Cape Town reflections: To the point of embrace

With every hope to do

A time to reflect on my recent journey to Cape Town, for this visit for a rendezvous with Brian had been in consideration from the time I returned in mid-January 2021, but the pandemic with its many waves and Coronavirus variants kept everything at bay.

As the year drew to a close, I had at least two essential things to do before I could plan to travel, my biannual consultation was already scheduled for the last week in October and coming due in the second week of November was my vaccine booster shot after which it looked like there was a clear way ahead to plan for the break.

I planned on a 6-week break and had diligently informed them at work about my plans for which a stand-in was recruited for my time away and this gave me the opportunity on approval to book my holiday from the first week of November and the countdown had begun.

We ploughed ahead regardless

Meanwhile, our daily conversations continued, in the morning and the evening as we planned what we were going to do along with the prospect of getting married. It looked like the whole pall of the pandemic was being put behind us until just in the last week of November, the Omicron variant first sequenced in South Africa though from what transpired was already prevalent around in Europe and the US, led to the putting of southern African countries on the UK red list without even knowing much about the variant.

This could have kiboshed our plans, but I reckoned that since I was going to be away for 6 weeks, enough knowledge and understanding of the variant would have helped put some in reconsideration into the knee-jerk reaction in the Global North. Besides, the whole idea of spending 10 nights in sub-standard quarantine hotels did not appeal to me.

Anyway, I kept my hopes up and continued with my arrangements, renewing my travel insurance, helping my stand-in bed-in, taking my Fitness to Travel PCR Test and I was ready to go. My journey to Cape Town was smooth and in just two legs, the first from Manchester to Paris and the newly reinstated Paris to Cape Town leg, arriving just after 22:28 on the 3^rd of December, but without my baggage in tow.

Bags on a merry-go-round

My baggage did not make the transfer between arriving from Manchester to taking off from Paris, and though we arrived late in Paris, I literally had to rush to the departure gate, the transit time was another 24 minutes longer than the scheduled connection and still, I was not reunited with my baggage until Sunday afternoon. The baggage itself took the Manchester – Paris – Amsterdam – Cape Town route. I should have been given Airmiles for that too.

At first, I thought I would need to stay at an airport hotel overnight because of the pandemic restriction curfew, but that was not an issue, travellers were allowed to make that journey to their accommodations. I had arrived in Cape Town safely and was in Brian’s arms that night, that was all that mattered besides the troublesome issue of my baggage somewhere on the planet.

I'll take the service, please and keep the compensation

A failure to do

Compensation: the refuge of service providers after the efficient display and demonstration of ineptitude and incompetence in the provision of an advertised and vaunted service you first can afford and pay for, that they have so failed to deliver, you are left both speechlessly askance and quite livid with rage.

You might think I am on the roll with regards to compensations in December, for at first, it was with my laundry service provider, LaundryHeap, with a laundry and dry-cleaning turnout of 24 hours, picking up and dropping off your clothes at your home.

A willingness to fix

When I used that service in mid-November, 20 out of 58 clothing items were returned in the service window, the rest involved a back-and-forth that ran for 4 additional days with a £10.57 compensation offered at that time.

Blog - Laundered to distress by Laundryheap

I was utterly dissatisfied even after using the service for years, and I resisted posting a review apart from what I posted on my blog, keeping my counsel and holding my peace. Then out of the blue on the first of the month, Laundry Heap contacted me to refund the full-service charge for 38 clothing items that were not returned within the 24-hour service window. It amounted to £184.50.

My globetrotting baggage

Moving on, we had a situation where I arrived in Cape Town 40 hours before my baggage which from the assurance of the captain on my Air France flight from Paris to Cape Town indicated our delayed departure was to allow for baggage to be loaded on the plane. The aircraft left Paris with less than half the baggage of the passengers that boarded the plane when we stood at the carousel a few minutes before 23:00 local time.

Blog - In flights of intermittent piquancy

We learnt that baggage had been left behind before each of us got emails from Air France informing us of the possible circulatory route our baggage would take to be reunited with us by Sunday, we having arrived on Friday night. After filling in a Property Irregularity Report with information of where to deliver my baggage, if and when it arrives in Cape Town, I took to Twitter to follow up on the progress.

