Live from Austin!

I am cheap. I don’t think I go quite as far as being a tightwad, but I’m frugal. I buy generics at the supermarket and drugstore, and when I order from Amazon, I always choose the free shipping option, even though it sometimes drives me crazy waiting for the item to arrive. I don’t mind spending money on functionality, but I find it tough to spend extra for luxury.

Today, however, I did something I found difficult: I paid the extra money for seat upgrades for our trip to the UK later this year. We traveled that way on our last trip, and the 8 hour flight across the Atlantic was vastly more pleasant than the couple of hours in cattle class between Austin and Chicago.

I don’t want to risk arriving in the UK with my back in spasm, and having a miserable time for the next couple of months (including a 12 hour return journey). Another issue is that we’re only going to be there a week–so the less jetlagged we are on arrival, the better. There’s a third bonus, however: by going with British Airways, I managed to avoid Chicago O’Hare, Newark, and JFK. It’ll just be a short 1 hour hop in cattle class to Dallas, then the whole of the rest of the journey will be spent in relative luxury. I plan to settle down comfortably with the Kindle and read a book or two, then sleep a little after the 3-course dinner.

It’s more than I’ve ever spent on travel before. Last time the upgrade was about a 20-30% premium, this time it about doubled the price. Alarm bells rang at American Express, and I had to call them to confirm that yes, it really was me buying plane tickets. It then took six attempts before they could persuade their security system to let me complete the purchase. It seems they know my spending patterns pretty well.

It wasn’t too bad when the wind stopped–only about -3 to -6 Celsius. When we arrived in Minneapolis, it was actually slightly above freezing.

I managed to screw up my back somehow en route. I’m not sure how. I think it was a combination of nasty airplane seats, improvised pillows, five hours of journey, and cold gray weather.

We managed to rent a Prius. The logic was that although it isn’t 4 wheel drive, on icy roads it’s better to know exactly how the car will handle and how effective the brakes are.

I can’t help wishing that the in-laws lived in one of the pretty parts of Minnesota, like the north east. Down in the south east it’s basically flat and empty.

There are quite a few Mexican businesses. What must it be like to move from Mexico to Minnesota?

On Christmas Day I was laying on the sofa at sara’s grandmother’s house. In my head was “Nation” by Colourbox. I remembered buying the CD in London, sitting on the train at Baker Street and unwrapping it. It must have been 20 years ago. Why remember it now? I have no idea.

British Airways gave us the option of paying extra for carbon credits to make up for our air travel. We didn’t take them up on the offer.

There are a number of reasons why I feel carbon offsetting is a bad thing. The first is that by removing the guilt, it encourages people to continue a profligate lifestyle, rather than actually changing their behavior.

For example, if Al Gore genuinely gave a crap about the environment, he would stop flying by private jet so much. But no, he’s rich and can simply buy carbon credits to salve his conscience. Similarly, John Edwards will happily lecture to ordinary people that they should give up their SUVs, then get into his own SUV secure in the knowledge that he’s bought carbon credits to make up for his own indulgence.

(In fact, Edwards owns 3 SUVs — a Ford Escape, a Cadillac SRX, and a Chrysler Pacifica — plus a pickup.)

The second reason why I dislike carbon credits is that there are much more effective ways to reduce emissions. For instance, if British Airways really cared, they would stop painting their aircraft. A fully painted 747 weighs 443kg extra, compared to around 100kg for me plus my luggage. That’s before you factor in the increased wind resistance from cracked and peeling paint, the chemicals needed for stripping and repainting aircraft, and the disposal problem of the dissolved paint and chemicals. [Update: BA could also stop flying empty planes across the Atlantic.]

The third reason why carbon credits are a dubious idea is pointed out by spiked online. When you buy carbon credits for your flight from Climate Care, what you’re actually doing is paying a bunch of Indian families to dig in the dirt via back-breaking manual labor, and pump water manually, rather than using modern farm equipment. Now, it might not be a bad idea if I personally spent some time stomping on pedals to pump water, but I don’t see why Indians should be bribed to do it so I can feel less guilty about air travel.

But my favorite argument against carbon credits is the parody site cheatneutral. If the logic behind carbon credits is really valid, why not buy some infidelity credits and cheat on your partner with a clean conscience?

While we were in England, we got the train from Bournemouth to visit London.

London was an important part of my life as soon as I was old enough to be allowed to travel there without adult supervision. Some people are naturally country folk, some people are city people; even though I grew up in small villages and quaint towns, that was never where I really wanted to be.

I was curious to see how London had changed since I last saw it, nearly 10 years ago. We arranged to stay overnight with Shimrit in Stoke Newington, which Sara amusingly misheard as “Stoat Newington”.

Memories fade, and my main reason for going to London was to take my new video camera and visit a bunch of familiar places and record them; the streets, the buildings, the traffic, the crowds.

