I wrote about this very thing on 2/15, just over a week ago, after returning from a trip where we had to put up not only with smelly people, but with gas, as well. Enough is enough. It’s time we take action.

I don’t think I need to explain why smells such as body odor or gas shouldn’t be tolerated on airplanes — anyone who’s flown recently knows how cramped and stuffy things can get without any “additional input” from rude and filthy people.

We’ve got a huge influx of immigrants and visitors from all sorts of countries. We, as a country, should do what we can to let them know what’s expected of them while they stay here. If we don’t, we run the risk of lowering public standards for everyone, and I don’t think that’s what we want.

There are two urgent issues that ought to be addressed right away:

• Personal hygiene: in this day and age, with such easy access to water and soap, there is NO excuse for not staying clean. A shower every day ought to be the recommended standard for everyone.
• Passing gas in public: this should be a big NO-NO. You’d assume people would know not to do this in public, especially in tight spaces, like on airplanes, but they either don’t know or they don’t care.

I’ve written about personal hygiene in the past, and also about passing gas on airplanes, but these things obviously bear repeating…

On two recent flights, we had the misfortune of being seated next to people who smelled horribly — they had this acrid stench of stale sweat that filled your lungs and made you want to cough and run away. On both occasions, they were from under-developed countries.

I’m not saying all folks from those countries have hygiene problems. We’ve known and befriended quite a few good, decent, clean and well-mannered people from third-world countries, people who are living and working in the US and have integrated themselves nicely in US society.

Still, it seems quite a few people from under-developed countries have a hygiene problem. For whatever reason — customs, habits, etc. — they either aren’t aware that they smell, or aren’t taking steps to remedy the situation. They should be educated, because they need to know what our standards for hygiene are. Don’t think we’re offending them — we’re doing them a favor by being honest with them. Or would you rather prefer we laughed at them behind their backs and ostracized them?

Passing gas in public is a nasty habit that isn’t restricted to recent immigrants. I’ve seen this across all segments of US society, and it’s disgusting every time. Doing it in closed spaces, like on airplanes or buses or trains, makes matters worse, because the rude and filthy people who do it turn the unwitting passengers next to them into helpless victims. What can you do when there’s no place to go and the air around you is filled with the putrid stench of someone else’s bowels? You hold your breath, your eyes bulge, you hide your nose and you curse under your breath, but still, you say nothing, because you don’t want to offend, right? You’re wrong. You ought to speak up and ask whoever’s doing it to stop, because it’s offensive. Shame the shameless creep, speak up! You’re doing yourself and everyone else a favor.

Tonight, while on a flight, I did just that with a woman whose children kept passing gas behind us. They were even bragging to each other, saying “I farted!” and “I farted again!” I asked her as nicely as I could,to tell her children to stop doing it. Her reply was, “Do you have a control button?” To which I wanted to reply, “You’re the control button, lady. You’re the moral compass of your children. The education and manners you instill in them now will guide throughout their lives, so if you can’t even teach them when to fart and when not to fart, you’re not a good parent.” But she was clearly argumentative, so I simply told her that it smelled very bad, and she had no manners if she didn’t do something, then turned around and ignored her.

In spite of the unsuccessful exchange, her children stopped passing gas for the remainder of the trip, so I got the result I wanted. That’s why I want to encourage you to speak up the next time someone does that to you. Stay calm, but shame them, publicly, because public shame has always been a good reason for people to change their behavior.

Of course, the better, more mannered course of action would be for the government or for a NGO to put together a few PSAs about things one is expected to do and not to do while in public spaces in the United States. It’s high time that happened.

I love this article from Patrick Smith at Salon.com. It’s on the subject of American hysteria when it comes to airport security, and it references all of the overblown and recent responses of the TSA and other individuals charged with security at American airports. Since when have we become such a nation of frightened ninnies?

“This country needs to get a grip. We need a slap in the face, a splash of cold water.”

“What caused the delays and what hassled so many travelers was not the defendant’s actions, but our mindless and hysterical response to them.”

“Here in this proclaimed new “age of terrorism,” we act as if the clock began ticking on Sept. 11, 2001. In truth we’ve been dealing with this stuff for decades. Not only in the 1980s, but throughout the ’60s and ’70s as well. Acts of piracy and sabotage are far fewer today.”

“Imagine the Karachi attack happening tomorrow. Imagine TWA 847 happening tomorrow. Imagine six successful terror attacks against commercial aviation in a five-year span. The airline industry would be paralyzed, the populace frozen in abject fear. It would be a catastrophe of epic proportion — of wall-to-wall coverage and, dare I suggest, the summary surrender of important civil liberties.”

“What is it about us, as a nation, that has made us so unable to remember, and unable to cope?”

Patrick isn’t the only one upset about this. I wrote about our overblown airport security rules in the past — see this article, and this one, and this as well.

