Friday to Sunday 22nd/24th July - Berlin to Karapiro
Time to Ausfahrt. We dropped of the car and hunted down some breakfast in the airport, with suitcases because Air Austria had decided to ignore the advertised check in time and create their own. Breakfast was standard for Germany, waiter rips you off on the change, the croissant was cold, but nice, the orange juice required a small mortgage and Roger avoided a bad coffee experience. You can tell the Germans in the café, they all want to return their plates to the counter, the Asians throw their mess on the floor and the Kiwis are still wondering how they managed to get ripped off by the German’s yet again, so in return leave their mess on the table.
Unfortunately we didn’t have the same comfort as our flight to Berlin, the plane was overfull with Chinese who, yes, managed to trash the plane with rubbish, ignored the seatbelt sign and constantly demanded drinks. The Austrians have no shame in humiliating them and announced on the PA about sitting down drawing attention to the offender, but unfortunately they couldn’t get them to pick the rubbish up and put it in the bins.
Our flight was delayed as we off loaded bags for 3 passengers who didn’t show, then reloaded them when they did show. Not as bad a delay however, as Shanghai where we were delayed because their airport can’t cope with the volumes and you queue on the tarmac for ages and have to be bussed to the plane because they don’t have enough docking points.
In Shanghai we had a 7 hour stopover, just enough time to think we had it mastered this time, i.e. pretend to arrive so we can officially leave. However they then wanted us to fill out arrival cards stating our destination in China and visa details. We sat in the airport trying to fill in time, sleep, eat on a limited budget and praise ourselves for getting the transfer thing right this time. Famous last words, our names along with others were called out because we didn’t go to the right check-in desk and get a new boarding pass. Not understanding the boarding call we lined up in the business class queue and got early access to the plane, really beneficial when the plane is full and everybody breaches the hand luggage sizes and item numbers.
The food choices, if any, were crap but I did get to watch some good movies including of course “The Sound of Music”, ruined by the fact I now know the real story, where it was really filmed, the faux pas and that all the main characters weren’t Austrian.
Having arrived safely back home from our brief history lesson I must thank a few people for making the trip possible. As our Sound of Music tour guide would say, thank the driver for getting us safely home, I would say also for not killing anybody, having an accident or committing road rage. Although we believe a photograph might be due in the mail of the back of the motor home, just another souvenir. Thank you to Angela the wonderful lady who looked after our house and cat, both in better condition than we left them. Thanks also too many others including Michele for the travel ebooks and Frances and Will for the car service. Thanks to all the overseas people who entertained us and Rowing NZ for their achievements. We feel lucky to have got back safely considering there were 3 terrorist attacks in areas of Germany we had been in during the month of July.
So what’s on the agenda now? Rowing regattas, 12 channels of Olympic watching and a course on the Holy Wars, hmm sounds familiar....
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