eefor jfp

Really, really great writing. Thanks for sharing all this with us.

jpatokal

HEL is an improbable airport. If you look at a map, it's way to the northeast of mainland Europe (it's almost 2:30 away from London) and doesn't seem to be very usefully located for traveling to anywhere except this capital of an obscure, sparsely populated country, yet for every year as long as I can remember the airport just keeps on expanding and setting new records; they've now completed a third runway, are busily building a Hilton and have just embarked on a project to triple the size of the non-Schengen terminal. This only starts to make sense when you consult a globe: if you draw a line between East Asia and central Europe, HEL is on it, and Finnair now packs its planes with passengers from places like Guangzhou and Nagoya, all looking for the best connections onward into Europe. This early Friday morning, too, the terminal was bustling with people. I hit the SAS lounge for a quick breakfast and bought some last-minute souvenirs from the handy Stockmann outlet, then passed through the Schengen checks to await my plane.

What was supposed to be my first Blue1 flight turned out to be my fifth Icelandair flight instead. This was obviously more regular an arrangement than the ad-hoc dba substitution before, because the pillow covers had little "Blue1" logos and the in-flight magazines and prerecorded announcments were Blue1/SAS, but the crew today consisted of captain Einarsson and chief stewardess Sigur. The plane was a semi-antique B757 very much like the one I once flew NYC-KEF-CPH vv with, only this was previously operated by a Spanish carrier, not an Arabic one. Seat pitch was decent, toilets flushed blue, entertainment didn't exist and all food and drinks from "Cafe1" cost money.

Load was kind of light, under 50%, but with seating in 3-3 formation I had my adjacent seats taken by two young, very Christian women who spent the entire flight animatedly telling each other how wonderful it is to find somebody else who is really Christian. I did my best to ignore them and sleep, not entirely successfully.

jpatokal

At Stansted I noticed that I was in Britain again when I queued for passport control, queued at WHSmith's to buy a bottle of water (70p with a copy of the Independent, 1.39 without; yes, that doesn't make sense) and queued once more to buy my bus ticket to Heathrow. In Singapore, S$35 (17.50e) gets me a private Merc limo transfer anywhere in the city; in Helsinki, 20e gets me a seat on the door-to-door airport minibus; in London, £20.50 (31e) gets me a seat on a very ordinary scheduled bus from one airport to another. I'd already gleefully figured that I'd have an empty seat next to me, when at the very last minute (the bus was already pulling out) one more fellow clambers on board, and inevitably sits next to me. And in the annals of odd body odors, something most frequent flyers know too much about, this guy was tops: he wafted clouds of musty herbal-floral essence, kind of like the smell you get if you crush a dandelion between your fingers. It was way too weird to be a perfume and he didn't seem much like the kind of guy who'd spend time rolling around flowery meadows either... but there was a fresh air vent above, which I turned up and then attempted, not entirely successfully, to sleep my way across the M25.

It had been sunny, bright and modern at STN, but by the time we reached LHR the soaring edifices of glass and steel glittering in sunlight had been replaced by grimy brick buildings bathed in a very Londonish drizzle. I headed straight for check-in, where an exceedingly apologetic gentleman with close-cropped gray hair and a natty suit was commiserating with business class travellers, telling them that yes, he understands very well that the regulations are silly and excessive, and no, they still couldn't take their bags as carry-on. I slipped past him while he was distracted by a businessman attempting to stuff his laptop into a plastic bag, and succeeded in not only getting my backpack on through security, but smuggling aboard a tiny can of Vaseline as well. Take that, BAA!

I beelined for the SAS London Lounge, took a shower/steam-bath (the water varied between "warm" and "boiling", and there was no ventilation), munched my way through a selection of cheese and then hit the Relax Lounge. Notionally intended for travelers wishing to sleep, this has sofa chairs with footrests, bright lights and sporadic loud announcements for Mr Mumble Fumble to go board flight XY123 pronto. I combined one chair and two footrests into a workable bed, stuck my head inside my sweater to block the light and noise and slept, more or less successfully, for about two hours.

