New Year
After a long new year hiatus, a wrapup.
Lots of things were blogworthy, but time was short. My own Christmas present (christened "Oolong") arrived just in time before I left for Germany. (The term "home" is slowly blurring.) The trip there went almost ok, but a large part of the trip to the plane was thwarted by NYC's total lack of luggage lockers. At the Manhattan Penn Station, I asked the tourist information for the locker locations, I was given a flyer with the address of a commercial locker facility (!), and upon walking the three blocks (!) with all my back-breaking luggage, it turned out this place was closed. To drive the point home: There is no place in Manhattan (maybe in New York City) where one can live his luggage for one afternoon. Probably this country has already completely succumbed to terrorism paranoia. In fact, after I reluctantly decided to forgo my planned sightseeing afternoon in Manhattan and took the metro to JFK (in fact, there is no direct connection, one has to change not only metro lines, but metro operators to get there), it turned out there is no place to leave your luggage at JFK, either. The check-in counters don't open until three hours before boarding. This meant staying at JFK for six hours, an international, major airport which nonetheless has no power sockets, no Internet, and only was seemed like three luggage carts for all of the millions of passengers to drive their suitcases around. Finally, it could be noted (although the point is obvious after having been here for four months) that the few luggage carts that are actually present cannot be used on escalators, unlike the ones anywhere in Germany.
Enough complaints! I arrived at Frankfurt alright (Iceland Air still existed, although food and drinks were visibly cheaper than a few months ago), and Germany immediately felt like... a part of the modern, industrialized World.
Lots of things were blogworthy, but time was short. My own Christmas present (christened "Oolong") arrived just in time before I left for Germany. (The term "home" is slowly blurring.) The trip there went almost ok, but a large part of the trip to the plane was thwarted by NYC's total lack of luggage lockers. At the Manhattan Penn Station, I asked the tourist information for the locker locations, I was given a flyer with the address of a commercial locker facility (!), and upon walking the three blocks (!) with all my back-breaking luggage, it turned out this place was closed. To drive the point home: There is no place in Manhattan (maybe in New York City) where one can live his luggage for one afternoon. Probably this country has already completely succumbed to terrorism paranoia. In fact, after I reluctantly decided to forgo my planned sightseeing afternoon in Manhattan and took the metro to JFK (in fact, there is no direct connection, one has to change not only metro lines, but metro operators to get there), it turned out there is no place to leave your luggage at JFK, either. The check-in counters don't open until three hours before boarding. This meant staying at JFK for six hours, an international, major airport which nonetheless has no power sockets, no Internet, and only was seemed like three luggage carts for all of the millions of passengers to drive their suitcases around. Finally, it could be noted (although the point is obvious after having been here for four months) that the few luggage carts that are actually present cannot be used on escalators, unlike the ones anywhere in Germany.
Enough complaints! I arrived at Frankfurt alright (Iceland Air still existed, although food and drinks were visibly cheaper than a few months ago), and Germany immediately felt like... a part of the modern, industrialized World.
posted by PJS at
Friday, January 16, 2009
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