Three babies and an epileptic man do not a good long haul flight make

Well, the flight back to Germany was half okay, and half complete shit. The half okay bit was flying to Singapore, and then spending a day just tooling around Singapore trying out my new camera. Singapore’s alright, nuthin’ special, but for me it’s only really worth a day. You could do a lot of shopping, but seeing as I didn’t have a lot of money, nor room in my bag it would have been a pointless exercise for me. But the lady I stayed with, a friend of my parents, was kind enough to hire (and pay for! heh heh!) a chauffeur to drive me round Singapore for two hours. He even had proper driving gloves and a proper driver’s uniform. The only other thing I did in Singapore was a boat cruise down the river, but that was nothing to write home about. Even though I just did. Whoops, sorry.

The completely shit bit was flying from Singapore to Paris with Air France. Firstly, the plane was tiny, and the seats were tiny – I reckon this plane was straight from the 70s. I’m not a big fan of paying a lot of money for the privilege of sitting in a confined environment for 14 hours, so I wasn’t filled with much joy to start with. Secondly, the hostie in charge of my section was an angry young Frenchman, who didn’t take kindly to being kind.
Then I scouted out my flying companions. Next to me was an arrogant bloke from somewhere else (although, to be fair to him, I’m sure he thought the same of me). And on the other side of me was an Aussie bloke gently cradling a small child.
Hmmmm.
That could be a problem. Small children and fourteen hours spell trouble.
I look across the aisle – and there’s his wife, cradling a new born baby.
Hmmmmmmmmm.
And next to her is another couple, with yet another newborn baby.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
That was when I knew this flight was going to be shit.

About fifteen minutes after take off, I hear this voice behind me “Attencion! Attencion! S’il vous plaît !” It was a Frenchman behind me urgently trying to get the attention of the not-so-kind flight attendant. I turned around, and realised why he was so urgent – the guy next to him was having an epileptic fit. I would have thought it was impossible to do this, because there simply isn’t the leg, arm, and head room to fully extend your limbs and shake violently. But, this guy was giving it his best shot, including frothing at the mouth.

So the unkind flight attendant had to contend with an epileptic man. A few of the passengers around him pinned him down (including a middle-aged woman wearing a g-string. Not that I was particularly looking, but she did happen to have her arse inches from my face, so it was kinda hard not to notice. It’s interesting how that even in somewhat alarming circumstances, the male instinct still manages to break through, isn’t it? Anyway, back to the action folks . . .), and when he stopped his fit laid him in the aisle. The captain made the diplomatic statement “If there is a doctor on board, could you please make yourself known to the cabincrew, as one of our passengers is feeling unwell.” and that heralded the arrival of a doctor, who declared “Yes, he is unwell” and they carted him off to someplace to fix him up (Do jumbos have a sick bay?) A quick search of his bag found some medication, and a couple of hours later he was back in his seat, looking a bit woozy, but otherwise fine.
Naturally, this incident led to the formulation of Maddock’s First Law of Transcontinental Flight (MFLTF):
If a man has an epileptic fit, all babies in surrounding rows will start crying immediately and loudly, for the next hour.

A short time after returning to his seat he had another fit. This time, he must’ve bitten his lip, because there was blood mixed in with the froth coming from his mouth. The babies started crying, the g-string lady, unkind flight attendant and doctor were all called again, and once more he was pinned down, and then laid out in the aisle until being carted off to the same place as before. And there he remained there until the last half an hour of the flight. If you ask me, it was just a ploy to get out of those ridiculously small seats. By the time he returned shortly before we landed, I had almost finished work on Maddock’s Second Law of Transcontinental Flight (MSLTF):
If three babies are in the same row of an aircraft, at any given moment at least one will be crying.
Ah, the joys of long-haul flights.


Take a left at Cologne
Brussels – a name to conjure up nightmares for many a young kid, and also me. Y'know, Sprouts? Although this time I'm talking about the city. It’s damn easy to get to, just drive to Cologne, and head left. We (coupla Aussies, coupla krauts, and a seppo) went to see the Counting Crows, but when we rocked up to the gig on Sun night, a big neon sign gleefully informed us the gig was off – apparently they’d been snowed in at Calais (or something) and decided to go to Amsterdam. Counting Crows can sod off then, and I hope they get venereal diseases whilst in Amsterdam.
Anyway, Brussels is okay – it has the best centre square in Europe, and that’s about it. Oh, there is the Atomium, which is somewhat spectacular; a 92m high iron molecule, and you can go to the top atom and look out over Brussels. Which isn’t too crash hot actually, but the whole structure does look quite impressive.
The only other thing of note (to me anyway, this next bit will be boring to you) is that we also went to a musical instrument museum, which was a lot better than the last one I went to, but still left a lot to be desired. A major bonus though was visiting the shop, where I found a poster with some info on the Italian guy that made my violin, and he gets quite a rap, which is nice. His name is Marinus Capicchioni – look him up! (I know none of you care about this, but you’ve read it now, so stiff shit! Haha! You’ll get cultured even if it kills you!)

There’s no boardin’ like snowboardin’
Me and my totally bodacious workmates went on a gnarly boardin’ and skiin’ trip to the far-out-dude alps. We went to Oberstdorf, right on the border of Germany and Austria (in fact, it’s so close that you actually snowboard/ski into Austria, and then catch the chairlift back to Germany). Before going, I read a bit about Oberstdorf in my Lonely Planet Guide to Everything, and I was delighted to read that they described it as carefree – now this is my kinda place! Snowboarding can get stuffed, I want to relax by the fire, skulling vodka whilst chatting to the Swedish bikini team. Sadly on reading it for a second time, I realised it actually said carfree. I was stuck with a lack of autos.
Leaving the warmth of our car at the bottom of the mountain, it was a personal best –16° outside. My snot froze. At this point I was wishing we’d chosen a carefree place. However, the cable car to the top of the mountain resulted in absolutely spectacular scenery - I’d almost forgotten that the sun does actually shine over this part of Europe! Once we hit the slopes, all my mates turned into totally gnarly dudes and actually knew what they were doing. I didn’t. Despite this, I did manage learn a few valuable lessons that day:

I have learnt not to try and stop yourself with just your thumb.
a) it doesn’t actually work very well
b) it really, really, really hurts your thumb.
As a result of this, I have also learnt the usefulness of opposable thumbs, which you only fully realise and thus appreciate once you have to do without one for a while. Opening doors, holding a glass of water, putting gloves on, punching someone, surreptitiously picking your nose – all of these are dead easy with an opposable thumb. The unfortunate thing is you don’t really need an opposable thumb to operate a computer, so sadly no time off work for me.

I also have a new found hatred of ski lifts. One of these bastards is what caused me to hurt my oh so precious thumb. I have also learnt to get out of the way of them quick smart. This is quite tricky if you’re a rabbit like me. I found the best method involved somehow skidding as far as I could, and trying my best not to fall over. But if you don’t get out of the way, although the one you were sitting in has gone, the next one will smack you on the back of the head. And it hurts. And then the chairlift operator yells at you in German, and stops the whole thing, and then everyone looks at you and laughs. And then you swear at them, and then you swear at the chairlifts, and then you throw you snowboard in disgust, and it hits a little kid and then the snow turns red and . . . oh never mind. I just don’t like ‘em, alright?

Finally, to make you all really jealous, here are my future travel plans: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Prague, Greek islands (yes, I’m definitely going to go to Mykonos and pick myself up a chips’n’gravy and a battered hamburger), Glastonbury, Edinburgh and perhaps Italy. Now where’s my pay rise so that I can pay for all this shit?