My baggage made it to Amsterdam on Friday night and then was put on board a plane in the morning from Amsterdam to Cape Town, to arrive just an hour short of midnight. I heard nothing more and could not contact the office in Cape Town nor leave a message as their mailbox was full.

A disorderly organisation

I assumed my baggage was already in Cape Town, so I made for the airport and through some security to a desk where I was informed my baggage was on the way to my Cape Town address without anyone having contacted me to update me of that situation. It transpired my baggage was still on the airport premises, I collected my 3 suitcases and signed for them.

I then returned to Twitter to remonstrate, wherein I was given a link to claim some sort of compensation. You wonder what for? The T-shirt, the pair of shorts and the sandals, I got to just not be overdressed for summertime in Cape Town?

Then I got a call from Air France to my South African number where I was offered a maximum compensation of £85 and 8,000 Air Miles. I could quibble because the last time Air France forgot to keep my baggage on the same itinerary and schedule as I was, they gave me 10,000 Air Miles and it was a journey to Bucharest and I was reunited with my baggage within 24 hours. But for the fact that I was a premium rate customer with a Platinum Flying Blue card meant this was throwing pennies at me to compensate for pounds of distress. I was unimpressed, we soldier on.

An apartment apart in chaos

Then, we are left wondering what attracted us to the apartment we are staying in for 28 nights in Cape Town because we were no doubt taken in by the glossy pictures and that was about it. The letting agents that injected themselves into the process after we booked the apartment on Hotels.com now have to earn their keep because they have heretofore been sitting pretty and indolent.

The agent who was supposed to meet us to show us around the apartment was not available because of car trouble, then on entering the apartment, we began to see that so many things were not as stated in the details we read about this place. There is a lift in the building even as the material suggests there isn’t as there is a bathtub in the bathroom when we were informed it only had a shower. How do you miss that, except if you have never bothered to visit the property under management?

No cooks ever cooked here

There is no microwave oven in a 21^st Century apartment leaving you wondering if anyone who ever stayed here ever ordered or takeaway or even tried to cook anything with the aluminium pots that had no handles and lids without holders, it got worse when I tried to prepare a salad and there were no kitchen knives.

The wardrobe with two 1.5m rails only had 3 clothes hangers, and though the apartment had a washer/dryer with a 7kg/4kg weighting for the respective cycles, there was no clothesline and there is no vacuum cleaner in the apartment. Considering this is the 5^th apartment we are staying in since we started visiting Cape Town, even we are left astonished that this is the first time we have ever had to complain about where we are staying.

We always try to create a home away from home experience with fully domesticated living, but this is at a stretch difficult in this apartment without considerable remediation that the agent has informed us the owner of the apartment would sort out, we just do not know when and it is the 5^th day of our stay.

Get it right the first time, thanks

Now, this is my view of the issue of compensation, I do not need it, what I need is the service I paid for delivered to the standard and better of what was advertised without my need to complain, except to be appreciative and commend whoever and the service provider for their excellent service.

In fact, you can never fully compensate for a failed or below par service apart from paying back everything with a little more for the distress and inconvenience suffered. In my view, LaundryHeap went the furthest in the compensation stakes, Air France has not acquitted themselves well for the fact that the captain knew he was leaving France without our baggage and that it took that long to get things back to me.

Then 6 hours after I collected my baggage from the airport, I received a message from Air France indicating my baggage had arrived in Cape Town and will be delivered to my address. Honestly!

As for our apartment, we are expecting to be surprised if any of the issues were raised gets sorted out. One thing the agency and the owner of this apartment should avoid is a negative review because I will be honest and that is just the way things are.

In flights of intermittent piquancy

The gut is a prophet

My deepest premonitions, I should trust a bit more, for they forestall frustration, disappointment, resentment, and complaint. You can set your expectations to the level where you are accommodating not so much of incompetence or even a residency in cynicism but in the realism of what can obtain when systems are not perfect because the human beings who designed it with all their best efforts and the those who use the system are just not perfect too.