We arrived at Waterloo Station, so we started off by wandering towards the Thames and taking a look at the London Eye. The Eye had been built some time after I left the country. I’d seen it on Doctor Who, but not in real life. We didn’t actually go up in it; there was a long queue, and the ride itself would have taken another half hour or so out of our busy schedule. There were more important places to see.

We crossed over to the Houses of Parliament. They were protest-free, thanks to the new “Serious Organized Crime and Police Act”, which bans such serious crimes as holding up a banner outside Parliament. We continued on to Parliament Square, where some Iraq war protesters were quietly camped out along the fence facing Parliament. Across the street, heavily armed police kept everyone away from their elected representatives.

We turned right and headed along Whitehall, past the Treasury and Cabinet Office. Some tourists were gawping at guardsmen outside Horse Guards; it’s good to see that the Queen is doing her duty and keeping the Colour regularly Trooped. We passed the old War Office; and defra, who were probably busy panicking over the latest outbreak of foot and mouth.

Trafalgar Square was disappointingly blemished by scaffolding, tarpaulins and wooden hoardings. It was also full of sky rats, of course, but they’re expected, so you can’t really call them a disappointment. We stopped at a small Italian restaurant nearby for a spot of lunch, then continued towards Leicester Square.

As we walked past the Odeon towards Piccadilly Circus, everything started to get very familiar, and I started to get tearful. The Swiss Centre is still as it was, and the Trocadero hasn’t changed much. Apparently the former is due to be modernized a bit, so I was probably lucky to get to experience it in its retro cuckoo clock glory.

We visited tate modern, of course. One thing we always missed in Boston was a decent modern art gallery, and Austin isn’t much better, though the Blanton does try.

By the evening, we were exhausted. We had some vegetarian curry at a restaurant near Shimrit’s pad, then crashed on the futon.

The next day we tried to take things a little easier, and started off at Oxford Circus for a day of shopping.

Now, I could be misremembering, but it seemed to me that the crowds were far worse than ten years ago. It was a rainy English summer day, but the herds of people reminded me more of the run-up to Christmas. We struggled towards Tottenham Court Road, ducking into stores here and there.

Given the current exchange rate, we tried to buy as little as possible; but inevitably, there were books, CDs and DVDs unavailable in the US which we were unable to resist. We went in to HMV, but tried to limit ourselves to stuff with a single digit price.

We had lunch at The Plaza, which had mysteriously moved the food court up to the second floor and made the basement vanish entirely. Baked potatoes. They’re not nearly as popular in the US. I used to buy one most Saturdays, from a guy with a cart in the Market Square in Cambridge.

Tottenham Court Road is still just like it used to be. I even recognized several of the gadget stores. The infamous Centre Point is still there, and still unnavigable by foot. The Telecom Tower is still visible from Oxford Street, but sadly sanity has prevailed and its existence is no longer an official secret.

The biggest change to London is that there are now coffee shops everywhere. Back in the 90s I had to bring an espresso machine back with me from Italy; now, you can’t walk for more than a minute or two without finding somewhere offering Illy or some other variety of “Genuine Italian espresso”. And tasty snacks, too. I definitely approve.

One good English food item I had forgotten about until I saw them at Waterloo Station was the pasty. I wonder if there’s somewhere in Austin that will sell me a good pasty?

Anyhow, we finished up our day with a little book shopping at Foyle’s and Borders, then got the train back to Bournemouth.

I woke up on board a 747. Once I’d remembered why, I looked at my watch, and estimated we were an hour or two from landing. I took a drink of water. Soon the BA flight attendants started bringing in breakfast, and I gently prodded the spouse awake. Against all probability, I had managed to get 2 or 3 hours of pretty decent sleep onboard an airplane. Soon we landed at Heathrow Terminal 4.

As we disembarked from the plane, I started to hear raised voices. It turned out that some genius in the UK’s Department for Transport had set new airline luggage policies.

Flying in to the UK, you can carry one piece of hand luggage, and one personal item such as a laptop. However, flying out of the UK, you can only carry the one piece of hand luggage. The piece de resistance: the restrictions apply even if you’re only changing planes at Heathrow.

Hence numerous business travelers had flown in with a travel bag containing valuable or fragile items, and a laptop bag containing their laptop. They were now arguing with airport security because they couldn’t fit the laptop bag inside their other bag, and didn’t want to trust the laptop or their carry-on to the tender mercies of the baggage throwers. And I can quite understand–I often travel with a carry-on bag containing SLR and lenses.

Still, it wasn’t our problem, so we strolled past the angry people and headed to immigration. Thanks to my European passport, I could waltz into the fast line. The woman who checked my passport was wearing a Muslim jilbāb, and the situation struck me as slightly ironic.

