Category: Travels

Moon Setting over Manhattan

On By Norbert HauptIn TravelsLeave a comment

The weather was pretty dismal during my stay in New York the last couple of days. It was rainy, and misty, and most the time you could not see beyond the next few buildings. Of course, it does not help that it gets dark at 4:30 in the afternoon.

This morning, as I was getting ready to depart, I looked out the window of my hotel room on the 7th floor of the Hilton at JFK. It was clear, and the sun had just risen high enough to light up a few tall buildings in distant Manhattan. With the moon setting over the city, partly behind clouds, it was a magical moment. Here is the best photograph I could get through a fairly dirty hotel window.

That was my parting view.

Best View in New York City and Nostalgia

On By Norbert HauptIn Travels3 Comments

Yesterday I visited New York City and spent a day working at the offices of our company’s financial partners. On my way there, as I stepped out of the Uber right in the middle of Rockefeller Center, I had this view of the famous Christmas tree:

When I stood there and looked down at the skating rink, I realized that I had stood at this very spot some 47 years ago with a group of my fellow exchange students, leaning on the very railing in the bottom of this picture:

I searched the archives in my home computer and found this photo. It was taken in July 1975. I am the guy with the blue shirt and bushy hair. Yes, I had hair when I was 18. The girl in front of me is holding on to the railing you see in the first picture with the Christmas tree.

After this short trip down memory lane, I went upstairs and they put me in a vacant corner office. I looked out the window, and this was my view:

You can look down on the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. The stairs where I had just taken the above picture are on the right.

Then I turned to the other window in the corner office, and here is St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in the rainy mist of New York in December.

Once I was done with my business in the afternoon and left, I surely wanted to go back down there and look up at the building from where I had just looked down:

Of course, the place was now chock full of tourists, all taking pictures and selfies with the tree. I am sure Facebook has another 10,000 such photographs posted today, right?

By the way, all the city’s hotels were sold out. The cheapest rooms to be found in not so exciting hotels cost over $1,200 / night. I asked the Hilton why this was and they basically said that there is so much pent-up demand to visit New York during the holidays after the emptiness of the Covid years.

New York City is definitely back!

Rents are too High

On By Norbert HauptIn TravelsLeave a comment

This morning I had a few hours to take a walk around the block from my hotel in Washington, DC. Two blocks south, I tried to stop in to visit Joe, but I was told he was on a Ticket to Paradise in Bali. Oh, well, next time.

But there were many other visitors. Here was a group protesting high rents in the city. I don’t think anybody listened much to them.

Just one block north from that spot, a two-minute walk away, is McPherson Square. The whole park is one big tent city. This is the reality of the capital of the wealthiest nation in the world – two blocks away from the White House.

I guess the rents are too high.

American Airlines Sucks

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product, Business, Travels2 Comments

I hate to say this, but American Airlines sucks.

I have flown over 2.5 million miles on American over a period of about 30 years. I was in the top elite tier (Executive Platinum) for many years and the Covid travel crash bumped me off and now I am a “mere” lifetime Platinum member. So I still get some perks.

It’s always been bad and challenging to claim travel credits with American Airlines. Here is a post I made 11 years ago about how their travel vouchers are almost impossible to use. It hasn’t gotten any better – maybe worse.

A couple of months ago my wife and I were in Croatia on vacation. We flew on American, but the connector from London to Zagreb was on their partner, British Airways. We had a layover in London Heathrow. While I am at it, do not get me started on Heathrow. I HATE HEATHROW, everything about it. When going to Europe, I always try to avoid it as a stopover, but that’s another rant for another time….

While in Croatia, my wife tested positive for Covid a few hours before we needed to board our flight home out of Zagreb. She was not allowed to get on the plane. Since business and other matters required that one of us get home, we separated, she stayed marooned in a Croatian hotel for what turned out to be another 9 days, while I went home while I could – while I tested negative. The agent for British Airways told me that in order to get a flight credit, I’d better call my airline before I boarded, so I would not lose her part of the ticket. I called the elite desk for Executive Platinum at American Airlines, and after a two minute tape on how I should go online it told me that they were closed. It was a Saturday afternoon in Croatia, so it was very early AM in the U.S. Then I made another call to the general reservation line, only to get the same message after listening for a few minutes to their drivel.