All I can say is that hope can be glimpsed across the pond, in Europe. Having flown through multiple European airports this past year, I can tell you things appear more rational there. Even when there are extra security checks, the tone is calm, the demeanor is calm, and you’re not eyed with suspicious eyes, like you are here in the US, where everything is seen as a threat.

We flew with KLM from IAD (Washington-Dulles airport in the US) to OTP (Otopeni-Bucharest airport in Romania) during this past New Year’s Eve and Day. I highly recommend KLM, we’ve had the best flying experience with them of all the airlines we’ve used so far.

I should warn you that Delta handles the ticketing and check-in for KLM at American airports — this means rude and borderline-incompetent service. At least that was our experience at Dulles Airport in DC. KLM can’t help it I suppose. At least once you step onto their planes, it’s a different world altogether. It’s clean, well-lit, well-ventilated, they’re friendly, accommodating, their in-flight video service is amazing, and their food is great.

How is KLM different from other airlines? Well, they’re not evil, like United Airlines, and they’re not clueless, like Alitalia, and they’re not mean, like Spirit.

We picked New Year’s for our flight out of Washington because we thought most people would stay at home. We were wrong. The flight to Amsterdam was fully booked. Who flies on New Years Eve anyway?! Apparently, young people, Muslims and Indians. I understand the latter two groups, because they don’t celebrate New Year’s on the same day as the Western world, but since when have young folks decided to give up partying on New Year’s Eve?

It was a foggy, somewhat snowy New Year’s morning when we arrived in Amsterdam. You couldn’t see a thing on the runway as the plane landed. Thank goodness the pilots knew what they were doing. By the time we cleared through customs and security, the fog cleared a bit as well, or at least as much as the photos show.

The flight from Amsterdam to Bucharest was empty, which figures. Most Romanians stay home on New Year’s. They prefer to have their traditional parties, then start the new year with some time off. I think there were at most 12 people on the entire plane. I felt bad for KLM, having to fly that big jet with so few people on board, but I suppose things average out in the long run.

Oh, and yes, KLM did wish us a Happy New Year while we were over the Atlantic Ocean, and gave us a choice of champagne or orange juice to toast in the new year. Quite nice of them!

Why don’t I have any photos from the Bucharest airport? Because photography still isn’t allowed there, which is dumb, but then that’s par for the course in Romania.

Ligia and I were supposed to arrive in the United States yesterday, September 18, 2008. Instead, we were stuck in Frankfurt am Main for the night and forced to pay for the lodging and meal expenses out of our own pockets, due to a United Airlines flight supervisor by the name of Zarah Smith, a cold, calculated liar whose habit is to mistreat paying UA customers.

We were on the third leg of our return trip to the United States, and everything was going well. We had left Cluj, Romania, yesterday morning on a Lufthansa flight to Münich, where we boarded another Lufthansa flight headed to Frankfurt. We arrived in Frankfurt at 4 PM, and promptly made our way to the gate for our connecting flight to Washington’s Dulles Airport, which was supposed to leave at 5 PM. We had over a mile to walk to the gate, but we made it there at 4:20 PM. This was a United Airlines flight. (UA and Lufthansa are part of a group called the Star Alliance, and they apparently hand off flights between each other.)

When we got to the gate, we were told to wait in line in order to receive our boarding passes. I’m not sure why, but we hadn’t gotten them in Cluj, which is where we started the first leg of our flight. The Lufthansa reps there told us we would get them in Frankfurt. And so we waited, patiently, along with an elderly Romanian lady who had started her trip in Bucharest; her name is Maria Țonea. It’s important because she ended up in the same situation as us, and she got treated much worse.

I want to make it clear that all three of us (Ligia, myself, and Mrs. Țonea) were on time at the gate for the flight. Its departure was at 5 PM, and we got there at 4:20 PM, while Mrs. Țonea had gotten there even earlier. They had started boarding the flight when we got there, and we waited for the clerks to finish processing some Russian women that were holding up the line.

When it came time for us to get our boarding passes, the clerk, a German woman in her twenties, started to process our tickets and stopped, stating that there were no more seats on the plane. I couldn’t believe it. We had paid for our tickets a long time ago, checked in just fine in Cluj, and they should have received the confirmation that we were on our way to the flight, so why weren’t our seats saved for us?

I asked her how that was possible. I explained to her what I just said above. She said, and I quote, that “United Airlines had overbooked the flight, and that there were no more seats on the plane.” I asked a UA rep, a translator, who was checking people’s boarding passes, an tall African American man, to confirm this, and he spoke with her, then confirmed her statement.

“What are we supposed to do?” I asked them. Their statement, and again I quote, was that it was “Lufthansa’s fault”, and that I should go to a Lufthansa counter and get them to book us on the first flight out to Washington.

