Lunch in Washington, D.C. Dinner in New York. Breakfast in London. Lunch somewhere over France. Dinner in Munich. That's how the great 2011 Eurotrip began.
Well, not really. After spending countless hours of packing and cleaning and preparing my apartment for an extended absence, I shared dinner with family and then flew to DC for two days of meetings (and way too many olive-less martinis with friends and colleagues). But that's mostly boring and certainly not sexy. This, however, might be.
I stepped onto the shiny (and tiny) American Eagle Embrarer ERJ-135 like I've done dozens of times before, but this time was a bit different. My second-longest trip was about to begin. This 37-passenger aircraft was ferrying me to New York's JFK Airport to link up with one of its bigger brothers - a British Airways Boeing 747 that I would eventually share, without air conditioning, with about 350 fellow travellers. And if you're thinking air conditioning isn't necessary in January, you go sit in an airplane for 2 hours while the flight crew tries to close an overhead bin...trust me it gets hot.
After takeoff, I settled in as best I could. I didn't sleep during the entire seven hour overnight flight. Maybe it was the excitement. Maybe it was the adrenaline from the fight with a British woman for my assigned seat who, subsequently, would not stop giving me dirty looks. Or maybe it was the fact that my body mass was crammed into an area in such a manner that multiple laws of kinesiology - and probably Newtonian physics itself - were violated. But I made it. I caught a fleeting glimpse of the London Eye, Whitehall, Big Ben, and the River Thames before the pilots glided our 875,000 pound hunk of flying aluminum and plastic to a ginger touchdown on British soil.
And then the fun began. I got searched. In all fairness, so did everyone else. Apparently, the Brits (at least at Heathrow) require everyone who flies into the country to be searched again despite obviously enduring security searches prior to boarding the plane that brought them there. That was a fun 2-hour wait, but then I was free to roam the isolated yet bustling Terminal 5, to peruse the duty free shops, and to enjoy a tasty fish and chips lunch with a beer or two (though not until one of my carry-ons was seized and subsequently "sent down to the aircraft's hold" by an overzealous BA staffer - I was shocked when I saw it on the luggage carousel at the end of the trip).
After much wandering and a venti Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks, it was time to board yet another plane for the final leg of my journey to Munich. Terrified that I would discover another overcrowded flight, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the flight was only booked at about 30% capacity - so almost everyone got three seats instead of the usual .689% of a seat usually alloted per passenger. The flight was uneventful, and I started to think my travel experience just might be starting to turn around, but then I encountered Veronica.
Veronica, the sophisticated, polite, gorgeous, impeccable English-speaking, young brick wall-impervious-to-logic of a woman at the Munich Airport's Hertz rental car desk was, for a few hours, the bane of my existence. To make matters worse, I was tired and hungry, but she was just too polite (and attractive) for me to get angry. Long story short, after several very expensive phone calls back to the States, some hard work by my colleagues in D.C., and apparently a miracle, my rental car needs were met (if you're wondering, a Honda CRV with heated leather seats and a 6-disc CD changer).
Oh yeah, and Veronica also slipped me her number and told me to call her the next time I was in Munich. At least she has good taste.
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