Tag: airport

Hello, this is car fifty-five; we’re in a truck

One of my all time favorite movies is Blues Brothers. Growing up, I watched this movie over a hundred times, and still, to this day, whenever play the movie again, I can instantly quote many of the lines from it. It was for this reason, that when I told the people that I was traveling with that I was in ” a truck”, I was instantly reminded of one of my favorite moments from that movie. I couldn’t help but laugh at the situation we found ourselves in. I was making my way to our airplane for a recent trip to Prague and I found myself in “a truck”. I even texted this fact to my friends I was traveling with, and was instantly reminded of this line.

To be clear, my wife recently had surgery on her ankle which means that she has to walk around on crutches for awhile. She is doing great, but she is just getting to the point of being weight bearing on it, and that means that she tires out pretty easily. This does not work well when traveling to Europe where everywhere you go, it is best to just walk there or take public transportation. We decided to bring a wheelchair with us to get around town with more ease, but getting that on to a plane is not always the easiest, especially when the company you are flying with is RyanAir.

To be fair, RyanAir was very respectful and accommodating. I usually do not have many nice things to say about the company, but in this case, I do. We had to gate check the wheelchair which we thought meant giving the wheelchair to the people at the gate, and then getting it back when we got off the plane, but this was not the case. Instead, we were pulled from the line, taken to one of those trucks that they use to load food on to a plane, and got to ride on that in order to get on the plane.

We got to skip a lot of the headache that we usually experienced with flying RyanAir and moved through many of the security measure quickly at the airport. Still, it was a little excessive. We just needed to wheelchair put on the plane, so we could get it back when we got to our destination. We did not need a whole group of people dedicated to getting us on and off the plane. Still, there are other people out there that do need this kind of service, and it is nice to know that it is out there. It just shows that traveling does not have to be just for those who can easily get around. Everybody can get out there and see the world, so take that chance while you still can.

Until next time, keep exploring and experiencing life’s little pleasures.

Denver International Airport – It is still weird

Ever since Denver International Airport was created, there has been controversy surrounding it. The designers had some bizarre ideas of how to give the place its decor, and it ended up with some really weird pieces of artwork. There used to be the murals depicting children presiding over the death of an animal on a World War II kind of battle field. There was the strange Native American music constantly playing on the bridge to Concourse A. And there were the strange gargoyle that could be found in the baggage claim area. The strange design of the landing strips along with all of this art created an environment ripe for the emergence of conspiracy theories. It did not help much that in order for Denver to be considered a city worthy of the international scene, they erected an anatomically correct giant blue horse rearing up on its hind legs and staring at you with its devil red eyes as the first thing travelers see as they leave the airport and head into the city.

Denver became a strange place in the mind’s of the people living outside of it all of because of its airport. Considering the airport recently turned twenty-five years old, the fine people of the city decided that it needed a remodeling. I have been to the airport a few times since and have not had time to notice the strange artwork anymore because everywhere I turned I ran into the signs of construction in process. Most of the time I came, I was in a rush to get out of the airport or rush to a plane that was getting ready to leave, so I did not have time to look for signs of the things that made this airport unique.

I got stuck in the main building recently, and had an opportunity to walk around and look for the strange sights that I had come to know over the years of living in Denver. I did not think that they would keep the bizarre artwork in the hopes of becoming more respected internationally, but I was surprised to see this was not the case. Despite having to navigate through the construction, they have done an amazing job of modernizing the building, giving it a sleek and user friendly kind of design. And though a couple of the pieces of art could have been hidden behind construction walls, many of the strange pieces that made DIA weird were still there. I could find the gargoyles, the Native American music playing, the horse, and a couple of these murals even though the oddest ones were still hidden. It made me relieved that DIA would embrace this weird aspect of itself, and I hope that it never loses it.

So the next time you travel through Denver try to find these weird aspects of the airport, and embrace the odd nature of DIA. And if you know of any weird things that I should find in other places in the world, let me know, so I can hunt them down for myself.

Back to Summer

Back when I watched television, I remember a commercial of a person taking a trip from Flagstaff, Arizona to Phoenix, and how they shed their clothes along the way because of the changing weather. On my last day in Europe, I had a similar experience. I took a bunch of trains with many stops along the way from Murren, Switzerland on top of the Alps to Frankfurt, Germany where I took a plane back to Bangkok. I left at 8:30 in the morning wearing all of my warm clothes to hopping back into shorts and a t-shirt by the time I went to bed the next night. I thought I would point out the change as it happened by taking a picture at each one of the stops along the way.

Murren, Switzerland was the highest point, and the coldest. I had to bundle up and crunch across the snow.

We were still pretty high up when we arrived in Grutschlap, but did not have to leave the station as we waited for the cable car to take us down the mountain.

It was still a little cold in Lauterbrunnen because it was early in the morning, but the short wait did not make it feel that cold.

We had made it to Interlaken, Switzerland on a train and felt the constant descent from the valley we had stayed in for the last five days. The snow was still there, but reserved for the far away mountains.

We hopped on another train to Spiez in Switzerland, and we could start to see more blue sky and the need to pull off the coat.

Basel was our last town in Switzerland. We had quite the break there and it was getting really nice.

We reached the outer station of Frankfurt and had to put the coats back on and stick under the safety of shelter because of the rain that had come out of nowhere.

The rains had stopped in the twenty minutes it took us to get to Frankfurt’s main station, but it was still cool outside because the sun had dipped below the horizon.

Even though it was cold outside, I was in Frankfurt Airport, and knew my next stop would be Thailand, so I packed my coat away for the next couple of months. I would not need it where I was going.

It was fun being out in Europe for the Winter Break. Thanks for following along as I got to enjoy the cold weather for a little bit. Never take it for granted because you will miss it when it is gone.