I didn’t quite understand this at the time. After all, if it’s a United Airlines flight, and they overbooked it, it doesn’t make sense that it’s Lufthansa’s fault, but I soon found out that was their way of not having to live up to the Star Alliance Passenger Rights, which require that they (United Airlines) do the following in the event they deny us boarding:

“If in case of overbooking you are denied boarding involuntarily on a flight for which you hold a reservation, you are entitled to care and compensation without delay and to a refund [...] In addition you are entitled to re-routing, under comparable conditions, to your final destination at the earliest opportunity.” There is also some cash compensation involved, also “without delay”, which for our flight would have likely been 400 € per person.

Clearly, United Airways wanted to pass the buck on their screw-up, which is why they sent us back to Lufthansa. After walking another mile or so back to a Lufthansa counter, we spoke with three reps, one of them a Flight Manager, and informed them of our situation. They were helpful and contacted other Lufthansa agents to see what could be done.

Lufthansa’s official stance on this was that it was United Airlines’ fault, because they had overbooked the flight, and they were the ones that needed to make the proper reparations. They gave us the Passenger Rights booklet from which I quoted above, and they waited over 20 minutes on hold to try to speak over the phone with the United Airlines supervisor in charge of the particular flight to DC, UA 933. Her name, and this is very important, because she bears the bulk of the blame, if not all of it, is Zarah Smith.

I learned from the Lufthansa agents, while they were waiting on hold, that Zarah Smith had already gained a reputation among the other agents at the airport for turning away customers from UA flights, and for being rude to them and not abiding to the Passenger Rights when refusing to let them board. They didn’t mince their words. They said she customarily “lies” to cover up the way she does business, and that it’ll be “interesting” to hear what she comes up with when they get to speak with her.

Well, it certainly was interesting. Zarah Smith did not disappoint. She lived up to her reputation, and once the Lufthansa agent explained to her our situation, she wanted to make it clear right away that we (all three of us) had been late for the flight, and that’s why we were turned away. It didn’t matter that we had gotten there at 4:20 PM, 40 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave, after rushing to the gate through the entire terminal, on multiple levels, and that they were just boarding people when we got there — according to Zarah Smith, we were “late”, and that’s why she denied us boarding and turned us away.

It also didn’t matter that we hadn’t even seen her at the gate or spoken with her there. Somehow, she had “spoken” with us and “turned us away” because we were late. This was one cold lie after another. Are you starting to see how badly this makes United Airlines look?

The Lufthansa agent insisted she meet with us, and she finally agreed to meet us at the departure gate (C9) in order to discuss the situation with us. The Lufthansa agents warned us that she will not want to help, and that we should be prepared and fight for our rights as passengers. They told us that if she refused, Lufthansa would book us on one of their flights as a courtesy, but they couldn’t cover the hotel and dinner costs, since it was United Airlines’ responsibility to do so, not theirs.

We walked back to gate C9, where we asked the airport security folks to locate Zarah Smith. She showed up, and as soon as she met us, before we could ask her anything, wanted to make it very clear that it was our fault, and that we were late for the flight. These were such brazen, outright lies, that I was furious. Mrs. Țonea unfortunately couldn’t understand her, since she doesn’t speak either English or German, but once we explained to her what Zarah Smith was saying, her mouth dropped in shock at the lies.

How could Zarah Smith dare to re-affirm these lies when she had three people in front of her who knew they were on time, and who got there with plenty of time to spare?

I told her I wouldn’t stand for her lies. I told her Lufthansa had warned us that she might try to do this, that Lufthansa knew were were on time, and that we knew we were on time. She said it didn’t matter what we thought or were going to say, because her records showed that the plane left with empty seats, and that we had been denied boarding because we were late. She also said that “it was our word against hers”.

This is where she gave herself away. You see, the clerk who had tried to process our tickets at the gate earlier told us there were no more seats left on the plane, because it was overbooked. The clerks had confirmed that over the phone with the Lufthansa reps when they contacted them. Yet here was Zarah Smith, telling us that the plane still had available seats when it left, and that she had made the decision to not let us board, apparently for “being late”, which was a bold faced lie.

This was unbelievable. I think smoke must have been coming out of my ears when I heard her. I told her then that I would not only write about my experience, using her full name, but that I would also write to the United Airlines CEO (currently Glenn F. Tilton, who is also President and Chairman of the company) and let him know directly what sort of an employee she was. She said I could “go right ahead”. Very well, I did it, as you can see.

We pressed on, asking what she was going to do to make reparations, and she finally agreed, “as a courtesy” [!] to book us on the earliest flight out to DC. Problem was, this wasn’t a “courtesy”, it was her duty, and she also wasn’t living up to the rules stated in the Passenger Rights booklet. She held to her lies, insisting that we had been late, and that she didn’t have to obey those rules.

We walked back to an UA counter, where she booked us on a flight the next day. We got her to give us our checked luggage, and we paid, out of our pockets, for an overnight hotel stay in Frankfurt and for meals and taxi rides, since Zarah Smith and United Airlines didn’t seem to want to live up to the Star Alliance Passenger Rights. We showed up this morning, September 19, 2008, boarded that flight back to the US, and are now home.

