I am sitting in the Aviance lounge in Birmingham airport as I am flying to Belfast today to visit family.  My day started badly with a mix up over time zones and meeting times which meant I had to rush to get to the airport at Copenhagen on time.  The flight out of Copenhagen was uneventful and I arrived in Birmingham at around 10am.

At that time I tried to check in for my afternoon flight.  I was told this wasn’t possible as my flight wasn’t departing until just after 3pm and they had nowhere to hold my luggage.  I was disappointed by this as I had paid for lounge access as I knew that I would be in the airport for hours.  As I couldn’t get to the lounge without checking in I went and found a seat and finished a book. (That description really doesn’t highlight how difficult it was to find a seat).

Just after 12 I went to check-in again.  As I was walking down to the check-in desk I realised that the airport was really full of people and that the queue for security stretched right back to the food court.  I hadn’t seen the airport that busy since the beginning of the “flying with explosive liquids” scare.  Things didn’t improve when I got downstairs.  It was really hard to even see the check-in desks with the number of people standing around the airport.  I finally managed to get across the terminal to the desks and joined a queue that was more than three times the length of the one I had queued in earlier.  It took more than 30 minutes for me to make it to the desk but thankfully this time I could check in.

I then had to go and queue to get my lounge access and priority track security pass stamped.  I have to admit that I am really pleased that I had the pass to get through security quickly.  I only had to wait about twenty minutes to clear security whilst I am sure that some people had to queue for around an hour and a half.  These additional services cost me 17.50 GBP and it may have been worth that for the priority security alone - which is just as well really as it really isn’t worth it for the lounge.

The lounge isn’t very big and isn’t very impressive.  It does have free drinks and maybe if I drank alcohol it would be better value for money.  There are cheese and onion crisps and biscuits to eat but these don’t appeal.  At the minute there is only me in the room but it’s not overly peaceful because the airport announcements can still be heard but at an annoying volume where you can hear them but not make out a lot of details.  There is a TV showing the Olympics and a phone on the desk of the receptionist that seems to ring every five minutes.  (I think the phone is annoying me partly because I’m tired and don’t cope well with background noise and also because the receptionist sounds like he is having a lot of fun chatting to his mates. Actually he is now sitting with a can of coke on a soft chair in front on the T.V. and is channel surfing…)

It has wifi as I was expecting but I wasn’t expecting to pay for this.  It costs 6 GBP per hour.  The other thing I wasn’t expecting was that I can only stay in the lounge for a maximum of two hours!  If my flight it delayed I will have to leave the lounge and go and wait in the main terminal.

None of the things that have gone wrong are that bad and my experience through the airport has certainly been better that the experience of the passengers waiting in the horribly long security queue.  But all the small things combined have made me feel irritable and grouchy.  Here’s hoping the flight isn’t delayed.

I’ve had mixed feelings so far regarding my Copenhagen trip.  I didn’t enjoy my arrival into Copenhagen.  The airport was chaotic with five different flights having luggage on the same belt as the one my flight was using.  I had to wait over 40 minutes to collect my luggage and then queue to get out of the airport.  I have had to wait this long to collect luggage before but never have it done it with so many people cluttered around the belt and with such uncertainty about whether or not it would ever arrive.

Yesterday I wandered around the city and it is quite beautiful.  I really liked the area around The Little Mermaid though the statue itself is not that special.  The weather is not great but it makes a nice change to have cooler, wetter weather.  It reminds me of Tokyo in early spring.

Food and drink are really expensive.  For lunch yesterday I had a chicken burger, chips and a large sprite.  This cost 150 DKK (around £15.00; 3,300 円).  In Tokyo I usually spend a third of this on lunch.  Actually, if I eat Japanese food in a restaurant close to the train station where I live I spend less on my main course than I did buying a soft drink in a restaurant here last night.

My sister Christine has been asking me why I haven’t written about her trip to Japan as last year I was keen to write about her exploits. The only reason has been my lack of desire to do anything with a throbbing head.

I am always stunned by how much “get up and go” Christine has. She arrived in Japan with a recently broken toe on her right foot. I thought that this might slow her down but she continued to go out every day. When I got to Japan I was shocked by how bad her foot looked. It was purple and swollen and she had either been badly bitten or was allergic to something. When I pointed this out she pointed out that that wasn’t the foot with the broken toe. (I have never been that good at telling left from right). So both her feet are a complete mess. What does she decide to do? Put on a pair of sandals and go hiking on Mount Takao!

I took a picture of her foot as she tells me that her friends haven’t quite grasped how bad it looks (she normally has really slender legs, ankles, and feet).

This morning when she was limping around the apartment I suggested that she stay in and rest her legs and feet. I was told that there was no way she was spending time in Japan sitting around my apartment. (I too would have liked to have gone out today but this is not the country to travel around coughing, spluttering and carrying two boxes of tissues).

