We're off to Berlin to visit Ezra and Katharina, our son and our Berlin-born daughter-in-law. They live in Schöneberg, a vibrant neighbourhood not far from the centre of the city, and they always insist that we stay with them. We look forward to continuing our traditions with them: out for wonderful German breakfasts, walking the city, and out again for dinner in any of the great restaurants to be found within a few blocks of their apartment. They treat us to accommodation, we treat them to meals. Seems like a good deal all round.
This is the start of my journal of the trip.
Pre-Day 1 – Adventures at 10,000 metres
Well, not really adventures, which you definitely don't want to have at 10,000 metres.
It was a perfect day to leave Vancouver: cold, dull, and rainy. There's our 747 outside the gate window. The photo is not in black-and-white – it's YVR in full colour at 2:00 in the afternoon.
Jumbo jets give a really smooth ride, compared to their smaller cousins. And this 9-hour flight would have been relatively comfortable for cattle class, had it not been for our neighbours to the rear, an older couple whose nationality I won’t name, other than to say that this was certainly not their first long-haul flight. First, the man grabbed and held on to the back of my seat when he was getting in, jolting me. That's just bad manners in a plane. Then, when the meal came, and the woman rapped on the back of John’s chair and demanded he put it upright, as it was leaned back by maybe 3 cm. We were surprised and a little annoyed, but the best was yet to come.
I do know the rules of good etiquette for flying. I know not to keep my seat fully reclined when it’s not lights out. I know passengers have to make compromises. If we all would co-ordinate our seat-reclining, we’d all be relatively okay, other than those who are really tall (which our neighbours were not.) I know enough to have a friendly interaction or make a polite request if someone else is taking up more than their share of space. That, or put up with it. Our neighbours to the rear on this flight didn’t get that.
When they needed to move, they rapped on the seat, yelled at us, and then shoved our seats to upright. Yes, we were fully relined, but so were all the seats beside and in front of us. The cabin lights were out, and it was clearly a time where passengers were intended to nap before our 8:00 a.m. landing in Frankfurt. These folks offered no “excuse me” or “would you please,” just the knocking and the yelling and the shoving. It happened several times.
We eventually got up to stretch our legs for a bit, and spoke to a flight attendant about our dilemma. He said the man had already been up in the galley complaining about legroom. He spoke to the couple, and the trouble ended.
As it happened, the seat I was in, 2nd from the aisle, wasn’t mine to begin with; John and I had been assigned seats across the aisle from each other, but the woman seated next to John offered to trade with me. Later, she felt terrible about the situation, and offered to trade back. I didn’t take the offer, but I was glad to know my perceptions were not off base, that these people were just plain rude.
The odd thing was that I may not have even been reclined except that my in-seat monitor wasn’t loaded with anything worth watching. John’s selection of movies was completely different from mine. His included several I would have enjoyed, whereas mine had none. Really, none. The upside to this was that, unlike John, I actually managed to get two or three hours of sleep. In between assaults from the couple to the rear.
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