Who would have thought travel gets harder the more you do it?
I'll start out first and foremost by telling you that this article is borderline bitching about certain aspects of travel. If you're sitting in a cubicle, hating life, I would either recommend to skip it or skip to the bottom where I talk about solutions to the problems I'm about to dig in to. Your choice. There are some good links though, so maybe just click on those before reading my feelings on the American passport...
Passports
Your standard American passport used to get sent out with 18 blank pages for entry/exit stamps and visas. These days, I believe it has 24, but mine is from 2002 and is a bit behind the times. With regular stampings, you can fit 72 entry and exit stamps in there. This seems like a lot and traveling within a huge chunk of Europe these days is just two stamps despite going to multiple countries thanks to blessed Schengen.
I made one trip in 2003, one in 2004, one in 2005, one in 2006, and then a whole bunch starting in 2007. My passport currently has one blank page in it and I have to keep it for another 2 1/2 years, but in some regards, I'm screwed already as the problem lies in visas. To get a visa, you officially need two blanks, facing pages in your passport when you apply for the passport. That eats up pages really fast and it means that if you only have one blank page, you've got a problem. Africa has been eating up pages at a large rate and this won't decrease at any point soon as I need a visa to travel to every country there except South Africa, Senegal, Namibia and of all places, Equatorial Guinea (that would be due to all the oil.) There is a solution to this problem which is to send in my passport, have the government cut out the stitching and add in several more pages. I've seen this done and the passports look like utter crap afterward. Never before has a prav happened at so high a level.
The idiocy is that they just won't simply issue you a new passport even if you fill up the current one and you can only add pages twice. Dumb, yes. Thankfully, if I'm in a really tight bind, the two years of work and the decent amount of application and research money I put in to getting my Croatian passport comes in really handy as it has 29 blank pages and they're "freeform", meaning you can put more than four stamps on a page.
Of course, once the time comes to get a new passport, you can put a small note in the application to get the bible-port, which has 52 pages and is as thick as a prayer book. There is no extra cost to get this and if peak oil doesn't nix flying in the next 10 years, it will probably be an option that I take, despite the fact I'll need a separate bag just for my passport.
But this is really indicative of the American attitude in that hardly anyone leaves the country. Most estimates place the amount of citizens with passports at 20% on the high end and 12% on the low end. I realize that the US is a very large country and so you might never need to leave it, but at the same time, never leaving it makes for all the inbred thinking that we have to date towards the rest of the world. And really, we should all have passports, or better yet, a Federal ID card so that my Social Security Card stays private.
Customs
I'm a bit stumped as of late because I'm getting questioned a lot more when I enter countries. As I mentioned above, my passport has a lot of stamps in it and I would think that would show I travel a bit and am just popping through, no big deal. But no, in London they asked my duration of stay, profession, where I reside, where I am returning to, what I was going to do in England (twice) and then let me through. Even returning to Spain from London, I was asked a number of questions, which has never happened before including how much Spanish I spoke. That was just bizarre as if the agent was going to say, "¡Aha! ¡You said you speak un poco, not un poquito Español! ¡You are obviously going to work illegally here, even though it is Catalunya!"
On a certain level, I really don't mind this as it's a reminder that just because you have an American passport, you don't have a golden ticket to go anywhere else in the world, despite what idiots who go hiking in Iraq and get captured by Iran think. But, I just wish that there would be a consistency to it, although wishing for world peace would probably have more of a chance in being granted. I mean, is it the worry that I might abuse my ability to enter so easy and will work under the table, or worse yet, sell my sugarlumps on the street? This has really only come about as of late and while London was pretty much typical with the general xenophobia there, Spain was more of a shock.