My flight from Manchester to Paris, or in airport code MAN-CDG was early, something I rarely do to punish myself, it was to take off at 6:05 AM, if I had to be at the airport at least 2 hours before, it meant I had to get a cab there from home round 3:00 AM. That whole setting meant; I did not sleep overnight.

Timing without priming

The flight itself took off at 6:25 AM, 20 minutes late and with a stopover in Paris for my connecting flight being 1h25, I was concerned about me getting on that flight from Paris to Cape Town (CDG-CPT) and then of my baggage making it too. There was no time for shopping or lounging, I was straight to the gate in Paris where boarding had begun.

It was to take off at 10:10 AM, but that was delayed until 10:39 AM, meaning my Paris stopover had extended 24 minutes to 1h49. The captain had announced that the reason for our delay was they were expecting baggage, which seemed to allay my fears that my baggage would not make it, how wrong I was.

A flight in slight

On the MAN-CDG leg, the Airbus 320 had on-board Wi-Fi which I used to communicate with friends and I was expecting that same service on the CDG-CPT leg, which when I bought the flight ticket was supposed to be a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, but we ended up on a Boeing 777-328(ER), the seating configuration completely different from when I booked a seat, it was a 2-3-2 seating plan instead of a 1-2-1, though seats were occupied as if in a 1-2-1 configuration.

There was no Wi-Fi for that 10h40 journey apart from the seating being a bit cramped, yet from my reading of the flight details, it has only been in service for 5 years. Having a spare seat beside you is quite different from having a wider space to occupy, my 6-foot frame I had to pull up as my seat did not fully recline as would have been the case on the originally designated flight and my long feet always scratched the top of the foot compartment. I made myself as comfortable as I could.

To places from above

The most I do out of in-flight entertainment is listen to music, I am more fascinated by the interactive maps that I have in constant view except when it is switched off because I have fallen asleep. I was surprised that we took a southwestern bearing from Paris towards the border with Spain flying over the majestic Pyrenes which are always a wonder to behold especially in the winter.

We left Spain, just by Valencia over the Mediterranean Sea into another beautiful mountain range, the adoring folds of topology are a sight to behold from above. We did not fly over it, Mascara was to the west, it is not etymologically related to cosmetic mascara which has an Italian origin. Then the flight path took into northeast Mali, pinching the southwest of Niger and then northeast of Burkina Faso before flying the length of the Benin Republic and exiting the African landmass into the Gulf of Guinea at Porto Novo.

Flightpath from Paris to Cape Town.

The person of my baggage

The greater length of the flight was over water until South Africa and the approach to land at Cape Town. The aircrew was extremely pleasant and nice with a genial and warm disposition. I caught about 5 hours of sleep combined as it was a daytime flight, after an early lunch, we pulled down the blinds to darken the interior and caught as much kip as we could. I usually change into my pyjamas for these long-haul flights, you shouldn’t be sleeping in a suit, and I always wear compression socks.

On arrival in Cape Town, we filled in passenger tracking forms and showed my Fitness to Travel (PCR test) certificate and made it through passport control to pick up my baggage at carousel 2. That was when we learnt that more than half the baggage that should have been on our flight had been left in Paris. I think I should get an additional set of air miles for the journey of the baggage which I have been able to ascertain took the route CDG-AMS-CPT and might have arrived late on Saturday night for my collection, sometime on Sunday.

Setting off for something

Packing neat not heat

I cannot at all understand where all my friends get the idea that I pack too much when going away. In my view, I pack what needs to go with me, for it is better to have more than you need than to be met with missing what you should have taken.

I am nowhere in the league of Donatella Versace who arrived at London Heathrow in one of those Airport television programmes and she was missing a suitcase out of 63. The airport staff were searching high and low for it, it made for interesting television viewing.

In any case, because I have a Platinum card with AirFrance/KLM, I have the standard quota of 2 pieces of checked-in luggage and one more. Since there were things, I was taking over for myself and for Brian, I utilised the full quota, even as my friends protested over the phone that I was going to overdo it, I am moderation personified, damn it.

Loyalty creates priority

Obviously, I had to call an Uber XL to carry 3 suitcases, a suit bag, and a rucksack, all brimming with goods, as one does. It meant I had to get a trolley at the airport to get my stuff to the check-in desk. There was a long queue for the standard check-in and just 2 people ahead of me in the Sky Priority queue.