Now mind you, American’s main reservation line is advertised to be open 24 hours a day, which is what I’d expect from a major airline. People don’t just need help on the phone with the largest airline in the world while it’s business hours in Dallas, Texas.

Eventually, I just had to board my flight home alone, wait for the weekend to pass, until I could get an agent on the phone during normal business hours in Dallas. It then took about an hour with that agent to get about $450 of credit back for her portion of the abandoned ticket. That credit is now in an account in the American Airlines’ system.

I have since tried to use that credit three times for three other bookings, but have not been successful. While the website says I should be able to use a credit when I pay for a ticket, it does not work.

As you can see in the screenshot above, there are two buttons at the beginning of the payment process, where you think you might be able to use your credit. When you click on either of them, it gives you this message:

Not very helpful, right? Why is the button there in the first place if you are not able to use it? When you click on “Contact Reservations”, you get to this screen:

The phone number shown at the yellow arrow is the main reservation line. At the red arrow, you see it’s open 24 hours a day. This is the number I have been calling. When you call this number, you first have to listen to about 2 minutes of bullshit stuff, like how much easier it is to go to their website, and then it finally tells you they are closed! On a Saturday afternoon at 3:00pm!

I just bought my third ticket at full face value without being able to use the flight credit I have on the books. My crime: I am not calling during normal business hours Dallas time. So in order to use my credit, I need to wait to book my next flight at just the right time, on a weekday (while I am working) and be prepared to be on the phone for an hour, first waiting to get an agent who can help me — they are all so busy all the time — and then fumble my way through applying the credit I have on file.

Maybe I need to take my travel business to another airline after 30 years of loyalty to American?

 

AFS Reunion in Croatia

On By Norbert HauptIn Cool People, Travels3 Comments

About 30 former AFS exchange students in 1974 from over 14 different countries, many with their spouses, had a reunion in Croatia this week.

We came to this reunion from Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, England, Luxembourg, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Thailand and the US. I maybe forgetting a country or two.

We’re all 64 or 65 years old, and share one life-changing experience, a year abroad in the US with the AFS program. Here is a group picture.

Here are some of us on our first day in the country getting some much needed refreshments.

Here is a shot of us at the initial welcome dinner in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.

For about 10 days, all these 65-year-olds were 18 again.

Visiting The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

On By Norbert HauptIn Art, TravelsLeave a comment

On a trip to Washington, D.C., where there are more art museums than in any city in America I know, we visited The Phillips Collection.

This boutique museum holds a most incredible collection of astonishing quality. There are several van Gogh works, countless pieces by Monet and Cezanne, and above all, the most Picasso works in one place I have ever seen. There must have been more than 100 Picassos, featuring “the Blue Period” early in his career.

I can highly recommend The Phillips Collection.

Here is a brilliant van Gogh where I lingered for quite a while before I moved on:

House of Auvers by Vincent van Gogh

Marvels of Travel

On By Norbert HauptIn TravelsLeave a comment

Back on the road again.

I was at the Dallas / Ft.Worth (DWF) airport on the inter-terminal train and saw this sign above two of the seats:

It made me think of all the great needs I have and promptly sat down.

A little later I boarded my connecting flight, an Airbus 321, and I got a little discombobulated about this little guy staring at me.

Once you see a face, you cannot unsee it. He stared at me for two hours, and it became disconcerting.

A Lanyard with a Message

On By Norbert HauptIn Pandemic, TravelsLeave a comment

This week I embarked on my very first business trip since the March 2020 shutdown. I attended a conference at the Cincinnati Convention Center.

Conference attendees had to wear masks at all times in the facility, and there are always name badges, of course. They usually come with a lanyard, which are generally sponsored and paid for by one of the attending vendors and contain the company name for advertising purposes.

Here is mine:

When I picked up my badge, there were three colors of lanyards to choose from with a sign describing the meaning:

Green – I am comfortable with hugs and handshakes.

White – Keep distance and fist bumps only.

Red – Do not come close!

I picked green. There were a few friends I had not seen in two years that were huggers. I was fine with that.

Most people wore green, quite a substantial percentage wore white, and I do not remember seeing any red. I am sure there were some.

And that’s a lanyard with a message.

Oh Maui!

On By Norbert HauptIn TravelsLeave a comment

We just came home from a week in Maui. We stayed at Kamaole Beach Club, right across the street from the beach. At the street corner there is a crosswalk.

