On International Travel

Perhaps the one bad thing about living in California is that the culture and beauty of Europe are a good 10-16 hours away by plane, depending on the number of stops you choose to make. This becomes doubly troubling as the quality of service on US airlines continues to decline. This weekend’s flight from SFO to JFK:

• United packed the 757 past capacity
• after we boarded the cabin smelled of kerosene
• the air conditioning failed; it was about 85F in the cabin
• 1 water service and two bags of salty pretzels
• $5 (hell no!) box of further salty partially hydrogenated foods

If you decide to make the stopover at JFK, and you have a couple of hours, and your baggage is checked, consider calling a friend to drive you to ‘inoteca for a mortadella and egg panino, sure to chase the Domestic Economy-Class blues away. While we were having a beverage at European Union we noticed that ‘inoteca is featured in this week’s Styles of the Times section. Nice work. We had a hard time convincing the British bartender that he should move to the Bay Area for the produce, though.

Our next and final legs of travel were on Lufthansa, and I cannot get over the difference in the quality of the service vs. United’s. (Especially — aren’t they owned by the same company or some such? What is this Star Alliance B.S.? Very confusing.) Here’s why we were relatively happier travelers after 50% more hours on planes with Lufthansa:

• 60% full transatlantic flight — 1 seat between to share for sleeping
• distinct lack of smell of kerosene in cabin
• woke up from nap 1 on flight 1 to a plate of free cookies
• woke up from nap 2 to some kind of pasta dish
• woke up from nap 3 to a mini sandwich of ham and butter
• woke up from nap 4 on flight 2 to another mini sandwich
• working air conditioning

We arrived here in Budapest and I was quite nearly rested enough to deal with the insane currency conversion that I will need to apply to every transaction while we’re here.

Odd thing though: prices are cheaper here depending on whether I pay in HUF or EUR. What’s up with that? Some sandwich vendors are even accepting USD, didn’t get a quote on that though.