The story doesn’t end here though. As if treating all three of us like that wasn’t enough, Zarah Smith overdid herself in the way she treated Maria Țonea. While we were there and translated for her, she promised to take full care of the elderly Romanian lady, who didn’t speak English or German and couldn’t get by on her own in Frankfurt. When we asked for details about what she would do, she refused to give them to us, and asked us categorically to leave the UA counter, since she was done with us. The phrase she used, and I quote, is “She is my customer, and I will take care of everything for her. I no longer need you.” We insisted, and she said a translator was on the way, and we were no longer needed.

We left, and met with Mrs. Țonea the next morning, only to find out the following from her:

• NO translator ever showed up. Instead, Zarah Smith called the lady’s sister, who spoke English, and explained that since there were “no hotels within 2 hours’ distance of the airport”, that she would put her up in a room with a bed at the UA lounge and provide her meals. This was yet another lie. We stayed at a very nice Holiday Inn hotel about 7 minutes away from the airport, a 4-star hotel by the way, and there were plenty of other hotels right there by the airport where Zarah Smith and UA could have put up Mrs. Țonea.
• Mrs. Țonea was then ushered out of the lounge and made to sleep on airport benches, with only two thin airplane blankets given to her, on a cold Frankfurt night.
  
• She was given NO food. Instead, she was offered tea or coffee, then left alone, to fend for herself in a strange airport with no one to talk to, since she didn’t speak the language. Nobody looked after her, and no one came to see her in the morning, to ask her if she was okay or hungry, or anything.
  
• Instead of being booked on the flight, she was put on Standby status, with no assigned seat, and it was likely that she wouldn’t have gotten a seat on the plane the next morning if we hadn’t asked her to go see Zarah Smith directly and to literally pull on her sleeve and wait there by the desk in order to press her into giving her a seat on the plane.
  

That’s how Zarah Smith, a United Airlines supervisor, takes care of United Airlines customers after lying in order to refuse them entry on United Airlines airplanes. That’s how badly she’d have treated us if we hadn’t argued with her and hadn’t spoken the language.

The questions I have for United Airlines are as follows:

• What are you going to do to address this visible and horrible customer service issue? Are you going to reimburse me for the expenses my wife and I incurred in Frankfurt?
• Is Zarah Smith the sort of employee you want to have? Is she the sort of supervisor that sets the right example for her subordinates, and for the UA office in the Frankfurt Airport? Are you going to tolerate an employee whose business practice is to lie, chronically?
• Is it common practice at UA to overbook flights, then turn passengers away, leaving them completely on their own in a city they’ve never visited before? Is this only a Zarah Smith practice, or is she acting on some hidden company policy? Can you please reassure me that this is not the way you intend to treat your customers?

The questions I have for Lufthansa and for the Star Alliance in general are as follows:

• In light of what has happened to us, do you feel United Airlines is a good business partner for you? Furthermore, do you feel they are a good member of the Star Alliance?
• Given what the Lufthansa agents at the Frankfurt airport know about Zarah Smith’s behavior, are you, and how are you going to address her case with United Airlines? Will you continue to tolerate her behavior and treatment of your customers?

In addition to writing about this issue on my site, I will also write to UA’s and Lufthansa’s management, pointing them to the URL of this post and to the questions I’ve posed here, to see if they respond, and what they have to say. And I will be looking for a reimbursement of my overnight stay in Frankfurt from United Airlines.

We got to the airport, checked in, went to the gate, and noticed that our flight was listed as leaving at 6 PM instead of 4:50 PM. A few minutes later, an elderly lady came by and asked if we’d heard that the flight was canceled. No, we hadn’t. Five minutes later, the notice was posted — the flight was canceled indeed, because of bad weather in FL.

To make matters worse, there were no other outgoing flights. All were full. The earliest available flight was on Saturday. No thanks. We went around to all the other airlines and checked. They had nothing, unless we were willing to pay Monopoly prices and fly tonight or on Friday. That would have been okay if only we could have paid with Monopoly money…

What were we to do? We could have gotten angry, but that would have been pointless. So I took out my 5D and started taking photos of the airport. I’d always wanted to do it and never got around to it. Isn’t DCA beautiful?

The main floor is shown above. I love the pillars and arches supporting the roof.

The ceiling is made up of repeating cupolas, as you can see above, and each cupola has a skylight in its center. It’s such great design!

I think I could spend a few days walking around the airport and taking photos. There are so many possibilities with the light, as it comes through the wall of glass or the skylights and reflects off the floor… It’s just beautiful, and if you get the right mix of people walking through (not too many, not too few), it really makes the place look great!

I leave you with an outside shot of the control tower, taken from the Reagan National metro station. It felt pretty painful to get right back to it a few hours after we’d just left it, on our way to FL…

We were late by no fault of ours. DCA is a small airport, and we wrongly assumed that it’d be easy to find Spirit. It wasn’t. They weren’t in the main building, but in a smaller, older building connected to the main one via an endless array of corridors. This older building had been the original site of the airport, and photos of those bygone times stared back at us, unmoved, as we frantically ran, luggage in tow, to catch our flight. The metro had run late as well, and you know how some mornings are — things just don’t go right no matter what.

