travel (part 1)

well...i'm in hungary now so i thought i'd share my experience about the trip here (more about the rest of it will be posted later).

so first i had to get past the fascists at the airport (aka the transportation security administration). to my surprise, i discovered the indianapolis airport wasn't taking everyone through their new 'screening' methods (aka porn or grope). they seemed to be either rolling with a random or profiling system. i would have stopped to ask them about it, but i didn't want to be profiled/selected to be groped so i quietly moved along...this was, of course, after removing everything from my pockets, taking off my belt and shoes, and going through a metal detector. the metal detector's fine, but my shoes...really?

anyway...the little hopper (plane) going between indy and chicago was running late as they had to contend with snow and ice at both ends of their trip. you'd think they would account for cold weather as it was (after all) winter, but they didn't. this caused me to miss my connection in chicago and get re-routed to a later flight. that part was, surprisingly, easier than i expected: just run over to customer service and presto...easy (and no charge)! the only thing i had to do was shoot off a quick email to the receiving party over here (in hungary) informing them of my new itinerary. this is when i discovered just how convenient it is to have a smart-phone.

fast forward to duseldorf (in germany). i had to go through their screening process as well...i think i unnecessarily left their 'secure' area...i guess i'll find out on the way back through. anyway, their process is so much easier than ours. they simply had me remove everything metal from my person and walk through a metal detector; no removing of shoes or any of that nonsense. clearly, the TSA have lost all sense of reality, and are implementing unnecessary procedures. conspiracy theorists would claim it's a power grab to prepare us for the new fascist state, while i simply think what we're seeing is the result of government being too large and full of incompetent people (especially around the top).

after a bit of a wait, i hit the plane to budapest. apparently, they don't get a lot of air traffic here as the airport is tiny: it consists of the baggage claim section (2 small carousels), and a non-secure area that's only twice the size of the baggage claim section. the small size made it easy for me to recognize my bag did not arrive with me. the lost baggage claim process was fairly simple; i just had to wander between lufthansa, customs, and the airport's claim desk. other than the back and forth though...easy.

my bag finally did arrive about 30 hours after i did. the airline was kind enough to deliver it to the house (score)! i opened it up and possibly discovered why it was so late: my laptop had been disassembled and poorly re-assembled. i suspect this was done by none other than the no longer so friendly TSA; it would make sense as they're incompetent in everything else they do so why would laptop re-assembly be an exception? i find it rather disconcerting that dis-assembly was necessary to see there weren't any explosives in there as well as we have machines that could have determined it was clean. i guess they're fans of the more intrusive method; again, hardly a surprise from the TSA.

fortunately for me, my job insures i have no trouble fixing sloppy re-assembly of laptops. i get the feeling most people would have a little more trouble with it though. so if you don't want your electronics to be opened up and have who knows what done to them, don't put them in your checked baggage. that would be lesson #1.

lesson #2: lufthansa (a german airline) is far nicer than any american counterpart. they afford you more leg room (at least in economy class), their flight attendants are more friendly, and they're all multi-lingual. not that language is a problem when it comes to the more common ones like english, german, spanish, even greek...but i quickly discovered i've had zero exposure to hungarian. i've managed to learn 2-3 words since i've been here, but starting from a clean slate is quite frustrating.

which leads nicely into point #3: next time i travel to a foreign country, i'm going to at least learn some basic phrases. not being able to greet someone in another country in their own language is unacceptable (at least for me). this time, i did the typical american thing and hurled myself into a completely foreign country with no method of fending for myself. if i didn't have friends here, i'd be screwed.

well...i've gone on enough for now. more will follow about the rest of the trip later.