By the time I skedaddled out of the lounge in search of haggis, "Last Call" was already blinking next to the flight and, after a cursory but unsuccessful search for stuffed sheep stomach, I hiked out to the gate along with many other worried-looking people, convinced that they were going to miss the flight because there were only 40 minutes until takeoff. Needless to say, gate 36 had a queue a mile long, as two random people (were they airport or AC staff or what?) checked passports and asked sneaky questions like "Why are you going to Canada?" in an attempt to trip terrorists into saying "To bomb Parliament and strafe Tim Hortons with semiautomatic assault rifles". There were plenty of bobbies with excessively large guns and hats about too, saying things like "Ooh, lovely, Margaret, thank you so much" into their walkie-talkies. I feel so very, very safe now.

mosburger

I flew DUS - HEL in AY J this week and when bussed from/to the terminal at both ends noticed the Air Berlin planes were bigger than the miniscule Finnair Embraers and of course they did gate arrival.

The AY flight attendant I chatted to described Finnair's approach to shorthaul biz pax as "cheating"...No room for hanging suits, only one toilet in the back of the Y cabin etc.

jpatokal

AC889 LHR-YOW C B767-300 seat 2H

I flew on exactly the same flight last year, so I expected to get the same plane (huge legroom, old seat, no AVOD, inseat power or other frills), but I hadn't quite expected that the dinner menu would also still be identical, complete with rack of lamb in wine sauce. Not in the mood to tackle a slice of sheep with a plastic knife, I quaffed a glass of bubbly and ordered the Gourmet Express(tm), which was served right after takeoff:

Cold braised salmon
Potato salad
Cheese platter
Fruits

The salmon chunk was big, dry and salmon-y, with no identifiable additional flavors, but the potato salad was good: firm potato chunks with the skin still on, sauce tart and not excessively mayoed. The cheeses were cheddar and camembert, both quite OK (although no bread was served, just crackers), and the fruit platter was excellent with melon balls, strawberries, a few slices of mango and a sprig of red currant. Definitely one of the best cold platters I've ever had on a plane. As soon as the tray was cleared, I reclined the seat to the max, pulled on the excellent thick fluffy duvet and slept, quite successfully, for over three hours.

I awoke, reasonably refreshed, to snacks being served. The chocolate chip cookie was excellent, the raisin cookie was alright, the ice cream was disappointing (no more Haagen-Dazs!) and the tea was predictably atrocious. I noodled about on my laptop, listened to DJ Mario's mix on channel 9, read a few chapters and was just about to try sleeping again when more food rolled around. The menu promised vegetable tikka, but instead we got falafel, shrimp rolls and a garden salad, none of them tasting quite like what they were supposed to be.

We landed at YOW a little ahead of schedule and pulled up to Gate 16, and everybody grabbed their bags and queued up at the exits. And queued a little more. Nothing continued to happen until a little announcement from the captain: Gate 16 was refusing to pull up to us, and they were calling the guy whose job it is to fix gates when they don't cooperate. The guy showed up five minutes later, and five minutes later it was announced that we'd be trying out luck with Gate 15 instead. Five minutes later the tug showed up, five minutes later the plane actually moved, five minutes later we were in place at Gate 15 and five minutes later there was applause when Gate 15 docked and the door opened, the gate guy quipping a cheery "Are you still alive in there?".