The sadistic attendant didn’t care about any of that. We had to watch the bus that took the passengers to the flight leave as he kept us in. The bus was right there, and the bastard didn’t let us get on. Nowadays, Spirit has a 20-minute policy for boarding their flights. Obviously, others complained as well, and they took some action.

We vowed we wouldn’t fly with Spirit again. We were wrong. We had to. They wouldn’t issue us a refund because they didn’t let us on the flight, and gave us credit instead, good for another flight on their planes. We were stuck with them for the time being.

What happened that morning? US Airways came to the rescue. They had a flight leaving about an hour and a half later, and they put us on it. They also did a VERY nice thing. They didn’t charge us last-minute ticket counter prices. They charged us only a little more than what we would have paid had we bought the tickets in advance. Just for the record, when I talk about a human airline, this sort of thing is what I refer to.

I remember another time when I was five minutes late for my plane’s departure, some time in the mid 90s. I arrived at the check-in counter about 5 minutes before the plane left. The attendants still checked my bags and called ahead to stop the plane from leaving. They rushed them through to the plane as well. The pilots waited for me as I ran through the terminals, through the gate, and onto the plane. The airline? US Airways.

As I write this, we’re flying back home, on Spirit. We flew with them a few more times since that first time. Would I fly with them if I had a choice? No. Perhaps one of the reasons is that a vile, sulphurous stench of farts wafts toward my nostrils as I type here, attacking them with fervor. Who did it, I don’t know, but it sure is disgusting. Maybe it’s the guy next to us, in the window seat. He offered to displace us when he showed up, or as he so “gently” put it, to “let us sit by the window”. What are we, kids?! I promptly refused, having picked the aisle and middle seat specifically for us ahead of time. Perhaps he’s retaliating in his own malodorous way…

When we left home, we flew with US Airways. They had a flight leaving at the right time for the right price, and we were glad to take it. But coming back was another issue. Their would-be return flight arrived too late for us to catch the metro home, and too late for us to bother any of our friends to pick us up as well. We decided to go with Spirit, since their flight arrived in DCA about an hour earlier, in time for the metro.

Leaving with US Airways and coming back with Spirit gave me a chance to compare things after repeated experiences with each. Yes, US Airways has older aircraft while Spirit has newer planes. US Airways has older chairs while Spirit has leather chairs. But I’d still fly with US Airways any day rather than Spirit. This flight that I’m on right now proves my point altogether.

When we checked in, we had to pay for our checked luggage. Excuse me?! Pay for checked luggage under the weight limit? What planet does Spirit thinks it lives on? But there it was, $10 per bag, take it or leave it. After we took off, we had to pay for our food — any sort of beverage or snack, even water. We got a not-so-aptly named Variety Pack and a can of tonic water. Bill: $5. The Variety Pack was just big enough to feed a hamster and cost $3. It had two flimsy packages of soup crackers, a tiny little bag of raisins, a bite-sized Rice Krispies treat and some melted cheese to spread on the crackers. The can of tonic water was the 12-oz. size, the kind that normally costs 50-75 cents. That was $2 on Spirit.

This sort of nickel-and-diming business pisses the heck out of me. What sort of a money-grubbing operation is this? Did you see their new re-design? They’re calling themselves an “Ultra Low Cost Carrier”, and that’s right from their Skylights magazine. They’re euphemistically branding their move to nickel-and-dime passengers to death by saying “you only pay for what you want, not for things you don’t need or don’t use”. Right… So people don’t need to check luggage or to have a snack on the airplane — that’s news to me.

By comparison, US Airways charged us nothing to check our luggage, and provided us with the usual snack (pretzels) plus beverage of our choice during our flight. If people wanted something more, they offered the choice of buying a snack box, which was gigantic compared to the one on Spirit and cost only a little more.

Later on, when we arrived in DCA, our luggage was delayed by half an hour and delivered to the wrong carousel. Thanks, Spirit, for managing to screw this up as well, after we paid $10 a piece… One of our suitcases also arrived scratched and dusted, also courtesy of Spirit’s “wonderful” service.

When I add up the cost of the tickets for Spirit and US Airways and tally up the hidden expenses on Spirit, US Airways still comes out on top. So as I fly with them the next time I head out of town, I’m going to look at those older chairs that I’ll sit on and smile, knowing I’m not only getting a good deal, but I’m also getting human service and a little truth in advertising — something that seems to be harder and harder to find nowadays.

Choice quote from the Spirit stewardess after a rough landing at DCA: “Now that we’ve plopped down here in DC, let us be the first to welcome you to Ronald Reagan National Airport…” Indeed. Gotta love her spunk and truthfulness.

