CA Day 1 – Planes are very reliable, are they?

So I’m sitting in Newark at the airport right now typing these lines. I should already be in San Francisco since 3 hours, but it’s not as easy. Those guys in vienna managed to delay a 1hr flight by 1hr. Guess why. Heavy traffic? Nah. Weather problems? Not quite. “We’re sorry for the delay, but the plane must be cleaned from the snow first.” Whatta Surprise, MORONS! It’s been snowing all night. Probably it would be a good idea to clean the plane BEFORE people board to it, hu?

However I have to admit that, besides that doubling-travel-time-and-making-me-miss-my-connection-flight to SFO, the service was hilarious. I had a Flyniki flight because I just didn’t care much about comfort for such a short distance. But compared to my Lufthansa flight right afterwards Flyniki beats them by far – in terms of comfort and in terms of service. Probably we were just lucky. But I’d heavily suggest travelling with Flyniki. The only advantage Lufthansa had was they had the better gates, you know, cheap airlines usually end up somewhere in the very rear end.

On with the travelling! So I literally waved my connection plane goodbye as we landed in Frankfurt. To hell with it, the girl at the customer service was very helpful and offered me two options: Try a direct connection to SFO on holding at 2pm, or a connection Frankfurt – Newark (NY) – SFO at 1.30pm. As all flights to SFO were booked through for the next two days she heavily recommended the NY option, plus added the bonus info that if I missed the connection flight there UA won’t have another option to bring me to SF and they’d pay for a hotel room in NYC. Doesn’t sound all that bad, so here am I now.

Actually, we arrived here in Newark about an hour ago – 45mins before the connection plane was about to depart. So on to the passport-check and for the ID-details. Where you from, which flight did you take to get here, date of birth, what do you carry with you, left index finger on the scanner, right index finger on the scanner, go go go now we know everything about you. Pretty scary actually. They’re taking fingerprints, just because. But besides that the personal was unbelievable friendly. “How are you today guys?” – and not the set-up standard shit we’re used to everywhere nowadays, these guys were smiling, joking around, talking with the people.

It was fun to queue up. It never yet was.

Uhm, fun aside, I was about to miss another connection flight and already planned to talk United into a flight to SFO on friday PLUS tonight in a nice hotel so I could hang out three days in New York right now and don’t have to get back here with more delayed flights later on. But not that time. There was some good luck in all that bad luck: Flight delayed. And not just peanutty 10mins, but 1hr 45mins. Enough time to sit down and write the first travel blog entry. Just for you. I’m SO nice. OBEY!

Next mission is to get in contact with my first host. He expected me to call somewhen around afternoon (which actually is somewhen now, it’s 0.20 in austria, 3.20pm in SF and here in Newark it’s 6.20pm. I’m awake since austria 16.00 yesterday, so that makes for … uhm … 28 hours. The flight will take another around six or so and if I’m lucky enough to get in touch with Allan I’ll probably be there when I’m running around for 36 hours. I tried to get some sleep on the plane, but economy class sucks. I could relax a little and every once in a while my eyes closed for a few minutes, yet no real regenerating sleep.

I’ll despearately need a beer at Allan’s. And an emergency plan if I can’t reach him.

Reached him. He’s at the airport. Departing. Forgot bout me. Mkay. Well, I was talking about an adventure, so here I go I guess. I called Julia. She’ll post to the SF-group and I’ll do the lottery-thing by checking if anyone replied to until I’m there. Party anyone? Basic rule for having food in the states: At all chain restaurants refills are free. A coke is 2.45 USD, that’s about 1.80 Euros. I just was at T.G.I. Friday’s and this guy refilled my glass automatically, until I desperately screamed “GODDAMN STOP THAT TERROR MAN!”. I had a good litre of ice cold coke and the bill was 2.45 USD. For that you’ll not even get a 0.25l mineral water in austria, how weird is that?!

I couldn’t change money yet, so everything’s VISA for now. That free refilling was as pleasing as making me give this waiter-guy a 2.55 tip. I rule. Gotta remember the 20% rule around here, it’s expected and better you not fuck with the people that cook your food and serve your drinks. Now for a little more waiting. And then for an interesting mail-check. Yehaaaaaa!

Mail-Check doesn’t look too good, but anyways – it’s 1.30am local time now, too late to call anyone. I’ll stay at the subway here on the airport, get a few hours of dozing and a beer and then write some couch-requests. Uhm, did I mention that the flight from Newark to San Francisco has been delayed because the toilets haven’t been serviced? “We could just take off and try, but we’ll have to do a pitstop to get them serviced if they run full”. After all I learned two things today:

• Flights aren’t on time.
• Flying is boring.