At Immigration, the guy behind the counter flipped through my passport, the first 29 pages of which are crammed solid with stamps and visas, and enquired whether I travel a lot. ("No sir, I just rent out my passport to all and sundry in exchange for sexual favors.") After contemplating the topology of his navel for a while, he decided that the passport would be considerably enhanced by a Canadian stamp placed tilted at a 70-degree angle smack dab in the middle of the otherwise empty page 32, and waved me on. My rollaboard tumbled out onto the conveyor belt, miraculously not leaking port wine, and I headed out to meet the welcoming committee.

jpatokal

Nothing happened, eh.

jpatokal

I thought I'd escaped the francophonie after leaving Paris, but no, like a smell that forever lingers I was again drawn into not one but two business trips to Montreal, one of which turned into a two-day excursion to Quebec City, la capitale nationale, which (oddly enough) seems to make its living by whoring its Disneylandified pseudo-European heritage to loads and loads of American tour groups.


I'm usually happy to pip for spunky upstarts battling for independence against overwhelming odds, but Quebec, like Israel, has never figured out the cardinal rule of winning sympathy: "Don't be a dick". The infamous Law 101, which made French the only official language of the province, proved highly effective at kneecapping the economy (with all the Anglos beetailing out to Toronto), and the few remaining will be happy to give you an earful of how the Office québécois de la langue française, aka the Language Police, goes around .....slapping companies for grievous offences like keeping PCs running Windows in English in a back room or, until 1992, using any language other than French on signage.

But enough politics -- I was here to eat. First stop was Schwartz's, the legendary Jewish deli still serving its famous smoked meat sandwiches, consisting of 5% bread and 95% meat, meat, meat. Despite the name, the meat isn't smoky at all, it's just encrusted with pepper and very, very tender. Two thumbs up. Second stop was "Maamm Bolduc!" (no, I don't know why they spell it like that), which crops up pretty high on most lists of Montreal's best poutines, Quebec's dreaded fries, curds and gravy combo. The menu offers about a dozen variations, and I opted for the bourguignonne, which throws in mincemeat, onions, mushrooms and (of course) red wine for a meaty, sticky taste treat. At $9/plate, it ain't cheap, but it sure whupped the one I had last year in Ottawa.

For my second trip (to Montreal alone), I tried out VIA Rail, which did its best to dissuade me from traveling by offering a schedule of five (5) trains a day and rejecting any credit cards I tried to book with online. Fine, I picked the least inconvenient time and showed up at the station, where I was charged $50 for this one-way, 1:45 trip in economy ("comfort") class. I could've paid double this for first ("VIA 1") class, which would have given me "refreshments" and the honor of being allowed to pay for wireless Internet, a privilege denied to us plebs. Perhaps one in five seats was taken, not a few by European backpackers at that, and the train shook, rattled and rolled its way through the flat non-landscape, eventually pulling into Montreal's underground Gare Central very, very slowly, just like trains in NYC used to gingerly enter the vast, steaming tunnels of Grand Central.

And guess when the last train from Montreal back to Ottawa leaves? 6 PM. That evening, I opted for a leisurely dinner with friends, and a bus back at 9 PM -- which was $15 cheaper, leaves every hour, is only marginally slower and offers a smoother, more comfortable ride. And they wonder why people in Canada don't ride trains.

The entire trip's most expensive culinary experience came in Gatineau, where we headed out to La Tartuffe for fancy French. I was expecting the worst when I saw the menu, replete with multi-line items like "Râble de iguane Outaouais croustillant avec fondue de betteraves à l'orange et compôte d'endives du Ouagadougou en réduction de lêche-singe clignotant", but closer inspection revealed that this had far more potential than any of Singapore's French restaurants: not a single dish contained foie gras, truffles or champagne as ingredients! Egads, a French restaurant devoted to épicurie, not snobbery? Tartuffe's concept is simple: the main course costs a bomb, but you get an appetizer and soup for free, and by the time you'd done with the three you're too sated and happy to care that dessert and cheese cost extra. I started off with scallops with bacon and chorizo, served with various drabs of unidentifiable sauces, which wasn't very old-school French but was tasty nonetheless, a description that also applied to the turnip-ginger soup that followed. (I've never been a great fan of the stick-it-in-a-blender school of making soup though; identifiable chunks, ideally ones that retain some unique flavor, are your friends.) The main course was rabbit with port wine sauce, which was a lot more mild and chicken-y than the last bunny I ate. Dessert was chocolate and pecan pie, which would have been very good if everybody else at the table hadn't ordered a raspberry crême brulèe that was quite clearly even better. All in all, the best (non-picnic) French food I've had in, well, a long while.

