up some time, but no promises.

No Riesling on this flight, either?! Just the same
wines, minus the bubbly.

TO BEGIN
Smoked salmon with lemon aioli, sliced cucumber
and plum tomato

Garden salad, Asian sesame ginger dressing

MAIN COURSE
Filet mignon and Bordelaise sauce with mushrooms,
garlic mashed potatoes and green beans

Breast of corn-fed chicken with port and red wine
sauce, mangold with chanterelle a la creme and
Swabian-style spatzle

Tortelloni duet filled with artichoke and basil
ricotta, four cheese and chive sauce

DESSERT
International cheese selection, Appenzeller and
Bavarian Blue cheese

Napoleon pastry with whipped cream and candied fruit

PRIOR TO ARRIVAL
Turkey and bacon sandwich with Cheddar cheese sauce,
roasted potato wedges or

Cheese plate with fresh seasonal fruit; Cheddar, Brie
and Bavarian Blue cheese

*Today's menu features beef from South America

Well, I'd been good enough, missed a meal or two, and
so the heck with corn-fed chicken and tortelloni duet.
A perfectly decent steak, medium-rare, with the taters
(not garlic mashed at all but rather sorta scallopped)
at least medium this time; a little more practice and
the caterers will get it right. The green beans were
replaced by big hard carrot batons and nicely done
snow peas that had unfortunately been drowned in a
chopped herb that was probably supposed to be chervil
but tasted, well, extraterrestrial - a taste I'd
never encountered before and hope never to again.

The Napoleon wasn't very Napoleonic: it was just like
those petits fours Swiss Colony used to sell when I
was a kid, only bigger. I guess I'm four times bigger
than I was forty years ago, so no reason why the petits
fours haven't grown an equal amount during that time.
The inside was even pink and green, same as in the old
days. The coating was chocolaty, same as in the old
days. Rather nice, and it came with a big old helping
of delicious schlag, topped with some orange-colored
candied unknown substance - I could eat only a spoonful
of it though. A glass of Sandeman went nicely. It's
interesting that UA has changed my tastes in a few ways
over the years. I used to be a Remy and Hennessy man -
now it's Courvoisier VSOP, despite the fact that the
stuff is inferior to the other brands. I used to turn
up my nose at cheap Port, and now Sandeman Founder's
Reserve is what I think of when I see the word.

A really bumpy flight.

I asked the FA about the 1K discount for duty-free.
Apparently it's gone, an old promotion.

Got some high-quality sleep on this flight, getting
ready for my marathon. Next thing I knew, it was time
to say goodbye to this aircraft and crew - it was just
a half hour late when we pulled into C5, but no big
problem. Little did I know.

0209 UA951 IAD SFO 1730 2021 763 5A
0209 UA174 SFO BOS 2230 0656 752 3A
became
0209 UA212 IAD BOS 2134 2300 320 1A

Ended up annoyingly. I checked the gate information,
and in fact 951 was going to be serviced by this same
aircraft that I had recently gotten off from, and I
was going to be in the same seat. Hunky dory. Coupled
with a congenial seatmate (lover of food and wine), it
promised to be a pleasant flight. We got loaded up on
time, and then the flight crew turned on the onboard
computer, and, guess what, it didn't work. Bear in
mind that I'd just been on this equipment for 9 hours.
I'm not so certain I'd have been so happy had I known
that the flight computer was on its last legs as we
wended our way across the ocean. So we sat for an hour.
I showed my seatmate the Empower port and my Xtend
adaptor, and he was totally enthralled. We talked mild
food shop for a while, and we discussed restaurants we
liked, so I showed him Streets and Trips, and he was
enthralled. Good thing - next thing we knew another
hour had passed. Eventually they gave up - another
aircraft was on its way, and we were going to swap out
- it was now past 7:30, and my lovely two-hour e-mail
and refreshment stop in San Fran had evaporated and
become an impossible connection. So we deboarded and
were given our little $5 food coupons, and I called
Res to see what they could offer me. After some
hilarity on the other end, upon seeing my original
itinerary, United set me up for the nonstop to Boston,
cutting a bunch of hours and 4600 miles off but at
least preventing my having to stay overnight in the
airport. Back to the RCC to get my boarding pass, and
the agent (after telling me that I was nuts for having
booked that plan in the first place) had some trouble
getting the bp issued; but eventually all got taken
care of. So I did my e-mail and went down to D10 and
got on the fairly empty flight 212 (7 in first, yes
to Empower and Channel 9). And then it turned out that
the seat in front of the exit row had flooped down and
was blocking the emergency exit, so they couldn't take
off, blah blah, so they had to have that fixed, and
there was that delay, but as the schedule is grossly
padded, we took off half an hour late and landed a
couple minutes early. Nice FA named Celeste, who
poured a double Courvoisier, which kept me amused for
most of the 50-minute flight. And so I'm here in
Boston, when I should be in San Fran, but what the
hey, the onboard computer at least had had the good
sense not to crap out until we'd landed.

P.S. Mileage Plus gave me credit for my original
itinerary without so much as a squawk, as soon as I'd
asked for it.

FlyLots

Great report! Made my mouth absolutely water at the thought of all that yummy food in my second home - Munich. Who needs light and fluffy when you can have stick to the ribs? Can't wait for my next trip in April. I usually go for the Schweinebraten as many places serve it with crackling as well but the meat is much leaner.

In my opinion, the Palais Keller is really the best place in Munich for a traditional Bavarian lunch/dinner. They have all the classics and the best pretzels and rolls on the table which are baked inhouse fresh every day.

Thanks for the great report.

P.S. The little cubes of bread in the middle of the potatoe dumplings are there for a reason, without them the center of the dumpling would be raw when the outside was cooked, given their large size. That's why here and in Northern Germany where they don't do this you get such small dumplings and where's the fun in that!