When I said that she might have difficultly walking her response was, “maybe I should hire a bike and cycle around”. Her feet have either gotten so bad she no longer has any feeling in them or she has super powers that I don’t possess.

Flying from the North Wing of Terminal 1 in Narita airport can be incredibly hassle free. Today I managed to get off the train, check in, and go through security and immigration in under half an hour. The airport is clean, spacious and air conditioned. Sitting at the gate is so comfortable that I haven’t bothered to try and find the airport lounge I can use. If only all airports could be like this.

I tried to make an online payment to my UK pay-as-you-go phone. As I haven’t used this in a while and my credit card had expired. I followed the link to amend payment, put in the new details are was told that something had gone wrong, they didn’t know what, but maybe I could try again in a few days!

I then tried to check my seat assignment with Virgin Atlantic as I occurred to me that Marty and I may not have seats together. But I can only do this up to 24 hours before the flight. I can’t actually think of a good reason why I can’t still update my seat but at least they could have shown me what seat I have been assigned.

I then thought I would have a quick look at the website for the Portuguese Perl Workshop but this wouldn’t load for me. I would find it hard to live without the Internet but sometimes it drives me mad.

(I’m only blogging because the sink has blocked up and I can’t finish washing the dishes. I had thought that using the computer for a bit would help me feel less stressed. It hasn’t worked.)

I’m having one of those days when nothing goes as planned. To make matters worse I’ve also become really clumsy. I’m managed to whack my foot of the wooden under-bed drawers, headbutt the kitchen cabinet and trip over my own feet. I also keep dropping things - but only one has landed on my foot so far.

I’m behind in more than my blogging and early tomorrow morning I will be flying to Europe. Hopefully I don’t become a health hazard at the Portuguese Perl Workshop!

Flying between Vienna and Moscow today I had the misfortune to be sitting behind two annoying travellers. I first noticed them on the way to the gate. We had tried to go to the gate as soon as the sign to do this appeared on the board as we knew that we had to go through security just before the gate. When we arrived there was a really long security queue for around 40 gates. We stood in line and watched as our flight status changed from “go to gate” to “boarding” and wondered if we would actually make the flight. Most people around us were looking at watches and shuffling impatiently. But then I noticed two men making their way through the crowd. They paid no attention to anyone else and just pushed their way to the front of the queue. I remembered glancing over and thinking “why do they think they are more important than anyone else?” When we boarded the plane the same two men were sitting in the row in front of us.

I really dislike sitting behind someone who puts their chair back before the food is served. Given the cramped space on most planes it makes it very hard to eat. But these passengers put their seats back before the plane had left the stand! And the staff didn’t complain or do anything about it. Instead they brought them over a bottle of whiskey and tucked it into their seat pocket. And this wasn’t one of those miniature bottles you sometimes get on airplanes. I thought that most airlines had restrictions on the amount of alcohol that they would allow their customers to consume during a flight. But on top of the whiskey they served wine and other beverages. I wasn’t really paying that much attention but I did notice when the empty bottle of whiskey was taken away.

I managed to ignore them for most of the flight and thankfully I hadn’t planned to sleep but as soon as the announcement was made about the plane descending they became noticeable again - mainly because they were moving about the cabin and making quite a bit of noise. By this stage it was obvious that they were drunk. The announcement was made about putting chairs in an upright position and storing tray tables etc but again this was all ignored. In fact they continued to drink until the plane jerked and the glasses they weren’t holding in their hands smashed onto the floor. Not learning from this they managed to smash more glasses when the plane wheels hit the ground on landing.

The only time the staff told them off was when they started to move about the cabin as the plane was taxiing to the stand. I wasn’t surprised to see them push people out of the way to get off the plane and was really glad to see them disappear off towards immigration whilst we went towards transit. Travelling with Aeroflot has been a strange experience and their lacsidaisical attitude towards the behaviour of the passengers seems to be another quirk I have to look forward to on my flight from Moscow to Tokyo.

I’ve been staring blankly at my computer screen for a while now. Jet-lag is finally catching up with me and I’m finding it hard to concentrate. I am sitting at a “laptop bar” in Schiphol airport trying to catch up with my email. But responding requires concentration, which I lack. I can’t even be bothered to walk over to the board to check on the status of my flight when I can look this up on the airport’s website…

I have been trying to find cheap flights from Tokyo to Taipei - but I’m getting nowhere. When searching for airlines failed I thought I had come up with a great way to discover who flies between these two places: I went to Narita airport’s web-site and checked the departures list. This shows quite a few airlines that fly to Taipei. But when I then went and searched the web sites of Eva Airlines, Delta, and China Airlines I got a variety of different error messages. I assume that they are operating code share flights with either ANA or JAL.

Going to the OSDC in Taiwan may be quite expensive.

We went to one of my favourite places today.