We were on our way to Paris from Washington, DC, on board an overnight Air France flight. We were going to have a short layover at Charles de Gaulle airport, then fly to Bucharest, where a rental car awaited our arrival. From there, we’d drive north, crossing the Carpathian Mountains to reach my grandfather’s house in Transylvania.

I liked Air France. The chairs were fairly comfortable, there was more space between the rows than on Austrian Airlines, and all of the seat gadgets worked, which was very unlike Alitalia (see paragraph 7 of that post for the details). The food was great, they got our menu selections right, the stewards and stewardesses were friendly and polite, and we had a good experience overall. I would fly with them again.

I hadn’t slept much all night. I can’t sleep very well on airplanes — I should probably say I can’t sleep much at all on airplanes. There’s the noise, then, of course, the “wonderful” seats and the lack of humidity, etc. I usually watch movies to pass the time while I gasp for air and pour water down my parched throat.

Outside, pitch black darkness stared back at me, and the faint reflection of a bleary-eyed traveler bearing my resemblance was visible in the window. Had there been no one around, it would have been eerie. But Ligia was next to me. She was sleeping somewhat peacefully, and that comforted me.

As morning approached and the first rays of light began to break through the darkness, Ligia woke up. I took out my 5D, and stood ready for that fleeting moment when color and light would combine to produce something worth capturing. Here it is.

At 33,000 feet, the cloud clover stayed below, and only its remembrance remained, in the shape of wispy lines that traced alongside us.

I kept my camera ready in case other opportunities presented themselves, and I wasn’t disappointed. A supersonic jet passed by us, leaving orange-yellow contrails in its wake.

No matter how commoditized flight gets, there are still a great number of people that can never afford to experience it. I suppose that has its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, enough pollution is generated by existing airplanes, so perhaps it’s better that their number is kept somewhat limited. On the other hand, many opportunities open up to you when you can travel so fast. Trips that take days suddenly take only hours. Life, for better or worse, gets faster, and you can do more. I suppose that can be both good and bad, depending on your point of view. I’m on the fence about it myself.

We found ourselves in our rental car, driving toward Transylvania, that afternoon. We drove through the evening and part of the night. Road repairs made our trip unnecessarily long, but that’s a story for another day. As we were driving through the Carpathian Mountains, night set in, and I stopped to take this photo.

As we paused to rest, we thought about the last 24 hours. In that relatively short span of time, we’d traveled over 4,000 miles and still had a few more to go.

Life moves fast these days. If we’re not careful, we can end up old and tired, having spent a lifetime running around from place to place. Sometimes it’s worth more than we know it to STOP, even if it’s only for a few minutes, and look around us. That’s when we realize that those few moments of pause are more precious than whole days of nonstop action.

An airline that lets you board the plane even though there are only a few minutes left till the scheduled departure time is a company that deserves my money. I’m talking about US Airways. Sure, their seats may not be leather, and their planes may not be shiny new, but when it comes down to it, they let you board the plane, not turn you away like Spirit Airlines, a full half hour before the scheduled departure time. I’ve been using US Airways, on and off, since my college days, and that’s over a decade. I don’t remember any bad experiences, only nice flights, sometimes bumpy, particularly on their express connecting flights to Burlington, VT, but nice, and often not crowded, which is a great way to fly.

Four parks in two days is a LOT to see, but it’s enough to let you know whether you want to come back for more. I’d seen WDW before, but Ligia and my parents hadn’t. We purchased two-day Disney Hopper tickets, which let you go to any of the four theme parks as often as you wish while you have the tickets. We certainly hopped, from Disney/MGM Studios to Magic Kingdom, then Epcot, then Disney/MGM (again), then Animal Kingdom and Epcot (again). It was tiring for everyone, and at the end of the day, we were exhausted, but it was worth it.

If you stay away from the most popular rides, you avoid stress, discover beautiful places and actually get to enjoy yourself. By this I mean the various popular roller-coasters or other such attractions where kids and teens alike crowd. Tower of Terror at MGM, Splash Mountain at Magic Kingdom and Everest at Animal Kingdom are some of the places we avoided. As a result, we didn’t see the crowds, enjoyed some peace and quiet, and got to see some unexplored corners of the theme parks, which were much more enjoyable than crying brats and long lines.

I visited Disney World twice in the past, some 4-5 years ago, and on both visits, I made the mistake of planning my time around the popular rides. I was stressed because of the crowds, didn’t really get to enjoy the rides that much, and actually felt let down. Let’s face it, Disney roller coasters aren’t Six Flags or Busch Gardens roller coasters, nor should they be. If you go there expecting some terrifying ride, you’re going to be disappointed. Even the Six Flags and Busch Gardens coasters get pretty boring after you ride them seven or eight times. It really all depends on what your mindset is. You’ve got to ask yourself: am I there to find radical excitement, with its inevitable high and let down, or to see some beautiful things and walk around in a surreal, more-beautiful-than-life environment? As Walt Disney once said, I needed to “use my imagination”.