True to the promise, our luggage got priority, and hit the carousel first. We found our way through customs, and my parents were waiting to meet us. Mother was clearly very excited. Hugs were exchanged, and we got into the Range Rover for the trip to Bournemouth.

England was much as I remembered it. The countryside is not unlike the Texas Hill Country, though of course it lacks the cactus and vultures, and the trees are different species. The buildings are the main difference–old, often dirty, and made of brick.

Bournemouth isn’t home, and I don’t think it ever will be. However, pretty much my whole family decided to up and move there after I had left for the USA, and they love it. It’s like they’ve lived their all their lives. So the place gives me a strange feeling, as though Buckinghamshire is just an implanted false memory.

It’s certainly a nice enough town. But in spite of recent changes, it’s still a bit of a sleepy seaside resort, and not the kind of place I’d want to live. And since it’s the most expensive place in the UK for property, we couldn’t afford to live there anyway.

The sea is cold. After a week or so, when the weather warmed up, there were people swimming in it; but I wasn’t going to be one of them. However, we did walk along the sand, and splash around in the surf a bit.

It had been some four years since I had last visited England. Given how little time off Americans get, visiting my family means not actually having a proper vacation that year, so I don’t get to go back as often as everyone would like. This time the visit was for a particular event: my brother Edward was getting married.

I know I have some friends who don’t really understand the whole “marriage” thing. As the saying goes, “Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?” Here’s an analogy that might help:

Consider sports. It’s possible to watch a random sports game and get something out of it. However, most fans choose to support a specific team. They make a long term commitment to that team. They go to its matches even when the weather’s bad. They buy logo shirts and hats and scarves and memorabilia. They support the same team for years, even if it loses, even if they move to a different part of the country or a different part of the world.

Why do they do this? Clearly, committing to supporting one team in some way makes watching the games better. It enhances the experience. The committed supporter gets something out of the game that an uncommitted spectator simply doesn’t get, even if the actual game is the same.

So anyway, my brother was getting married, and we were to attend. And since it’s a long way to travel just for a couple of days, we planned to go a week early and spend some time with the family.

Shortly before booking the plane tickets, I learned that British Airways and Virgin Atlantic each have a “deluxe economy” class. BA call theirs World Traveler Plus, Virgin’s is Premium Economy. In either case, it costs about 15% more than the regular cattle class ticket. For that you get a wider seat that reclines further and has proper lumbar support and headrest, there’s more legroom, and you get proper food and free drinks, priority baggage handling, and so on. We decided to give it a shot; anything to make the 6-8 hour transatlantic hop more bearable.

Unfortunately, no US airline offers anything like it. They have cattle class, and they have the outrageously expensive first class, and that’s it. So we were stuck on an American Airlines flight to Chicago, where we had to change to British Airways for the rest of the journey. It was a bit like taking a Greyhound bus to your limo; I don’t know why BA picked American as their “OneWorld Alliance” partner airline.

In Chicago, we had to change terminals. Which meant leaving the secured area, walking across to the trains, getting the train to Terminal 4, and then going back into the airport and clearing security again.

Unfortunately, Chicago O’Hare’s Terminal 4 doesn’t have proper security facilities yet, as it seems to be last on their list for upgrades. (It seems they want to build a new Terminal 4 that works, then demolish the current one.) It’s also the terminal every single international flight leaves from, which means lots of people who look suspicious (i.e. not white and midwestern), which in turn means security is slower than normal.

At the far end of the shopping concourse, they had set up 5 makeshift security gates. Three lines of frustrated would-be travelers stretched the entire length of the concourse, past all the shops and restaurants, all the way to the building’s entrance doors.

After spending around 40 minutes in line, we reached the TSA person whose job it is to look at your boarding pass and passport. She said something unclear about needing a boarding pass. I looked at the boarding pass I had obtained from the online check-in. It said “Boarding pass” in large letters, and “You are now ready to fly”, and had a bar code. I explained that we had checked in for the flight online.

No, explained the TSA person, you have to get your boarding pass stamped. By the ticket desk. Hence defeating the entire purpose of online checkin. I looked at my watch nervously, and explained that we would never be able to make it through the queues again in time for our flight. The TSA staffer said we could jump the queue when we came back.

So, we left the queue and found the BA ticket desk. The woman there sighed and explained that it was a new rule the TSA had imposed, and nothing to do with BA. She stamped our boarding passes with a generic rubber stamp, and wrote something illegible over it with a ball point pen. We walked all the way back up to the front of the security line, and this time made it through. Good job, TSA; security theater at its finest.

Beyond the security barriers there was a small stand selling snacks at an outrageous markup. By this time we were tired and angry and hungry, so I gave in and got some Chex Trail Mix.

