I’ve just spent a few days in Holland. If John Denver was still around he’d hate the place. Searching for a Rocky Mountain High (the Rocky Mountain bit, not the high bit – that’s everywhere) here would be like looking for a massage with a happy ending at a Puritan League meeting. The only hills here are inverted – when you go down into a tunnel and come up and out the other side.
I got here on Finnair, which I’ve never used before. After decades of travel it’s unusual for me to experience a new (to me) airline despite the fact that new airlines are springing up all over the place all of the time. Perhaps that’s because you’d avoid most of the new budget outfits like the plague.
But Finnair was great. One disappointment, if you could call it that, was that the cabin crew in the part of the plane I was in were all Asian (bogus racism alert!!!!!!). We did leave from Singapore so maybe it was the local crew but I expected at least one or two cool blondes. But I’m not complaining. Pick an Asian airline, any one – Cathay Pacific, Singapore, Malaysian, Korean Air etc – and all of their people are guaranteed to know the difference between offering a service and being your servant. That can’t be said about certain Australian, US and British airlines, some of whose fussbudgets would prefer to throw that drink in your lap as serve it to you with a smile (which should always be reciprocated – free piece of advice there). But in this case it could certainly be said about Finnair.
We landed in Helsinki on the way to Amsterdam and I saw snow for the first time in years. I also wore a coat and a scarf when I got off the plane there and later in Amsterdam also for the first time in years. The first day in Holland was bitterly cold. The sort or cold where you could snap off an ear and not feel a thing. I was reminded of the last time the CB and I were in Europe in winter on vacation and vowed and declared never to do it again. This was business though so I guess it didn’t count. And it was November so not officially winter unless the EU has redefined the seasons in accordance with some transgender, marriage equality, climate change directive from the UN to spite the Brits because of Brexit. Or something.
Like another flat place we visited recently – Denmark – there seem to be more bicycles than cars, especially in and around the town centres. I was in Haarlem and there were bike lanes everywhere. For the uninitiated this is a real hazard and the bells don’t help because they can be ringing all around you or not at all as the case may be. When my colleagues and I ventured outside we were constantly hauling each other out of the way of whispering, wurring, scarf trailing missiles. It was like a practice run for the future world of electric cars. They’ll have to be fitted with diesel engines so we can hear them coming.
On my way home it was Finnair again to Helsinki then on to Hong Kong then Brisbane. I had been fortunate in that my contracted employer has stumped up for biz class so I settled into my cubicle, contemplating the glass of Perrier (champagne, not water) on my little side table and hoped the bunch of Australian women who were screeching and cackling on the other side of the cabin didn’t do something really embarrassing that reflected badly on me. My inner snob is emerging; I’m a very intolerant traveller. By all means get pissed, I do it all the time, but leave the bogan on the cruise you just got off or wherever it is you’ve been.
Shit, I didn’t think I had that level of nastiness in me. Must be because I am currently immersed in Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens’ memoir. The old adage “the word is mightier than the sword” was written for him although he would have considered it trite and a cliché despite the fact that his word-sword and especially his spoken words were uncompromisingly and ruthlessly rapier sharp. He quotes William Safire as saying “clichés should be avoided like the plague”. Quite so. I use present tense in the previous sentence because it’s in his book and past tense in the sentence before that because tragically, he is no longer with us. But he is preserved forever in print and in the formaldehyde of YouTube.
You can’t complain about lie flat seats these days….but I’m going to. As I said previously, Finnair is great but, and this is really pushing it, you really need to lie on your right side because the space where your feet go sort of curves to the right. So if you lie on your left side you’re feet are against the curve and it’s like having your shoes on the wrong feet because the end bit is rather narrow. But this is Venezuelan President-for-life, Nicholas Maduro complaining that his steak is medium when it should be well-done so I shall shut up.
If anything of interest was going to happen between Helsinki and Brisbane, I would have let you know.
It didn’t.