At the desk, I presented my passport, then proof of vaccination, 3 jabs of Pfizer BioNTech and a Fitness to Travel Certificate, a negative result from a COVID PCR test, which is standard for any travel consideration and thankfully a lot less expensive compared to what I paid to the same test in December last year. The directors of that company are probably sunning themselves on their yachts in Dubai having made a killing in the pandemic. Disaster capitalists, all of them.

Far, a longer way to lounge

Then, I was through to security, the Fast-Track Lane as I displayed containers of liquid, electronic devices, then through a scanner where I had inadvertently forgotten a pound coin in my pocket and some creams were secreted in my rucksack. It’s been a long week.

Terminal 2 at Manchester Airport is new, and I had never been through it before. I cannot understand why the lounges are so far away, tucked away from the madding crowd and presenting an ordeal to get to if you use a cane or need some mobility assistance.

Once late, twice deflated

My flight to Paris was to take off at 6:05, the lounge had been open early and it was good to settle there for just about an hour before leaving to board my flight which left Manchester 35 minutes late and that ate into the time I would have had to shop and lounge in Paris, I had quite a short stayover, I had to go straight to the gate for my flight to Cape Town.

Now, I was expecting to be on a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, that was what was advertised when I booked my flight, well, fancy ending up on a Boeing 777-300, cramped, noisy, no WiFi and well, let me not complain, I sip the champagne and lie down, it is a 10:40 hour flight to Cape Town. Savoir-faire.

Bucharest: The other journey of a case

I remembered

Last night, I picked up a pencil and recalled from memory 11 items I had packaged into my baggage the night before for my Easter holiday.

Whilst the list was not exhaustive, I was surprised I could remember when I got each of the items, where I bought them and how much I paid for them.

Worse still, it was the feeling that I really could not put a price on losing any of the items even if I was compensated with the full cost of replacing all of them as new. There is a whole experience that goes with getting things, the time, the place, the emotion, the joy or otherwise that cannot be relived along with the wear or tear that comes with that thing being in your possession.

This is what is called sentimental value, and I do not think anything can replace that, however, something might help accept the loss.

A man and his case

That however was part of the run of emotions that engulfed me with a prospect that I might never be reunited with my luggage again.

We left home together yesterday, as I made a note of the numbers on the rotary number locks of my case and had it checked it at the airport weighing just less than 12 kilograms.

The check-in clerk tagged the case and attached a “Priority” label whilst informing me that my case would be transferred onto the connecting flight in Paris where I had a stopover for the onward leg to Bucharest.

We left Manchester, 30 minutes behind schedule and when I arrived in Paris, the transit desk said my connecting flight was also delayed and that my baggage will definitely make the connection too.

Waiting in vain

At Bucharest, I stood at the carousel for almost an hour until the last piece of luggage was taken, mine did not show and so I went looking for the Air France – KLM baggage handling company. It was there I learnt my baggage did not make my flight and that it will be put on the next plane to Bucharest. Another assurance came; it will be delivered to my hotel at night.

Eventually, I found out when I took my phone off flight-mode that I had received an SMS Text Message that my baggage did not make the flight. Though I do wonder what the “Priority” tag really means. Giving you a sense of importance at the check-in desk whilst your baggage might suffer God knows what in transit.

Lodging a complaint

I filled in a “Property Irregularity Report” (PIR), there was nothing irregular about my case, it contained my personal effects and things you were not allowed to carry as hand luggage.

The PIR has a reference, your name, details of your itinerary, a coded description of the piece of luggage and the tag number. My baggage did not arrive and the handling company appeared not to care that much about it as the lady said, my case will probably arrive in the morning. I had to calm myself down.

Since I booked my ticket through KLM on their website and then changed it with the help of a KLM Customer Service Agent, I visited their website to make a complaint where I could not find a number to call. I posted a lengthy comment on their Facebook page and also tweeted at them on the advice of my best friend.

The helpful and the unhelpful

The Facebook response was more helpful whilst the Twitter account appeared to engage me before they decided it was none of their business, because the PIR was created in the name of Air France. Now, Air France and KLM have the same parent company, they are a merger that is more than a code-sharing arrangement apart from the fact that they are core members of the SkyTeam Alliance.

It saddens me that corporates are quick to cash in on your custom but are quicker to shirk responsibility when some customer service is required of them.

However, the KLM Facebook page provided a link that allowed me keep a trace on my baggage, it showed the originally intended flight and then the rescheduled flight and the route it was taking. I was able to use that information to determine the flight had arrived in Bucharest.

On its way

About 90 minutes after the flight arrived in Bucharest, we were already in next day territory, I received an SMS Text Message and email from Air France that my baggage will be delivered to the address of the hotel I was staying at. When I filed the PIR, I also provided my home address and there was a danger if the baggage was not found in 2 days, it will return to the UK.

This morning, I went down to the hotel reception and my baggage had arrived, the rotary number lock combination had changed from what I set it to when it was checked in.

I do marvel at the wonders of technology today, the way we were able to keep tabs on my luggage whilst it appeared to be lost in transit and the way the system eventually worked to get us reunited.

Some advice

Yet, there are lessons to learn from this interesting ordeal.

·         Never place items of high sentimental value in your cargo hold luggage if you can avoid it. What you do not have to travel with, you really do not have to travel it. If in doubt, leave it out.

·         Always take out travel insurance that covers your luggage because airlines have very limited liability, even though your baggage was entrusted to their professional care. There are many hand-offs in the chain, anything could happen. Airlines will probably advise you to contact your insurance company than have you commence a compensation claim against them.

·         Never put your essential medication in your cargo hold luggage, get a doctor’s note if you have to along with your prescription and have that in your hand baggage.

·         With the restriction of fluids on flights, you might want to get travel packs for toothpaste, morning goods and cosmetics to take through security.

·         Most importantly, knowing what to do when you lose your baggage is the greatest path to peace of mind, what you know, gives less of a bother.

Now, let’s discover Bucharest.

As a hostage to a baggage crisis

Hostage to a baggage crisis

Everything went well for my return to Amsterdam from Stockholm until we got to Schiphol airport where the dial on the Farce-meter did read empty on competence and problem management.

Apparently there was an accident in the baggage sorting area that meant a delay in retrieving our baggage from baggage reclaim.

We were told there would be a delay of about 15 minutes; I think it was well passed the hour before I picked up my luggage.

As we waited by the assigned conveyor belt there were certain announcements made about the delay, then about the airport being a non-smoking airport, the advice not to leave luggage unattended and then changes to the assigned conveyor belts for baggage reclaim.

Amsterdam we are told has one of the most sophisticated baggage sorting systems and it has featured on the National Geographic television channel.

Between computers and silly human ideas

My concerns about those changes were two-fold, at first the indicators were not updated to reflect that change and then only the flight numbers were announced.

On the matter of the indicators, it should have been an easy software fix to show that under the remarks column that passengers to go to another conveyor belt and the newly assigned conveyor belt updated with the information.

I was quite surprised by the use of only the flight numbers because I never once checked my flight number and I felt people would have been better served by first announcing the origin of the flight and then the flight number, that way we would have been better focused on using the information properly.

Cities and flight numbers

From what I noticed of all fellow passengers as myself, none of us moved to the new conveyor belt because for each KLM flight number there were at least 5 code-sharing flight numbers – the time between scanning though the list of flights from other origins and then the one that pertained to your journey just left you hoping you will hear the advice again.

I did match the flight number to my flight but by then I had lost the other crucial information that I had to go to the service desk to be helped when Stockholm was cleared off the indicator as all baggage completely off-loaded.

At the service desk, I was told where to get my luggage and when I said they should have announced the origin with the flight numbers the lady looked at me as if it was a stupid suggestion and gave the silly excuse that there were so many flights to handle.

What it would have saved them and us if only they had done the sensible and easy thing – all announcements for boarding are made with flight numbers and destination, all notice boards with arrivals or departures always have origin or destination with flight numbers – I think the point is made.

The smell of home

As I walked to the trains a hawker of perfumes accosted me and ask if I had a wife, I had no time for small talk, talk less of smelly talk, I just wanted to get home but I had the presence of mind to refuse the offer of a cheap ticket bought in error to Amsterdam when the ticket machine offered a better discount.

I got home tucked in a mozzarella salad and that was home sweet home.

Holiday snaps: A touch of privilege

Step forward for access

The wait at Madrid was long enough, just under 3 hours of killing time during which I sat in the dire lounge watching planes touch-down and take-off.

I had arrived too early for a gate number for my transit flight and was informed I would be called when the gate is known.

A few minutes before boarding time I saw the gate on the screen and made for the boarding gate, within 10 minutes the announcer asked us to come forward giving priority to those who might need assistance, elite passengers and those with children.

Grabbed from privilege

So, I stepped forward being an elite passenger by reason of loyalty but just as I was about to present my boarding pass, I was tapped on the shoulder by a man, a father with his wife and child in a stroller and he gesticulated to his child, I then gesticulated with my cane.

The question then becomes who needs more assistance, two able-bodied adults with a bubbly child of 2 or a man who needs a cane to walk about?

The matter of priority is another thing, I would have had to show off my elite card and mouth a near obscenity – in both cases, the fair-minded would defer to my being served first in those circumstances.

I was in no mood to get rattled by some stupid sightless aggravation, I let them go before me, I would have been slower anyway because we had to ride a bus to the plane getting there by steps; there was no gangway connection.

Late but sped

When we finally got on the plane, I thought we would be on time, it took another 45 minutes before we took off just because some people had taken their Spanish siesta early rather than make their way to the airport and onto the plane.

One thing about flying is you cannot be done for speeding, we made up for lost time and gained back 30 of those 45 minutes, an Airbus 330-200 it was and what a bumpy ride we had in the air at some points.

Baggage declaim

At Las Palmas, one of my airport peeves was played before me, people who gather at the conveyor belt blocking the way for others who already have their stuff on the belt. There just doesn’t seem to be any decorum at those places, dare I say a sense of breeding at the risk of snobbery.

When I said excuse me to get my suitcase, with a cane in one hand, surely, someone could have offered to help, but no, I struggled with it and as I got it off, well, it literally landed on a big buffoon’s feet who should have moved out of the way seeing I was pulling off the equivalent of a trunk. It should not be Baggage Reclaim but Baggage Declaim.

At the exit, I saw my name with the N in my surname, I forgave the infringement, handed my suitcase to the chauffeur and got to the hotel to be welcomed by known faces again.

Board now or baggage off

I know thee not

You can imagine as I walked to the iris scanning system I put in my card and it let me through to the iris scanning machine which after 1 minute of thinking decided it could not identify me.

So, I gave my passport and boarding pass to the backup alternative, the human customs official who checked everything and let me through.

I did not realise that my gate number required I go through another customs check because I had come out on the wrong side and as I passed through that check I was accosted and asked where I was coming from – strange question, I thought – I am coming from Amsterdam and I am going to Berlin I said.

Named for my journey

As I looked at my watch, it was well past the initial boarding time and just as I got to the gate my name was mentioned on the Tannoy asking I board immediately or would have my baggage unloaded.

The flight was smooth apart from the purser mixing up his destinations about us approaching Hamburg when we were going to Berlin, meanwhile, I wanted sparkling water and the host was offering everything but – when I insisted, he eventually heard my request and sought out the sparkling water for me.

I have always considered Berlin Tegel Airport a very efficient and customer-friendly airport, you were through the airport in no time, the efficiency that accompanies baggage reclaim usually means you are off the plane and in a taxi in less than 10 minutes.

Struck by strikes

Today offered a few surprises, in exasperation I finally said aloud, this is the longest I have had to wait for my baggage, even the tardier Amsterdam Schiphol does not take this long; almost after an hour of arrival, I heard the baggage handlers were on strike until 19:00 hours which would be in a few minutes time.

I do believe that unionism has its benefits for the working class and for the leverage of demands for fair working conditions – sometimes, I sense a kind of recalcitrance between management and the unions that lead to avoidable disputes that should better be resolved with discourse and maturity.

