Flying from the United States to Continental Europe

 Back in 1988, I traveled with a school group to West Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.  The negative side to such travel is coping with airplanes and airports.  From the time I left O’Hare Airport in Chicago, to the time I arrived at the Vienna airport, I was beginning to think that perhaps foreign travel isn’t the abundance of enjoyment I had expected it to be.  However, this feeling dissipated entirely by mid-morning of our day in Vienna.        

At O’Hare, we stayed for a couple of hours, for our flight was delayed about an hour.  When we, the group traveling together, were finally in the flying airplane, I panicked.  It had been about five years since I flew, but it’s amazing I didn’t remember the ear aches and stomach aches involved.

 But that was not by any means the worst flying experience we had.  At the JFK International Airport in New York City, we had to wait for hours; the plane was delayed.  Afterwards, we rode it for eight hours overnight, while the time zone changed to eight hours later than it would have been at home.  It was almost impossible to sleep, and by the time we landed in Hamburg, I needed a bath.  As if all this weren’t enough, we waited at the Hamburg Airport for a while…then we waited on the plane itself for two more hours, because it was “having mechanical difficulties”…and finally the pilot announced that our flight was cancelled.  Oh, we had such a jolly time waiting around at the airport, listening to agitated Germans and being searched as though we were escaped convicts.  I vowed that if we had just one more cancellation or delay I would never involve myself in foreign travel again. 

 

Our last two plane rides were quite short, but nothing major went wrong; the first of the two went to Dusseldorf and the second to our destination, Vienna.  The last trip made me rather anxious (as though I weren’t already) because I was sitting far from the group, and thus was completely surrounded by Germans.  The German next to me was drinking wine as though it were cranberry juice—for we were actually served red wine—and he was smoking.  The latter gave me an urge to open the window and thrust my head out.       

We arrived in Vienna at night, thereby losing our free day in Vienna, for we were a total of eight hours late.  Despite the catastrophes of the first two days, when I awoke on the following morning I was refreshed by a bath and about seven hours of sleep, and I even felt a pinch of anticipation.

 Heinz, our Austrian tour guide, spoke English excellently and was rather amusing.  For instance, as we were driving out to downtown Vienna, he said that there’s a place in Vienna called the Bermuda Triangle; it contains a lot of bars, and many people who have gone there have never been heard from since.

It was a splendid day in Vienna.  We wandered the streets.  We peered into shop windows, at such things as jewelry, dolls, clothing, chocolate bunnies and intricately painted egg shells.  Stately old buildings, stone streets, Austrians wearing interesting clothing, and phaetons with horses surrounded us.  Also, we pointed out a variety of door handles, since there weren’t such outlandish things as doorknobs.             

I had my first experiences with foreign currency, though that could be considered negative as well as positive.  For instance, I purchased a jumping-jack from an amiable salesman who was patient with me even when I rummaged through my purse, dropped coins on the floor, and was short of twenty-four Schillings; fortunately, he let me use two dollars.  Finally, the salesman remarked cheerfully, “This money is confusing, yes?”

 In short, that day in Vienna and the remainder of the week actually proved worth all the flight problems. I never again regretted visiting Europe…and will hopefully do so again.  Since then, I have traveled to Canada, England, Ireland, India, Nepal, and Tibet and hope to do more foreign travel in the future.