Notes ON Travel: Trans-Atlantic Tomfoolery

Hey, it's the return of that recurring series no on really pays attention to! This is surely the best way to recommence the blogging habit and pulling in the audience.


1. If you're going to be stuck in the middle seat, it might as well be on a Trans-Atlantic flight. You may think I'm kidding, but you'd be wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG. Wrong. That's because those trans-Atlantic flights use non-shitty planes, that have such concepts foreign to your average commuter traveler as "legroom". And given the added convenience of free TV and movies, I was able to watch "30 Rock" and "How I Met Your Mother" episodes along with a neat Bollywood movie. This allowed me to only watch "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" as a final attempt to put me to sleep.

Plus, it didn't hurt that I was stuck between two beautiful ladies...that I didn't say a word to the entire flight.

2. If you're going to be stuck in an airport for a five-hour layover, make sure it's not the Frankfurt airport. Those goddamn Germans and their Teutonic efficiency--they made this aiport into a giant hallway, with only a couple of half-assed newsstands and duty-free shops that take up about 5 square feet. Their food choices are: random prepared-sandwiches, and other random prepared-sandwiches. At least I ended up finding the one set of benches without armrests to sleep for two and a half painful hours, but this was after traveling 2.3 miles in that godforsaken hellhole.


3. There is no scarier feeling than realizing you may have gotten on the wrong train in the middle of a foreign country. Luckily, this feeling only lasted 25 minutes--I randomly ended up on the correct train. But goddamn would I have been fucked with my limited knowledge of Dutch and my 10 weeks-worth of luggage.

4. Don't take a taxi in The Hague. I'm used to New York cabs being pretty cheap, never really having to pay more than a few dollars unless I'm headed to the airport. LA is different, since you're stuck in traffic for 2 hours and have to travel 30 miles to do anything. But taxi service in Den Haag is insane--the starting price is 7.50 euros, which is, if you're scoring at home, 10 dollars. STARTING PRICE. And then once that meter starts ticking, you're going to be paying top dollar. At least their cabbies are dressed in suits. Good to see my money being put to good use.