Negotiations and compromise

Having mostly been self-employed all my working life, I suppose it is difficult for me to appreciate some of those needs, one has to live by ones wits, skills and negotiating acumen rather than commit those negotiations to some socialist truculence battling with capitalist indifference.

Whilst, I am not pleased to find myself at the wrong end of an industrial dispute, I do hope that whatever has brought this about does not degenerate into the debacle that the British Airways dispute has become.

Long live the compromise and coexistence of socialist and capitalist aims for the maintenance of just, fair and orderly societies.

Irksome airport landings

Baggage handling

Despite all the automation and technology involved in baggage handling at airports, the end of the chain still requires the man-handling of luggage to and from the cargo hold of planes.

Sometimes I have looked from inside the plane how bags get thrown, dumped or dropped, even with the occasional panicky official who has just noticed some baggage is about to leave on the wrong plane.

There was one instance, a suitcase was dropped a good 2 metres from the belt to the ground, I could say I felt ever bit of that drop and the possible consequences, as 7 years ago when the mishandling of my luggage by a no-frills airline had my laptop in pieces. I have not done no-frills since that episode.

The herd embarks

What really gets to me is the herd mentality of boarding and disembarking from a plane, the way people rush to get on considering we all have pre-assigned seats, people with seats in the aisles what to be on first and then discomfited by passengers with window seats, as if getting on early means you get to the destination faster.

Keep seat belts fastened ignored

Then on landing, as the aircraft taxies to a gate, the seat belt fastened lights are still on and some cretin gets up to open the overhead lockers to get his stuff, at which time other members of the cretin club get up to do the same whilst the plane is yet to come to a complete standstill.

At one time the cabin crew had to bark the order for all to sit down and fasten their seat belts. One wonders how getting up first to get your stuff is going to help you get out of the airport first when a majority of luggage is checked in, though I would not be surprised if some had also checked in their brains and with their manners, consideration and smartness.

Then just as the plane comes to a halt, lights still warning to keep seat belts fastened, they still get up and open the lockers grab their stuff and the wait standing for possibly 5 to 10 minutes before they are able to disembark and there is no way they would get their stuff from baggage reclaim any earlier than those who have been patient to get off the plane gracefully.

Mobiles off planes

It looks like impatience and stupidity vying for prominence in their heads.

Beyond that, there is that other herd stampede that occurs the moment we arrive, all mobile phones go off and everyone is calling arranging meets, dinner, coffees and so on, all these can wait till they are out in the arrival lounge but the fact that too many people are complete addicts to information and slaves of electronic communication; it is a blessing that a flight still has the sanctity of a mobile phone free zone even though the science of not using mobile phones on planes is suspect.

Methinks mobile phones should be checked in and not allowed in hand luggage though there are other security consequences for that, the rule to keep them switched off completely is good enough for me, it should be extended to say they should never be switched on in a plane.

In fact, the plane should be a Faraday Cage of sorts which is let down only in emergencies.

Kids at play

The final peeve is at baggage reclaim, what has been checked in is probably quite heavy luggage, but then you find that kids are allowed to run around the baggage belt and stand in the way of bigger people who really know their business about standing there.

In some cases, there is a complete lapse in discipline; the kids get on the belt, in one case the kid was pulling off stuff twice his size and the rotten parents proudly looked on at the initiative of their devil kid.

In exasperation, just before the kid gets mangled in the conveyor belt mechanism, one helps giving a look that could kill the parents only that the result of their deaths might leave one the guardian of an orphaned devil kid - one cannot live with that.

Once out of the airport, the relief that one has been separated from these crazy people is the joy of being on holiday or having returned to home sweet home.

Why Brussels doesn't work

Enduring the pain of travel

Whilst I am not a jet-setter in reality, I am probably the railway train equivalent of one.

This time, I did not have to run for the train and there were enough people in the first class area for me not to have to bother about safety, security, company and over-arching awareness requiring me to sit in the other class with a first class ticket.

Strangely, the last time I did that, a man got on my coach with his own music, he started to play the guitar; in the first class area, I could have told him to stop; here, I probably would have the guitar smashed over my head.