When we got there on Saturday, there was this “beach bum” who sat on a wooden bench overlooking the ocean just a few feet away. He had long matted hair, wore a bicycle helmet and had a dirty pink backpack. Next to him was a cart presumably holding his various possessions.

He sat there all day long that first day, staring at the ocean without moving, at times holding a papaya in one hand and staring at it. Sometimes we’d see him muttering to himself.

He sat at the same spot every day, from morning till night, not moving. He never took off his helmet, he never removed his backpack. We never saw him come or go, but I must admit I didn’t go out late at night or early in the morning and check.

We took the picture above on the morning of the 7th day as we were leaving. This time he was standing up, motionless, looking at the ocean. We had never seen him standing, or walking, or doing anything before. The overnight low is 72 degrees in Maui, the high is 88 degrees. The trade winds keep the beach cool. So there is no need to move from that spot.

I am now back home, thousands of miles away, but I know exactly where this man is: Sitting on that bench, helmet slightly tilted to the left, dirty pink backpack on his back.

And I am thinking to myself: I have so much to do and so little time to do it.

Off-Roading Challenges in the Anza Borrego Desert

On By Norbert HauptIn Hikes, Travels3 Comments


There are some beasts in the Anza Borrego desert.

No, this is not photoshopped. This is a real photograph of me this afternoon.

The End of the Age of the “Superjumbo” Airliners

On By Norbert HauptIn Business, Travels1 Comment

Lufthansa, Germany’s largest airline and the second-largest in Europe, recently announced that it is retiring all eight of its Airbus A380 planes. Emirates operates 115 such planes, the largest fleet in the world, and it predicts the “end of the era.”

While the large planes are comfortable, they are not efficient, are too costly to maintain and to fly. Smaller widebodies, like the Airbus A350 and the Boeing 787, both with only two efficient engines, are much more economical, and being smaller, more versatile. This trend started long before the start of the pandemic, but with air travel now just being a shadow of what it once was, the fate of the world’s largest planes is sealed.

The Boeing 747 had a life of over 50 years and 1,558 were built since 1968. According to travel data firm Cirium there are about 500 747s still in service, of which only 30 are flying passengers. More than 300 fly cargo and the remainder are in storage.

Airbus only built a total of 242 A380s, about half of which went to Emirates. Airbus has already retired the plane.

I have never flown on an A380, and now I probably never will.

I have flown only three times on a Boeing 747. One was my first ever flight when I was just 18 years old. The second time was in England in 1989, on a short-hopper from London to Manchester. Yes, a commuter trip of less than an hour on a 747. It was full of commuting businessmen. And the final trip was in 2012 on British Airways from London to Chicago, and I reported about it here.

To put this into perspective, I am a very frequent air traveler, and I have flown constantly since my youth at a rate of 100,000 miles a year or more. With American Airlines alone I have logged more than 2.5 million miles, and that’s just one airline. If in all these thousands of flights I have only THREE flights on superjumbos, and if I am a good example, it’s not surprising that the era of the large planes is over.

Farewell, A380.

JFK Addresses AFS Students at the White House – 1963

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Cool People, Feelings, Political, Travels, Wisdom5 Comments

Back on July 18, 1963, as the AFS [see below] students who had spent their high school year in the United States, were preparing to go back to their countries, they got to visit the White House. JFK talked to them.

It would be another 11 years before I had the privilege to be chosen as an AFS student. I arrived in the United States two weeks after Nixon’s resignation on August 20, 1974. Our group did not get to visit the White House when we went home in July of 1975.

All my life I have been proud to have been an AFS student and to carry the mission forward of spreading peace in the world, one person at a time.

It’s gotten a little more difficult in recent years.

[AFS stands for American Field Service, today the largest and most famed high school student exchange program in the world]

The New SoFi Stadium under Construction in Los Angeles

On By Norbert HauptIn Travels1 Comment

Landing in Los Angeles this afternoon, I had a great view of the new SoFi Stadium under construction in Inglewood.

This is the future home of the Los Angeles Chargers and Rams. It will open in the summer of 2020.

Already, it is scheduled to host the Super Bowl LVI in 2022, and the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2028 Olympics.

I am wondering what is happening to the real estate values of the housing developments to the right of it?

You can check with Wikipedia page for more information.

Nerves of Steel – Landing in Heavy Crosswind

On By Norbert HauptIn Travels1 Comment

I have done my share of flying. I have also had some scary landings, but nothing like this one: