BitaTruble
Posts: 9779
Joined: 1/12/2006 From: Texas Status: offline
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Ugh. I flew from San Francisco to Frankfurt, Germany just last week and what a fiasco! On a 12+ hour flight, the captain came on the intercom and told us (first time I EVER heard a captain on an airline actually yell!) in no uncertain terms that we were not allowed to leave our seats to walk around and stretch but we could get up for quick trips to the bathroom. By the time we landed I was so sore and getting major cramps in parts of my body I had forgotten existed from not moving for such long stretches of time, I could barely raise my arms over my head to get my carry-on out of the over head rack and I still had a 4 hour layover plus a three hour flight to Portugal with which to contend not to mention an hour cab ride to actually get home to Cascais during rush hour traffic. I got searched twice in SF and not at all in Frankfurt and actually going through passport control in Frankfurt was as breeze. I didn't get asked a single question. The guy just looked at my book, stamped it and I was on my way. Took all of 10 seconds. I did have to go through two separate security partitions in Frankfurt, but only because of the way the airport was laid out and and where they dropped us off on the international side. Security wasn't that horrible .. just taking the laptop out of it's case and I didn't have to take my shoes off in Germany but did have to remove my coat and fleece to go through the metal detector. In SF my eyehooks on the back of my bra set off the metal detector so I had to get a pat down.. then another one at a second metal detector right before they allowed us on the plane and as the plane was jam packed (747 I think) the lines were very long and as I had bought my ticket fairly late, I didn't have the best seat in the house so had a long wait before my row was called. All that said, if I could avoid doing a lot of flying, I would, but since I actually like my family, I do try to get back to CA as often as I can so unless I want to swim across the Atlantic, flight is my only viable option. I've built my flyer miles back up though, so next flight is on Lufthansa.. at least one way and I'm good with free in lots of forms.. especially when it comes to airplane tickets!
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"Oh, so it's just like Rock, paper, scissors." He laughed. "You are the wisest woman I know."
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