Of course, my other theory is based on the fact that I had no problems in Paris when I flew in, in October. They glanced at my passport and thought, "Huh, American. 4,000th one today. Welcome to Paris, now shut up." The other airports I was flying through were Gatwick in England and Girona in Spain. It's possibly the case that the border agents in these airports feel especially important as they're at minor airports and they have to prove something, thus harassing people more, although they will probably let everyone through. Unless of course you're African or Muslim (or god forbid, both), in which case you get no end of trouble. Again, this is why I don't mind a bit of a hassle when going through as others have it far, far worse. I just wish they would choose some level to be consistent with it.
09 11 2009 1 comment
Tags: airports, immigration, passports, the europe, travel
Charles de Gaulle Airport, your passport control is killing me!
Charles de Gaulle as an airport is glorious. The structure is well-designed. It's classy, airy, and nicely modern. It gives you all the sense of world travel that one would expect from a very proper international airport. The fact they have newspapers from around the world doesn't hurt either. Sure, connections between terminals can be onerous due to the distance, but as I finally found out this time around, there is actually a shuttle to take you between them, although at times it seems hard to find.
The one single, bastard thing that hoses everything good about CDG is the passport control. It's a disaster. Take a look below if you'd like to see the line from my last trip two days ago. There are three, count 'em, three windows to check passports for every single person traveling through CDG internationally. W. T. F.?!! Naturally, the lines are hell and while waiting is often part of life, when you have an extremely tight connection, which is often the case, you will actually miss it simply due to the airport's ability to get your passport stamped. This has happened to me before and while the opportunity to buy French cheese while waiting three hours for the next flight has its merits, this is just dumb.
The airport blames the government and the government blames the airport. In the end, it's the passenger who gets screwed. There's not really much way around it other than to not fly through CDG, but that's pretty damned hard given that the routes through there go just about everywhere in the world. About the only suggestion I give people is to try and guess which of the two lines is the one being served by the two windows as opposed to the one. Also, ignore the EU Citizens and All Others signs. Both lines are for everyone, although the supposed EU one might be faster at times due to them basically not paying attention to most people in that line, while scrutinizing most everyone in the other line. Oh yeah, if you're not white, be prepared for no end of crap as the control agents are quite racist. Lastly, try and avoid having a connection flight between 7-9 in the morning as that's when it seems every flight in Europe connects at CDG.
25 07 2009 1 comment
Tags: airports, france, paris, travel
No, that business is flat-out Real
In worthless gossip rags that I love to read, such as WWTDD, it's usually the case that the first commenter to chime in always said, "first!". This was soon challenged for the number one moron comment spot by "fake!" whenever some hot girl was the feature of the article whose breast authenticity was being called in to question. I don't really care as either answer keeps me from delving in to the sordid world that is blog article comments.
I bring this up as when watching, this video, the natural response is to blow it off as a fake. Oh no, but it is not. It's the typical approach to Princess Juliana International Airport on St. Martin in the Caribbean. Take a look at a couple more shots from Google Image Search or look at the fellow below, where I love the warning sign about the planes coming in and everyone just sitting around staring at that hulking bird from KLM coming in.
The reason for these absolutely low, apeshit landings is best seen on Google Maps. The runway is a mere 2,433 meters long. For comparison, the runways most of us usually land on at SFO are 3,231and 3,618 meters. What this short distance for St. Martin means is that the planes need to drop in exceedingly low on their approach, prior to touchdown and you end up with what is one of the more insane things to watch.
Of course, there is apparently only one airline still flying the 747 like the one you see in that video. Most other airlines are flying slightly smaller planes these days as flights are down, fuel costs are up, and taking a plane loaded with 500 or so people down a skinny runway was probably not anyone's idea of a safe time; at airline headquarters, as I'm sure the pilots get super buzzed about it. It should be noted that there have never been any incidents at the airport. This make sense, because the weather is good, the land is flat, and if the pilot had to land somewhere other than the runway, he has nice shallow water all around to dump in to and I'm sure on every approach the passengers must be thinking that that is probably what is about to happen since they see nearly nothing except water until they touch down.