mad_atta

heh! Loving your work, jpatokal

jpatokal

So there I was standing outside Chateau Laurier, waiting for the reserved shuttle bus that was already 10 minutes late. A big brawny fellow with a closely cropped head of steely gray, wearing only a T-shirt in the 15 C weather, seemed to be in the same predicament and we consulted the bellhop, who called the company and obtained a vague promise that the van was "on its way". He shook his head and told us the YOW Airporter is notoriously flaky and actively "disrecommended" by the hotel -- the two of us could split a cab fare and probably save a buck or two.

We did, and that's how I met Bob, a retired cop from the UK who now lived in Ottawa and was on his way to Stuttgart on the same flight as me. I'd been unable to get AC to confirm a Biz seat for me, and we together rued the night in a sardine can that awaited us. At check-in, I marched up to the biz queue (which ended up moving more slowly than the eco one, because it only had one desk open), where I batted my eyelashes at the not-unfriendly matron and pleaded for a seat. She couldn't guarantee me one either, she said, but there were five seats left and I'd be at the top of the queue with my "paid" (well, in points) seat.

I airlifted Bob into the Maple Leaf Lounge (which impressed him more than me) and, after more commiseration about not being able to sample the fridge full of beer or the free flow of Alexander Keith on tap (carbonated booze and flying being contraindicated for both of us), we launched into an rather animated but interesting conversation on social and criminal politics, the laissez-faire liberal living in a conservative police state (me) versus the conservative ex-cop living in a Liberal-ruled city in a progressive state (him). He had plenty of shocking tales about pussyfooted liberals letting hardcore junkies get away with murder; I had my own complement of guilty-until-proven-innocent justice systems running roughshod over harmless people in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the chat remained civilized and some 40 minutes before takeoff we trekked across the vast empty expanse of YOW late in the evening, and just before we reached gate 14 came the siren song I'd been hoping for: "Mr Jpatokal, Mr Jpatokal, please go to desk at gate 14." It was my seat in C and I was set to fly in a modicum of comfort.

Or so I thought as I sipped on my champagne and appreciated my luck. It was the same flight, again, but in this direction it's shorter (5:45) and, despite being a night flight, AC had no intention of reducing the meal service: the first two hours were taken up by dinner, and the last two by breakfast. For once, I preserved the menu:

Quick Meal Option (Gourmet Express)

Chilled Seafood Trio of Salmon, Lobster and Shrimp with Seven Grain Salad
Cheese and fresh Fruit

Appetizers

Shaved Beef with Asian Celeriac Slaw, or
Marinated Mushroom Salad with Asparagus

Main Courses

Roasted Cornish Game Hen with Chasseur Sauce, Lyonnaise Potatoes, sauteed Baby Carrots, Sunburst Squash and Fennel, or
Arctic Char with Carrot Ginger Sauce, White and Wild Rice, steamed Baby Bok Choy and Vegetable Julienne, or
Spinach and Ricotta Cheese Cannelloni with Alfredo and roasted Red Pepper Sauces, sauteed Mushrooms and Herb roasted Vegetables

Gourmet Cheese with Crackers

Chocolate Rhubarb Cake, or
Fresh Berries

The "Asian celeriac slaw" was surprisingly good, "Asian" turning out to mean "sesame oil", but the very meaty slices were more suited for a sandwich. The main was a bit of a disappointment: to be fair, the centerpiece of arctic char was excellent, moist and well-spiced, but the julienned vegetables weren't as much crunchy as raw, while the bok choy had been boiled until dead and then some, and the carrot-ginger sauce looked and tasted like baby food well past its sell-by date. The cheeses (cheddar and Gouda for me, Camembert and chevre for others) were quite OK, but the rhubarb in the pie was drowned out by the chocolate.

