New York, Day 0
I recently had the privilege of spending close to 24 hours flying from Israel to New York, and I thought I'd share some of the experience with you guys.
Making New Connections
I booked a flight plan that included a connection flight - Tel Aviv to Barcelona and Barcelona to New York. I thought I made a pretty good deal. So when I got to the airport and the nice lady at ticketing said "oh, you know you have this surprise connection flight in there?" I replied "of course, I get to spend 4 hours in Barcelona".
Wrong answer. The real answer turned out to be "yeah, I get to spend 4 hours in Barcelona, then get off the plane in Madrid, spend another couple of hours there, and get back on the same flight, only it's a different seat, on a different plane, where only the flight number stays the same so it registers as a single flight rather than two". What can I say? I love surprises.
Of course, that makes the computer system at Ben Gurion Airport confused about the flight number, so it spews out two tickets, both of them to Madrid, and you have to change one of them once you actually get there. That great, because otherwise I'd have to spend those four hours reading or resting or something horrible like that, instead of looking for an Iberia representative, explaining the situation, getting answers in Spanish-laden English, and going through check-in again with the new tickets. What can I say? I love adventures.
European Web Terminals FTW
Since I had lots of time to spend at various spanish airports, I thought I'd go online and see what's up, and maybe tell the world of my plight . I spent a Euro on 10 minutes of internet access in a web terminal which had the worst possible interface imaginable. It boasts "a powerful web browser" which turns out to be a stripped-down version of Internet Explorer 6 with the ability to open multiple windows removed (yes, it's that powerful). And for some reason they didn't want to use a real keyboard, so it's got lots of clunky metal buttons arranged in a QWERTY layout, most of which require moderate exertion of force to be pushed.
Oh, and since it's a dedicated web terminal, it has some important web keys, like the ":-)" key and its almost-as-important sibling, the ":-(" key, and of course the always needed ".com" key. Seriously, I still don't know why these don't come built-in in all standard keyboards these days. They were incredibly useful. So useful, in fact, that I hardly noticed the lack of a CTRL key (why would anyone remove a CTRL key, you ask? My guess is that they found out you can still get a new browser window if you press CTRL-N, and decided to deal with the problem at the root. Another option would be because they needed to make room for the '.com' key, obviously). That's Europe for you. What can I say? I love challenges.
The Importance of Not Coming
The really nice thing about Iberia airlines is that they go to great length to make you feel comfortable. For example, when you board the plane and wait for all the parents to shut their whining babies up, you can enjoy the soothing voice of Norah Jones in "Don't Know Why I Didn't Come" -- a generic easy-listening ballad about relationships or whatever. When it came up, the teenage girl in the seat behind me said "oh, that's a sweet-ass song!", which made me smile for no reason . Seriously though, it's a really good song, like most of Norah Jones.
In addition to that, during the 30 minutes of landing (I never knew it takes so long to land a plane. That explains my early frustration with flight sims), which are known to be nerve-wrecking, Iberia plays relaxing landing music, and mainly Norah Jones' "Don't Know Why I Didn't Come" -- a quiet blues ballad about the impossible love between a woman and the man she impossibly loves, or something along those lines. It's a pretty decent song, I guess, but they could have done better.
Oh, but it doesn't stop there! During the flight, as you know, there are plenty of stressful moments, most of which involve crying babies and the smell of diapers. To get you calmly through these hard times, Iberia provides channel 10 on the airplane's internal audio entertainment system, which, as far as I could tell, plays nothing but "Don't Know Why I Didn't Come" by Norah Jones -- a subtly erotic classic female blues ballad, presumably dealing with the universal theme of women having trouble experiencing orgasms. In my opinion that's a rather tasteless choice of music, but I got used to it by now. What can I say? I love consistency.
Something Positive For a Change
Enough with the cynical attitude already. Here's something I really liked. My last flight was on an Airbus something-or-other, which has a camera mounted at the top of its tail, looking down on the body of the plane. During takeoff and landing, they feed that image to the internal video monitors, so you get to see the plane rising off the ground into the air and then touching down again. It's really an impressive sight, and it makes you appreciate the miracle of human flight . This really made me smile despite my best efforts to appear cold and heartless to my fellow passengers. The emotional effect is amplified by the musical accompaniment, which was a beautiful, sexy blues ballad by Norah Jones.
So, that was my trip. I left home at 03:00 at night and reached my destination about 26 hours later (about 23 of these were spent in airports or on airplanes, where they won't let you carry a deodorant, because everybody knows deodorants are the main instruments of airborne terrorism). I've only been in New York for one day, but so far it seems to have been worth the trip (and the loss of personal hygiene). I'll share some more when I get interesting stories to tell. Meanwhile, stay tuned for pictures.
Avish, New York City, USA