29 03 2009 2 comments
Tags: airports, travel
Damn it's Cold up in this here Europe
As I'm making my way back via Paris today, I gotta say that this has been one of the coldest trips to Europe I've had. Obviously this is a no brainer given that it's the middle of winter. It just happens that this is one of the coldest winters here in a long time. Forget about the damned rain in the plain of Spain. Let's talk about snow. In all of Spain. And a lot of it. It's completely screwed the incredibly screwable Barajas Airport in Madrid. Basically, when a pigeon takes a poo on the auxiliary runway, they shut down to one runway there, so you can only imagine what it was like with snow. Bad news. It made the opening disaster of Heathrow's T5 last year look pleasant. Of course, I don't know how bad it really is as the Spanish media blows things a little out of proportion.
But then there was the fact that it snowed in Barcelona. This is the first time that's happened in 12 years. That makes it not quite the sunny holiday retreat so many people know it as. Of course, despite this, there were still scores of tourists as there always are in Barcelona. Still a great city despite that, although anywhere in snow can be tough to deal with. Note to self: Look in to sitting out the winters in Cape Town next time.
Probably the worst though was an abortive trip to Auchan in which the snow was dumping too much over the pass (all of a meager 200 meters) the we had to turn back. Still though, the overall trip hasn't been a waste. I experienced a Christmas and New Year's outside the US and we made a great many other smaller trips around the area when the weather permitted. Sure, it could have been better and the 20C+ in San Francisco would have been nice for my and #1 Fan's birthdays, but still, an enjoyable outing to the Europe. Naturally, I wrote this before catching my flight, so talk to me once I'm back to see how the worst customs setup in the world at Charles de Gaulle went as well as the 12 hour leg from Paris to SF went.
15 01 2009 0 comments
Tags: airports, the europe, weather
It's the Wood that Makes this Cheese Good
One of the major downsides of flying through Charles de Gaulle in Paris is that you will inevitably: miss your connecting flight, be heavily delayed, or get overly stressed through an insufficient four customs windows through which all of Europe passes at various parts of the day. It of course didn't used to be like this and it's our ever-increasing number of flights that is overloading the airports that exist, although Heathrow would probably suck even if it had two flights a day going through it.
A great deal of this can oft be forgiven as in Charles de Gaulle they have things such as free newspapers in all the major European languages, "fast food" kiosks with croissants that are eight times better than almost anywhere else in the US, and a French food and wine shop in Terminal F that is to die for. I have gotten to know Terminal F well and especially Gate F29 as that is where it seems flights down to Barcelona happen most of the time. Of course, the in laws are highly supportive of these F-bound journeys as it means we'll inevitably pass through the French shop and stock up on a number of cheese that they have from a variety of regions in France.
The home run in the most recent trip through CDG is this cheese from the Mont D'Or region which is about here in France. This cheese (and cheese seems too small a word for it) knows no earthly bounds. Describing it is tricky. You can see a shot of its quickly receding mass below. It's definitely a soft, creamy cheese, with a flavor I describe somewhere between the absolute best of cream cheeses and the absolute best of butters. But, there is an element to it that sets it above and beyond most other cheese in that they age the rounds in a layer of tree bark. While it may seem strange, those genius French realized that what's good for wine could also be good for cheese. The wood aging gives it an element that makes it pretty hard to describe other than to say, mutha uckerin' delicious.
Finding the cheese outside of CDG can be tricky. It is often available at Auchan, but not in as good a quality. It runs a bit stale and loses its best elements. So, it appears that short of going just west of the French-Swiss border and getting the cheese in the region where it's made, the best bet for the freshest version of this cheese comes from the airport. Hit that shop if you're ever in Terminal F, although I'm guessing that shops like this exist in other terminals too, in which case, hit them as well.
21 12 2008 0 comments
Tags: airports, cheese, food, paris
Heathrow Terminal 5, the $8.6 Billion Thumbs Down
As one might be able to tell with my coverage of airports, I've flown far too much, through too many countries over the last couple of months. While nothing compared to some business travelers, I had the joy of logging in 16 flights during this period with four of them being intercontinental to three different continents.