I listened as the “out-of-tune” guitar strummed The Caterwaul featuring Banshee and Hyena in D-minor – allegro.

The things we do to endure the pain of travel.

See Brussels and weep

This time, it was Brussels (forget the spelling, it has as many variants as a meaningless anagram where s, x and l may feature, all depending on your mother tongue).

It is the capital of Europe, they say, and it probably is a microcosm of what is so wrong about Europe and nothing is happening to remedy it.

It is the where you have heard so much about the great statue and having found the statue, you are utterly under-whelmed – great is used in the context of myth not size.

I saw Europe through the use of one of those dreaded self-service station lockers.

Lucky locks for working lockers

Basically, there are three sizes with different prices; the instructions are available in an electronic panel with buttons for one of four languages – Flemish (The Dutch spoken in Belgium), French, German and English.

You put your baggage, luggage, wares whatever in, close the door and the lock engages, the electronic panel/screen then shows you the price, put in your coins and you retrieve a bar-coded ticket.

When retrieving your luggage, just show the bar-coded ticket to the supermarket till scanner and the door automatically opens.

Now that is a process that works with the technology offered.

Here be dragons of Brussels

How do you give this system a Brussels perspective?

Look at the pricing in Euros – 2.10, 2.60 and 3.10, now that is easy if you were in South Korea you could pay with your mobile, or some other system would allow the use of a money card.

You need coins here, chinking coins. Some of you might wonder, why wasn’t the pricing rounded off, well, that might be the price a committee had arrived at to balance equality of access with a break-even possibility. Really?

Okay, let us break it down with numismatics; you are allowed to use Euro coins that offers the choice of 1 and 2 Euros, then Euro-cents which have 50, 20, 10, you cannot use 5, 2 or 1 Euro-cent(s).

Big deal! You say, I’ll just put in the money and get change – Oops, it wants the exact amount.

Then put any amount above the price you need to have your luggage safe, it spews out the extra money, then everything you put in and the door opens.

Why, am I having this problem, I do not have 10 Euro-cents on me and all those prices require you have 10 Euro-cents regardless of how rich you are.

I probably have a hundreds of Euros of coins below 50 Euro-cents in a drawer at home; you suddenly wished you had installed that device that could have teleported that 10 Euro-cent coin immediately.

Aha! The smart people who designed this system probably have a coin exchanger around like they do in Amsterdam and hopefully it dispenses all denominations. Zilch!

Switch to anger management, do not hit your head against the locker, you need it to think.

Service desk, closed!

Probably, I might perchance have that elusive coin in one of my million pockets, starting with the first, none, and finally, a stray coin which must have slipped into some cranny in my baggage materialises like a gold coin out of a fish mouth.

Perspiring, exhausted, irate but determined, the last coin goes in and my baggage is secure.

Exactly, the locker is a symptom

This is the sense of frustration that greets every European, many of us are Europhile, just as we need to use the lockers, but every aspect of daily life is complicated all the more by ideas that suit every metric but the people.

The prices on the lockers could easily have been rounded off; it is easier to ask someone to change money for you than to ask for spare change.

People are more likely to have two 50 Euro-cent pieces than five 10 Euro-cent pieces.

In many senses, it shows how Europe was designed with a customer in mind, but the customer probably does not have the resources to avail themselves of the potentials.

Beyond that, many decisions are about national self-interest rather than community values, it informs why the Common Agricultural Policy cannot be reformed, nimble East-European Countries are feared by Old Europe and big countries can flout the economic rules for maintaining the stability of the Euro.

Europe is not working

The “one size fits all rules” do not work for that fact that it is a seriously unequal partnership of nations with almost nothing in common, more reason why the constitution was rejected by two of the founding nations.

Viewing Europe through a the locker regime in Brussels Central Station is probably a bit frivolous, but it also happens to be the station where a kid was murdered in a crowded place for not giving up his MP3 player. It probably informs the solemn and numerous bouquets of flowers placed at the entrance to the concourse.

Even in crowds, safety is relative and security is uncertain if you are in Brussels – that is the Ode to Joy of the Europe we live in today.

Update - July 2008

The lockers at the Brussels Central Station now takes money rounded off to 50 cents or the Euro.