The middle two hours of the flight were taken up by the movie flickering in front of my seat, with the lights never turned off, and I tossed and turned in my not-very-reclining seat, the strap of the eyeshades boring into my skull. I probably slept an hour or so, it just didn't feel like it because I couldn't find a comfortable position and (unlike on the way here) wasn't tired enough to ignore the discomfort.

Two hours before landing -- which means that, on this 5:45 red-eye flight, you were allowed to sleep for under two hours -- breakfast rolled around:

Choise of Juices and Energiser Smoothie
Fresh Fruit
Warm Breakfast Pastries
Yogurts
Cereals

The smoothie was absolutely disgusting, it tasted like the yogurt in it had fermented to be point of being alcoholic. The rest was quite OK, although frankly I can't remember much, except that "Special K" in Europe means something entirely different from "Special K" in America (or Asia).

Eventually, the plane landed in London 30 minutes early, although we had to hold back for a few minutes while an Airport Health Service crew headed to the back of the plane to check on several medical cases. I expected them to wheel out heart attack patients on stretchers, but no, soon the announcement came that us passengers were allowed to disembark. Did they originally think somebody had something contagious back there? Another reason to fly in the front of the bus.

Kiwi Flyer

There's something to be said for reduced service on red-eyes - they are about the only flights where typical north american airline (apparently not including AC) no service is acceptable.

jpatokal

T3 was bustling, but I hit the FastTrack queue and was immigrated in a jiffy. My bag rolled around five minutes later and it was time to consider my options. My plan A for London was to pop down to Lille to check out N's new digs, but train scheduling wasn't in my favor (it's almost 2 hours one way) and ticket pricing was less so. Plan B was to ask the mountain to come to Mohammed, but pricing wasn't any more in her favor either, so plan C was to head out to Marylebone alone to poke around obsessively specialist bookstores, sci-fi emporia, artisanal bakeries and assorted weirdnesses culled from Wikitravel.

In YOW, I'd originally rued not being able to check through my bag, but now this allowed me to execute Plan D -- instead of hanging around in London for 12 hours, tired as a dog, I could take an earlier flight to Singapore. I queued up at check-in only to be told that I'd have to ask ticketing; ticketing told me it was possible, and they had an empty biz seat on SQ317 leaving in under two hours, but needed a couple of calls to sort out how to do it and if I'd need to pay. The answer was "nope" and I had a reissued ticket a few moments later, so full points to SQ London for being able to work this out.

I checked in and was told that the SQ lounge was available. "OK. But can I use the Virgin Atlantic lounge?" Well, yes, she murmured, but then brightened up, "Oh, but they can't assign your seat number there. Or announce the flight." "But I can get the seat at the gate?" "Well, yes." "Greatthanksbye!" and I speedwalked to FastTrack.


MarginallyFasterTrack made me wait in line for 20 minutes, my little jar of Vaseline escaping detection for the third time already (muahaha!), and I still had forty minutes to go before boarding. I beelined for the Virgin Clubhouse, tucked away on the 2nd floor and, well, da-YAMN. I thought the SQ lounge in ICN was stylish and the BKK TG lounge's massage service was remarkable, but this was on an entirely different level -- the Clubhouse looks like a nightclub, complete with huge bar counter complete with tender, chill-out zone, restaurant with menus of made-to-order actual food and not just showers, but an entire spa complex (sauna, steam room, treatments) and even a bloody hair salon. All of it for free. A cutie from the spa counter led me all the way into my shower cubicle (in a less frazzled state of mind I might have been cheeky enough to ask her to join me), and after I emerged, refreshed, I was too shocked to do anything but sit on a sofa and sip at an Innocent Cranberry-Raspberry Juicy Water(tm) for twenty minutes. Richard Branson, you're my new hero, and I'll book a suite on an A380 Upper Class flight as soon as I can afford it. (And the thing is airborne, which may take longer.)