But, I bring this up to possibly (although most likely not) soften my rancid criticism of Heathrow's new Terminal 5. This multi-billion dollar expansion of the airport is nothing short of a huge flop. Sure, it will continue to be massive transit hub for the future, but one that no one is going to enjoy the use of. Let's put aside the whole baggage disaster from back in March. These things happen. It was painful, but let's move on to bigger and better problems.
For instance, arrival. I flew in to Heathrow from Budapest on British Airways. One of the primary reasons that they built T5 was to better house BA, so in a sense, this is BA's home. For some reason, when I arrived at this brand new terminal, on time, at the right terminal, I was dumped out on the tarmac and had to use one of the movable stairs to get off the plane. How is it that at a new terminal that's not even being fully used yet, the primary airline of this terminal is parking jets out on the tarmac? This does not bode well for the future.
After getting off the plane and getting wet from a touch of the London trickle, I made my way on to the transport bus to go to the proper terminal. Luggage wasn't an issue thanfully. That came up quickly and it seems that the snafus with the luggage system have been worked out.
The main issue in luggage retrieval was that after ripping off my tracking tags I couldn't find anywhere to deposit them. I looked high and low for a trashcan, but none were to be found. A docent saw me looking around like and idiot and asked if I needed help to which I asked him where a trashcan was. "Oh, there aren't any. They didn't put any in for security purposes." What?!! No trashcans in the whole damned terminal. So, I guess everyone should learn from this and dump their garbage wherever they're sitting. It's what T5 wants you to do. Think of it as modern trash disposal in a world where no airline passenger has trash.
Then there came the issue of getting to my connecting flight. Looking at the sign, my flight wasn't coming up. I later on found out it was at Terminal 2, which I had forgotten. I don't really understand how it is that something I can look up on the internet can't be broadcast on arrival and departures boards. They are digital after all and this wouldn't take much to have all the flights at the various terminals shown. But, once knowing where to go, moving on to the other terminal proved tricky as well, since the signage in T5 is abysmal. Trying to figure out where to go is not a simple process. Naturally, I did find the way and got out of T5 quite quickly, hoping to not set foot in it anytime soon.
Overall, I got the feeling that much like Barajas in Madrid, so much more work went in to finding fancy shops and having a good look to the place than making it usable. That and there seems to be some kind of arrogance on the part of BA that there is no possible way you'd be flying in to T5 to not be flying out of T5 as well, even though the British do this all the time with budget flights. Suffice to say, the airport has a long way to go before it's a sensible place and I wonder if the Queen ever feels that she cut the ribbon a little too soon on the whole shebang.
16 07 2008 2 comments
Tags: airports, england, london, the europe
From Budapest Airport and Back on Public Transport
Prior to going to the airport for Budapest, I heard many accounts about how great the taxis or minibuses were. "Just a mere 24€!" some people said. Locals told me that taking a taxi out to the airport was the best way to get there as well. But, with taxis costing about 5,000 Forint (20€) for two people (if they felt like being honest) I thought that there must be a better way.
Yes, of course there is a better way, but naturally it involves public transportation which an amazing amount of people loathe. I don't know why as it's generally about as fast as a taxi, much cheaper, and eschews the whole issue of having to deal with taxi drivers who are, the devil.
So, here it is. This is how you get from the center of Budpaest to the airport on public transportation. If you can take the #3 line directly to Kőbánya-Kispest, then you don't need to transfer and the whole trip will cost two people, 1,000 Forint or 4€. If you do need to take two lines and transfer at a station like Deák tér, then the trip will run you 1380 Forint or about 5.50€. Once you get off the #3 Metro at Kőbánya-Kispest, then you take the #200 bus out to the airport and get off at your respective terminal.