Once we were on the BA plane, things looked up. The seats were comfortable, with good back support, and headrests at head level. (I don’t know where US airlines get the midgets they use to design their seating.) Before long there was food and drink, and they remembered my vegetarian meal preference. I took a melatonin tablet, reclined the seat, and tried to nap.

I’ve written quite a few times about horrible airline experiences, primarily at the hands of American Airlines. Well, there’s one airline I’ve never had a bad experience with, and that’s Virgin Atlantic.

Which is probably why the US government doesn’t want to allow Virgin to start operating in the US. Lip service to the free market is all very well, but if a foreign airline is allowed to show US passengers that flying doesn’t have to be a miserable experience, where will it all end? I mean, take a look at VA’s cattle class cabins. They’re better than Delta’s first class.

So, if you’re the kind of pinko subversive who thinks sucky, bankrupt American airlines should see some competition, there’s an online petition you can indulge in. Or you could even write some paper letters.

Food turned out to be less of a problem than in Berlin, oddly enough. There seemed to be lots of vegetarian restaurants, and we found a vegetarische imbiss at Schantzenstrasse and Susannenstrasse.

I also got the impression that people were more friendly than in Berlin. Then again, perhaps it was my imagination, a side effect of my becoming more used to Germany.

Josef had an original LP from the first release of Autobahn. The band look like big geeks in the photo, and the sleeve credits Conny Plank. (His name was removed from later editions.)

CD shopping was made more annoying by the fact that nowhere seems to take credit cards, not even big stores. If you don’t have an EC card with a PIN, forget it.

Stereotypes sometimes have an element of truth to them. While we were in Hamburg, Josef and Ute helped rothko to polish the text of her German scrapbooking site. The original text talks about the enthusiasm of TLC scrapbookers for the business. For our hosts, this proved to be the most difficult piece to translate, and it took a long time for them to come up with an acceptable German phrase for “enthusiastic”. Apparently the literal translation of the word would be viewed with great suspicion in a business context, particularly when said by an American.

This reminded me of my two favorite jokes about Germans:

1. Q: How many Germans does it take to change a light bulb?
   A: One, and he does it with ruthless efficiency.

2. Q: Why did the German cross the road?
   A: Because the traffic lights indicated that it was appropriate to do so.

We got to the airport for our return at around 06:30. The queue was very, very long. The airline official checked my passport and visa (permanent resident card). Then he asked for my driver’s license. After that, he wanted proof of employment. Fortunately my medical insurance card has IBM’s logo on it.

This is all the result of the US government decreeing that airlines should pay the cost of deporting people. Ironically, if you don’t have a visa at all then you’re OK as far as the airlines are concerned, because it means they’re not on the hook; it’s if you do have a visa that they have to triple-check everything, just in case the visa is fraudulent or you can’t continue to meet the terms of your residence.

Next, we had to queue for the metal detector. My passport was checked again. Then we walked through to the hallway beyond, and walked to the departure gate…where there was another security checkpoint, with another queue. My passport was checked a third time, and everything went through another round of metal detection, this time using a wand.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get more ridiculous, I realized that they were hand-searching the carry-on luggage of every single passenger. I cooperated with removing every single item from my bag, so they could be checked one by one.

The guard noticed the TRIO DVD and grinned. “Trashy,” he commented. It turned out that he had been a fan back in their early days, before they became famous, when they were playing obscure Hamburg clubs. Somehow this puts a more human feeling to the proceedings, and makes it all seem better.

When we got to Newark, we had to collect our luggage. We re-checked it, and it was scanned again. Then, we had to go through security, for what was my third round of metal detection and fourth round of passport checking.

At immigration, I was handed back my documents with a smile and “Welcome home”. Maybe I was fragile from the 8 hours on the plane and the repeated security screenings, but I felt genuinely touched. And not in a full-body-cavity-search kind of way.

Apparently speaking a foreign language in an airport is now deemed suspicious, and grounds for questioning you and making you miss your plane.

After the weekend, we go to stay with Käthe and Herbert for a few days. They live in an old farmhouse in the Altes Land, south of the Elbe. It’s a fruit farm, growing apples, pears, plums, and probably a few other kinds of fruit in small quantities. Like many small European farms it’s 100% organic, with three modern windmills providing some of its electrical power needs.

Herbert speaks some English, but is self-taught, and a little hard of hearing. Käthe’s English is better. Still, I can’t help thinking that if I’d known that one day I’d be spending time in a farmhouse in Germany, I’d have paid more attention in German lessons. Not that it would have helped that much—when they’re talking to each other, Herbert and Käthe speak Plat Deutsch, modern Low German. It sounds like a mix of German and Middle English.

So I find myself surrounded by German and dialects of German, and for a while it makes my brain hurt. By late afternoon my language processing regions have spent hours trying to decode the strange noises around me and are tired out.

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