Now that I’m a little more grown-up, I see Disney World as a platform, a wonderful foundation upon which I can build dreams. I can go there and escape reality. I can feel like a kid even though I’m definitely not one any more. I can imagine those many picturesque spots populated by lovable characters from the Disney cartoons and get immersed in the tales I loved so much as a kid (and still do). That’s the beauty of it all. As Walt Disney put it, he built a place where kids and adults alike could go and enjoy themselves.

I think there are some shows/rides that people shouldn’t miss. There’s a wonderful exhibit on Walt Disney’s life at the Disney/MGM Theme Park, and it includes a short movie as well. I highly recommend seeing this, as it provides incredible insight into the life of the man that made Disney. The Art Deco architecture at this park is beautiful. Take the Backlot Tour and see Walt’s personal plane, as well as memorabilia from various movies. Even though I avoided the big rides, I did go to the Lights, Motors, Action! show, and I recommend you see it as well. It’s a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at automobile and motorcycle stunt work in today’s movies, and it sure is exciting to see the stunts in person, not on the movie screen.

At Magic Kingdom, go on the ride called “It’s a small world”. The song will stick in your head, and you may or may not like that, but the nice, clear decor and attention to detail in the puppet costumes are a sight to behold. Plus, it’s cool inside and not crowded, so it’s just the ticket for a hot, sunny day. Also get on the Mad Hatter Tea Party teacup ride. It’s fun and there aren’t usually long lines. Don’t forget to walk around the castle. Even though you can’t go inside (which I would have liked to do), you can still admire the architecture and its surroundings. It’s rumored Walt Disney had an apartment built inside the castle for his family. Maybe someday that’ll be open to the public, who knows. You shouldn’t miss the Swiss Family Robinson tree, and you should also take the boat ride on the lake (no, I’m not talking about the ferry ride from the transportation center to the park, which is nice in itself.) And definitely take the train ride around the park, you’ll regret it if you don’t. The Carousel of Progress show is also a must-see.

At Animal Kingdom, don’t miss the “It’s tough to be a bug!” show, which is always great fun. This was the third time I saw it, and it was still very enjoyable. Take the safari tour there as well, and don’t miss walking around and spotting the animals and birds. Animal Kingdom is a great place to take great photos of wonderful, wild animals up close, so bring a good camera with you. At many zoos, it’s hard to take photos because the enclosures are tiny. The photos end up looking bad, because anyone can tell those animals aren’t in the wild. But at Animal Kingdom, each animal’s enclosure is made to look so natural that you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference in a photo.

When I first visited Epcot, I thought it was the lamest of all four parks because it had no dangerous rides. I don’t know what I was thinking… Now I know it’s the coolest of them all. There’s so much to see! There are exhibits from many countries of the world, and everywhere I looked, I found beauty. There was beautiful architecture, beautiful landscaping, and beautiful decoration. I was surprised to find the buildings were real stone when I knocked on them. Many of the buildings at attraction parks are pretty much just cardboard and stucco. Not so at Epcot!

Three of the parks have their own fireworks show, but the Magic Kingdom and Epcot shows are the most accessible. The wonderful thing about them is that serious thought and planning went into each show, and they are all infused with their own character. I can think of no other word to describe them but SPECTACULAR. What amazes me is that they happen daily! Given the cost of fireworks, that’s a lot of money! Think about it: Disney World uses the equivalent of a typical 4th of July fireworks show every night at two of its parks (Magic Kingdom and Epcot). I would have liked to go to the Fantasmic! show at Disney/MGM but didn’t get the chance.

When I think about the Disney World experience, two words come to mind: abundance and quality. There’s an abundance of things to see at all of the parks, and it’s all quality-made. Walt Disney wanted to make sure people got their money’s worth, and I think they do. One of the tram operators wished us well as we got off to enter Magic Kingdom, and something he said stuck in my mind: “All 58,000 Disney employees wish you a wonderful time here at Disney World.” I don’t remember the exact phrase, but the number definitely caught my attention. Whether that’s just Disney World employees or employees of the Disney Corporation, I don’t know, but regardless, there were a LOT of employees at Disney World, and a lot of machinery, and a lot of lights, and a lot of everything else that requires maintenance and people to operate. Add to that the infrastructure, which was built from scratch: roads, lines, pipes, landscaping, buildings, etc., and the expenses really add up. I shudder to think what the daily operating expenses of Disney World are. In light of this, the $75 ticket price to see one of the parks is not a bad deal, and the Park Hopper ticket is a great value indeed.

Ligia and I look forward to our next WDW visit.

I left Romania early this morning. At 6 AM there, it was 11 PM here (7/3, not yet 7/4). At the airport in Bucharest, which has been greatly renovated and expanded these last few years, I couldn’t help noticing vestiges of communism – mainly, idiocy on the part of those who wrote operating procedures and who manage employees. There are two examples I can give.