That's it. It takes between 45-75 minutes depending on if you hit the train and bus connection right, but otherwise, it's incredibly simple. Just know which terminal your flight is at (this really only matters if it's 1 or 2A/B) and you're set. Taxi avoided. Flight reached. Money saved. It does help if you buy your tickets at the ticket window in the Metro. Just say, "airport" and they'll give you what you need to get to the airport from the station where you're buying the ticket.
15 07 2008 0 comments
Tags: airports, budapest, hungary, the europe, trains
How to Survive N'Djili Airport in Kinshasa
Upon arrival in Kinshasa, DR Congo, the first site for visitors in N'Djili Airport, which is definitely not the most pleasant of sites. It's rundown. It's smelly. It's crowded and it is overall a complete zoo.
Previous to visiting Congo, I read up a great deal on the country and this airport was one of my biggest fears. The endless delays in getting through it, the possbility of losing a great deal from your luggage when going through "customs", and then trying to get away from the airport and in to the center of Kinshas were all daunting problems not allowing me to sleep on the seven hour leg of the flight from Paris to Kinshasa.
Once we got there, my fears weren't fully lived up to. They have apparently cleaned up the airport a great deal in recent years and the need to have a "control" to usher you through the airport has lessened. It still sucks though and there are what I consider to be the five levels of purgatory before you are actually released upong Kinshasa.
1. Passport Inspection This is pretty minor and is just checking to see if you have a visa. The line is lengthy and stretches out on to the tarmac as naturally there are no true landing gates for the planes.
2. Passport Control A much longer process. You stand in lines with everyone else as you weed your way through a couple of booths checking each person's allowance to be in the country. This was apparently much faster in the past, but has been slowed down in the last month as the Congolese staff are learning to use some new computers that the EU got them. Once they get used to it, it will most likely speed up. One thing to note here is that no matter how seemingly stupid of a request the police might ask of you, go along with it. They have nothing else to do other than controlling that line and if you feel like giving them shit, they will give it right back. Just be patient and listen to them and respect them.
3. Health Control A minor step to make sure you have your yellow fever vaccination and your immunization card, which if your traveling here, you should most definitely have had.
4. Luggage... Sweet jesus almighty. This is the worst part. You stand along the luggage conveyor for something like two hours or more waiting for your baggage to come out. This may seem like a boring wait, except that there is no air conditioning in the space and there are all these random guys who want to "help" you grab your bags for a tip. It's sweaty and completely not fun, but is part of this journey. The biggest issue here is if you bag was lost, like one of ours was in the tight transfer in Paris. You don't find out that the bag is gone until the very end of all of this and then once you know, you have to register it as lost and then wait until the next flight, of which there are only three a week. Of course you have to get in a circular line (also known as a mobbing) to get in there to register your lost luggage.
5. Clearance and Onward Once you have your luggage, ignore every single person outside the airport. They will forcefully try to grab your bags to again "help" you carry them for a tip. Just cling on to them and keep going for either your ride, the taxis, or if you're lucky enough, the UN shuttle to the center. It should be noted that the taxis will be $50+ to get in to the center. Why? Because it's an hour ride on some of the worst roads ever conceived.
But that's it. Just a few simple steps. Just a few minor hours and you'll soon be in Kinshasa, home to 10 million people and a whole lot more craziness that I'll get in to again when I can get at the internet, which is scarce commodity in these parts.
28 04 2008 5 comments
Tags: airports, dr congo, in to africa, kinshasa, travel
Barajas Airport in Madrid is Messy Design
Yes, that's right, Madrid has fired a warning shot across the bow of the design world in Spain. Their aim was pointed squarely in the direction of Barcelona, Spain's design center. It's just that this attempt comes somewhere around two decades two late.
This all boils down to the new Terminal 4 and I suppose the number one issue I have with the new terminal (which is the newest and most heavily designed of the four) is that is was just done so that Madrid could thumb their noses at the rest of Spain and dance around singing, "Neener, neener, neener. We're the capital. Ha, ha, ha-ha, ha." Definitely not the best approach for a country dealing with extremely strong and prevalent secessionist groups.
