Come Fly With Me

Frankfort, Germany May 8, 6:15 AM

I’m here at the Frankfort airport in transit from Washington DC and in one hour will board a plane to Munich from whence, if all goes well,  I’ll catch another to fly to Lviv, Ukraine. Here’s a picture of the waiting area for my flight.

Great German interior design. Tables to work at or eat. Seats in which to wait and watch the TV screen.

The rest rooms are in the waiting area on the top of the picture on the left

At the bottom of the picture you see the head of guy at a long rectangular table (just a small portion of which shows in the picture) with sockets to charge phones and computers.  You can see the first letters of the word "Work" for those who need reminding in this country of focused diligence.

And in the very center of the picture the area of small tables with my computer screen where I am writing as we speak.

All of this in one cozy place .. no long walks down endless airport corridors to get to what you need or want as in Washington's grand airport which you see in the next picture. 

Before I boarded the flight that brought me here, I had an strange and somewhat unsettling experience.

Should I say something? That’s what I wondered as I waited at the boarding gate. 

A few moments earlier, the security guard had asked me about the backpack sitting unattended two seats from mine. He said “that’s yours right?” I said no and put my hand on my backpack resting on the seat right next to me.

Then he turned away. Did he call someone? I wasn’t sure.

The backpack stayed there and I began to wonder .. who would leave a backpack? With all the warnings to not leave your stuff unattended.

What could be in that backpack that the owner didn’t want to be near to it?

Did the security guy call someone to come, and remove it? Should I follow the dictum “if you see something say something”. Surely he knows what he should do and is dealing with it.. 

Surely?

I went to get something to eat and much to my relief the backpack was gone when I got back to the departure area.

Speaking of backpacks, I’m traveling with just one 25 litre backpack. The regular carry on bag allowance is 45 litres and here you see me with my backpack. That's all I've got for 6 weeks traveling in Ukraine.

I’m pretty pleased with myself that I could get my stuff reduced to this small amount to carry.  

This trip I'll be visiting a number of different cities, towns and villages. About 10 in total. A good number of them in the Carpathian mountains where I'll be climbing on and off buses and trains to get from one to another.  So I need to travel light.

Perhaps not a Guiness World Record in light travel, but certainly a personal record.

The best part of the flight from DC to Frankfurt was watching the flight from all angles and seeing the plane and the territory as we flew North and East over New England, Canada, and Newfoundland and then over the Atlantic, Ireland, the UK, London and thence across the English channel to France and into Germany

You can “fly with me”, and see exactly what I saw by watching this video of my monitor. I always like watching the progress of my flights, but the technology has greatly improved since my flight last fall and is now quite captivating.

Do click on the arrow on the picture and watch this.  And if you can't or don't want to watch the whole thing just click on 10 or so spots on the control bar at the bottom of the video and in a minute or less you'll get the gist of it.  

I think they call this “AR – Augmented Reality”. The flight path is real and in real time using the plane's GPS. It is augmented with real movies (I think) of real flights taken over the same route and simulated pictures of the plane from different viewing angles as if a sister plane was flying above and  alongside photoing the plane we are on.

The floating compass beneath the plane is a really creative way to show the plane’s direction.

This was so engaging that I got sucked in as my mind began to experience that I was seeing the real plane and the countryside passing by in real time. So abosorbed that I was a bit surprised when we raised the window shades and saw that it was still dark outside.

As we traveled through the night sky over Europe. Enchanting.

And not a bad thing as what we were seeing was largely what we would see if it were day time and we could see the real earth below and our own plane like we would if on another plane flying alongside .

We are in a Brave New world with Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence.

And yes, "alternative facts", and fake news.  But, alot of the new technology is quite exciting.

Good news! As I am about to visit Ukraine the largest country in Europe some paticularly good news arrives that the French have rejected the far right candidate and the EU will survive.

This is particularly good news for Ukraine which had a revolution because of their people's desire to participate in the benefits of Union with Europe along with freedom from Russian domination.

Needless to say it would have been disappointing to Ukrainians if after all they had gone through to join Europe, the French had participated in what appeas to be an underappreciation of the Union that had brought piece, prosperity and hope to this part of the World.

More on this and alot more as the journey continues!

Thanks for reading!