At some point USirritated and a guest came up and dined
at a nearby table.

A super pleasant visit with bk3day, punctuated by the leggiest
of the LH concierges coming by periodically as our waitress,
bringing little treats for us, meticulously plated gems.

The only thing missing was music, sweet music, preferably
performed on a violin (or viola).

We eventually came downstairs to the festivities and enjoyed
them a lot - still nicer than real life, but not the same
thing. Boarding was a bit of a scrum (but a polite one), as
it might be with a hundred more Star Golds than usual on a
flight. Alas, for us it was back to the mundane world, and
the reality of LH coach - neither of us had thought the
added expense justified for C, and the tickets for our group
were booked into a nonupgradeable class (otherwise imagine
the chaos). Perhaps our choice was mistaken, I don't know.

As we were booked, in an abundance of optimism, into two
aisles, anticipating at least some of the middles being left
empty, I pulled a multi-switch, moving George up a row and
the middle people in 45 over one spot, paving the way for
us to sit together at 44DE.

LH 405 JFK FRA 2245 1120 744 45DE

This was an expectedly somewhat uncomfortable flight, but I
managed to snooze through most of it. I didn't pay any
attention to whether there was any food but had a glass or
three of cheap red wine.

We staggered out into the Frankfurt semisunshine around
noon, which gave us not very much time to freshen up before
our scheduled activities.

Checkin at the Sheraton Frankfurt Towers was singularly
inefficient, as before. Last time the computer system had
been down; this time it was just being intractable. I
scored a club room on the 8th floor; lili did not, and so
I had the unaccustomed honor of guesting her into the
lounge, which was pleasant in an IKEA sort of way and
strangely devoid of FTers on both our visits. Decent wine
selection, including the Allendorf Geisenheimer Monchspfad
sparkling Riesling.

Soon it was time to board the buses for the secure area,
where we had the pleasure of crawling all around, under,
and inside the A380 "Muenchen," bound for Tokyo next day,
but LH very kindly made it available for our perusal before
preparing it for the flight. (This of course was one of the
numerous aircraft grounded a couple days later.)

Our first seminar, led by the tag team of Urs and Ulli,
dealt with the airport experience, from ticketing to lounges
to innovations in self-checkin. As I was particularly
interested in lounges, the emphasis was on checkin. We went
downstairs for a hands-on demo, with me as the guinea pig.
Of course I broke the kiosk. So I kept trying, with Ulli
on the horn to his programmer, who kept patching on the fly.
Gradually the FTers wandered off to their new assignments,
leaving just lili, Ulli, and myself; after about 10 minutes
I had my passport information squared away, chosen my new
seat, and a boarding pass for Houston, and we went on to the
Special Moments workshop, where we were supposed to suggest
what we might enjoy for a special treat as LH premium pax.

I found myself assigned to a team led by Mrp Alert, who
waxed extremely enthusiastic about bath stuff. As I know
nowt about bath stuff (I use what's cheap and available),
I faded into the background; admittedly Mrp Alert's
enthusiasm is remarkable and almost contagious. I think we
ended up making a fairly reasonable case for a takeaway of
bath stuff packaged in a floating airplane-shaped reusable
tub suitable for children and other swag-minded people.

The reward for our labors: a special cocktail of Sekt,
bitters, perhaps amaretto, and a Maraschino cherry. I didn't
care for it but had two anyway. Oh, we also got a model of a
Constellation to take home.