The first is this: cleaning personnel were done with the bathrooms, and while the floor was drying, they were gossiping in front of the bathrooms and turning people away. They blocked the entrances with brooms, and were standing and sitting nearby, chatting, instead of working. When people tried to use the bathrooms, they’d be turned away with the blanket statement: “The bathroom is closed for 5 minutes.” The problem was, that bathroom had been closed for “5 minutes” for the last half hour. Did management care? No, and I doubt they were unaware of the problem. After all, I found one of the cleaning crew sleeping on the third floor of the airport, as I paced through, trying to stay awake for my flight.

The second is this: for some stupid reason, photography isn’t allowed at the Bucharest airport (technically known as Henri Coanda, previously as Otopeni). Why? I don’t know. Logically, it makes no sense – other airports don’t have this silly rule. Photography is a normal event at airports. People are saying goodbye, and they want to take photos. As my mom tried to take a photo of me and my grandfather, one of the security crew had the nerve to stick her hand in front of the camera. I got so upset, I wanted to kick her. How dare they? But you can’t fault the underlings. They’re just following orders. It’s the management who’s to blame. They’re stinking things up. Just who are they? Well, the company that manages both the cleaning crew and the security is called Romprest. Given my experience, they’re not only incompetent, but they’re idiotic.

While we’re on the subject, don’t think idiocy is somehow restricted to the Bucharest airport. My mother reminded me that it’s present here in the States, as well. Right after the photo incident, she recalled an occasion when my dad came back to the States from a trip to Romania through the Miami airport, carrying, among his luggage, a bag of apples from his parents’ (my grandparents) orchard. They were confiscated, of course. Here’s the kicker. The crew at customs started eating the apples immediately. Apparently, they were so tasty that they radioed more of the crew, and they all came and had their share. My dad stood there, apalled. If these fruits were unfit to enter the States, how could they be readily consumed by airport employees? He tried to reach into the bag (HIS bag) to take an apple himself – a small consolation, at least – but one of the bastards eating HIS apples stopped his hand. Can you imagine the nerve of these asses? And they’re allowed to do this as airport employees? Talk about asinine policies and poor management!

At any rate, our return to the States this time was devoid of any such provocative incidents. Ligia and I came through Dulles International (DC), and the employees were professional, nice and fast. We went through customs in 5 minutes, which is unbelievably short. The plane trip, however, was somewhat of a different matter. We flew with Alitalia, through Milan. If you’ve ever heard the term “Italian driver” and you’re acquainted with its meaning, then you have a pretty good idea of how the pilots handled the takeoff and landing. Ligia and I were clutching the ends of our seats as the plane bounced through the air and on the runway. It wasn’t fun…

Alitalia should get their act together. While their flights are plentiful, they never leave on time. What’s more, the availability of a flight depends on who it is you talk to. There is no official word on whether a particular flight is a go or not, or at least it’s not properly disseminated through their computer systems. My parents spent a hectic hour in Milan on our way to Romania wondering if their flight was cancelled or not. In the end, it wasn’t. Ligia and I tried to get on the same flight, only to be told there were no seats. When my parents got on it, it was almost empty. On our flight from New York to Milan, the in-seat video system wasn’t working and had to be reset. Half the people could watch the movies, and half couldn’t. I kept asking the stewards and stewardesses for help, only to get the typical Italian shoulder shrug and a “Scusi, it’s not working…” That’s not the kind of answer one expects on a long flight when there’s nothing to do. On the trip back to the States from Milan to DC, the plane didn’t even have in-seat entertainment. It had old TV’s mounted to the ceiling, with uncalibrated colors to boot. The colors on screen bled into each other, making it hard to see and follow the action. The sound was off and on, and the volume control didn’t work reliably. It was a mess.

Oh, and don’t get me started about the Milan airport, which is hopelessly in disarray. We went through it two times: on the way to Romania, and the way back. Both times, we were bused from the plane to the terminal, where we had to climb to second floor, where hundreds, if not thousands of people, were crowded into a waiting area for passport checks. Heck, we’d already gone through passport checks at our originating airports, and we’d been in the custody of Alitalia staff throughout the trip. What was the point of those checks, other than extra stress and wasted time? After this exercise in futility, we were allowed to go to the particular gates for our connecting flights, on the first floor of that same building. There, we waited in small areas not equipped with enough chairs, most of us standing, once again crowded by hundreds of people. Late once more, our tickets were checked, and we were ushered onto buses that took us to our flight.

My patience was sorely tried when I found out on our way back to the States today, that we’d entered that sorry building through a gangway located just steps away from the gate exit to our plane. We went through three hours of pointless waiting and passport checks only to come out steps away from our entrance? Ugh! To make matters worse, we were crowded into the bus only to be driven 100 meters to our plane! We needed a bus for 100 meters?! It’s enough to make one cuckoo! The apparently moronic disorganization on the part of Alitalia and the Milan airport is striking. My head still reels now that I recall it.

I’m so glad to be back home!