So, instead of spreading out the flow of air traffic for intercontinental flights like we do in the US, they decided to force everything to bounce through Madrid when the destination is outside Europe. This isn't to say that if you're flying on British Airways or Air France to or from the US, that you have to go through Madrid to get to Barcelona, but if you're flying on Iberia, you damned well better believe that you're going to touch down at Barajas before getting to continue on. So naturally, this construction is going to be self-fulfilling in that there will indeed be much more air traffic at Barajas than say, Sevilla, Granada, or Barcelona because of the mandate to force more traffic to go through there. Such is the thinking in Madrid. And such is the reason that an ETA terrorist blew up a massive chunk of this new terminal in December of 2006. These things don't make people happy.
Looking past the political ramifications of this terminal, there is the fact that it sucks. The design is not something I care for on an artistic level, but that's a completely subjective thing. The biggest problem is that it's pointless and doesn't work. For instance:
What the hell are those big exhaust pipe looking things on the floor? Will they reheat my tea that grew cold from the lengthy ride on the Metro to the airport?
Why are the trash cans only 30 cm deep (a foot for metric-so-scary-land)?
Why is it that when people walk through a door that is clearly marked for those arriving to pass through that an alarm goes off at irregular intervals?
Why can people not figure out how to open the bathroom door to leave?
Why is it that when there is the least bit unfriendly weather (heavy rain in this instance) that they have to only run one of their two runways? SFO runs every damned runway even when there's fog.
And most importantly, how is it in a building that isn't even two years old, the ceiling leaks like a sieve when is rains?
It's for these and a number of other reasons that I vote this 21st century construct a massive failure, despite the fact it won the Stirling Prize; a prize that obviously weights federal masturbation higher than passenger usability. If it doesn't I'm at a loss for why this catastrophe won an award other than the fact it built wavy ceilings to scale never before imagined possible. It's crazy that on so many level, it's actually less usable than LAX despite all the money that went in to this gigantic potato chip.
19 04 2008 0 comments
Tags: airports, madrid, spain, the europe, travel
Am I Crazy or Does LAX Suck Ghetto Style?
Call me crazy, but from arrival to departure, I was less than amazed with my first encounter of Los Angeles International Airport. Amazingly, with the amount of traveling I do, I've never flown through LAX and apparently, I was missing little and gaining a great deal by flying out of SFO.
LAX is just old. It feels like it was built in the 1960's (1961 according to Wikipedia) and has never since been remodeled or even really cared for. I experienced two fronts of it, arriving in a domestic terminal and departing from an international terminal. I have yet to really understand how this slab of concrete moves nearly 62 million people a year through it while a place like SFO moves only about half that (37 million) yet feels a lot more like a proper airport.
Things that made the airport feel paltry to me were:
- Trash and uncleaned floors in many places
- Schedules shown in housings from the 70's
- The really crappy bus system to get between terminals which is seriously unneeded
- Bathrooms that feel like they're about 20 years past a remodel (I mean, no auto-flush? I'm not a germophobe, but come on!)
- Ghetto maintenance, such as a row of tiles that were knocked out in a restroom that left a gaping hole in to the interior of the wall, which look like they're been that way for years.
Then of course there is the staff. While I've never been a fan of airport staff, those at LAX appeared to be some of the worst. They are not friendly at best. I saw two French women in front of me when going through security who didn't understand that they needed their boarding pass instead of the piece of paper that they were presenting. The woman at the gate just kept yelling at them in English to get our their boarding pass. We have an international "gateway" here and the staff don't know how to ask for basic things in any other language than English, which I might add is not the official language of the US no matter what any hick thinks.
Unfortunately, I have to fly back in to LAX in about two months, which I pray will go well despite all the ug that is LAX. From this point forward, I'm going to make every effort to fly from SFO and avoid the funktastic dip to the south, even if it costs me a bit more money.
17 04 2008 0 comments
Tags: airports, travel
