From today on I am back in Germany. After a 34 hour flight from Sydney via Saigon and Paris to Berlin I’m pretty tired. Will fight my Jetlag now. Just read on if you wanna know the whole story…
I flew with Vietnam Airlines and it was a quite disappointing experience. Though Vietnam Airlines was about $400 cheaper then other Airlines and I had a 40 kg baggage allowance the 24 hours in the plane were soooo boring. During the first 8 hour flight from Sydney to Saigon, I didn’t have a personal video screen and on the overhead screen they’ve shown the flight details with these wonderful maps and the speed of the plane. Unfortunately, this gets pretty boring after 10 minutes. After 3 hours the crew finally decided to screen a movie. They had Agent Cody Banks – pretty much a kids movie – and that was it. No entertainment at all. The crew’s command of English was improvable and the food was rather average. However the crew was friendly and tried to fulfill your requests – if they understood them.
The weather in Saigon was hot and humid. It rained pretty much all the 8 hours I had to wait for my connection flight. The personal at the airport was very friendly and allowed me to use a power point for my laptop. If you want to buy anything there you need US dollars. Unfortunately, most of the shops in the waiting area don’t take credit cards and the money exchange is not in the transit area – smart, isn’t it… After 8 hours in the socialist republic of Viet Nam I boarded one of Vietnam Airlines four Boeing 777.
This time everybody had an individual video screen, but this didn’t help much, since they didn’t have movies to screen. So for 13 hours you could stare at the flight information or – a nice gimmick – on of the two cameras which show the flight direction. Unfortunately, we were on 40000 feet and it was night – so there wasn’t much to see anyway. So I tried to sleeeeeep most of the time. When we arrived in Paris the weather was humid and rainy – unfortunately, I couldn’t see the Eiffel Tower from the plane.
The airport was rather chaotic, since you have to figure out yourself where to go. There was no staff directing you to the right terminal / gate. Finally, I managed it with the few french words I know. After 2 hours of waiting I flew to Berlin in an Airbus 318.
Arrived in Berlin I was waiting at the luggage checkout for my bags. Unfortunately, AirFrance seamed to have forgotten one of the baggage trolleys, so that about 30 passengers missed their luggage. After running through half of the airport the lady at the luggage investigation service told me that they will send it to my home.
After all, AirFrance managed to lose the suitcase with all my summer gear and important belonging. The bag with all the jumpers and winter gear arrived safely – what a service. Anyway, I’m pretty tired by now and have to do all my organizational stuff on Monday. So I will just go to bed and try to get some rest. Have a g’day from Germany…