jpatokal

With a sigh I headed out to the gate. My seat hadn't been assigned yet, and my heart skipped a beat when the check-in lady reached for a preprinted First Class boarding pass -- just to confirm that it wasn't for me. (It wasn't.) I'd had an upper deck window seat and BTC Lobster Thermidor prebooked; now I was relegated to a middle-middle seat on the lower deck, but I didn't give a fig. I had in-seat power, I had WiseMan 3000 AVOD, I had a fresh Economist, I had noise-cancelling headphones, I had satay, and above all, I had a SpaceBed. This is so the only way to fly. (Although I'm now considerably more curious about Virgin than before...)

After lots of futzing about with champagne (my seatmate, an innocuous-looking English professor type, snarfed down around 5 glasses), meal service rolled around:

Cucumber-corn salad with marinated salmon and garden greens

Veal loin in a blanquette sauce with celery, celeriac and boiled fingerling potatoes
Wok-fried New Zealand lamb in a black pepper sauce with seasonal vegetables and egg noodles
Murgh biryani
Sauteed prawns in white wine-pink peppercorn sauce with sauteed vegetables

Tartufo ice cream
Gourmet cheese with garnishes
A selection of fresh fruit
Gourmet coffee
Selection of tea
and pralines

Gourmet napkin
Gourmet toothpick
A selection of turbulence
and barf bag

The salad was, once again, just smoked salmon with a smattering of random veggies; not bad, but boring. I picked the wok-fried lamb and taste was enough to bring tears to my eyes -- oh man, halfway decent Chinese food for the first time in over a month. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it, but here it was and it was purrfect. Thin slices of soft lamb battered and coated with peppery sauce with unidentifiable but harmonious Chinese spices, resting on a bed of firm noodles and some astringent veggies on the side. In comparison, the ice cream was a letdown (it was so cold the sauce was frozen to the plate), but any meal that finishes with a piece of Lindor can't be too bad in my book. Nine out of ten for SQ!

After the meal service was over I battened down the hatches, lowered the Spacebed and fitfully slept a little. The guy on my right was playing video poker on Krisworld, and when I woke up some three-hours hours later, he was still at it. I tuned into Thank You for Smoking, which was brilliant, and when it was finished he was still playing poker. On closer observation, I noticed that on occasion, he'd nod off for a few minutes, then wake up and continue playing where he'd left off. By the end of the flight he had accumulated well over $150,000 in funny money (this in a game where average winnings are on the order of $100).

Breakfast rolled around at some point, but I have to confess I have absolutely no recollection of what it was or how it tasted, other than to guess that if this was the case, it can't have been too delicious or terrible. An accelerated dawn followed and, on schedule before 8 AM, we touched down at SIN.

jpatokal

And that, as they say, was it. I valiantly followed my usual routine of pretending that 12-hour jetlag doesn't exist, which led to what felt like two days with a particularly persistent hangover: I suck up as much water as I can on flights, but when you're on a plane for the better part of 24 hours dehydration will win that particular battle. In the afternoons, I had to fight off the tendency to nod off, but sleeping at night was not a problem -- although, despite the accumulated sleep deficity, I still woke up pretty early in the morning every day.

This was probably my last full-fledged trip report on FlyerTalk, as henceforth I'll be migrating to Crossroads, the upcoming blog-and-more arm of Wikitravel. It's still in beta testing stage, so free registration is required, but if you're willing to jump through that hoop you can read about my ongoing adventures in India in my blog. Once the site is officially launched, I'll start to post pointers on FT for any particularly epic episodes.

So long, and thanks for all the miles ^