Month: July 2011

I’m home!  The long journey from Cape Town to Seattle had me cross three continents and one ocean.   But before too much sympathy is heaped on me : I got upgraded to first class from Frankfurt to Chicago.   Life is a charm in first class at 38,000 ft, complete with caviar served with crumbed cheese, onion and a lime and German Riesling to wash it down with. 

The tarmac picture is of O’Hare airport with the Airport Hilton behind the old control tower, and the new control tower on the right.   And finally a picture of somewhere over south Washington State.  I think that’s Mt Adams on the horizon.

This is Wednesday morning and I am in the lounge at Frankfurt airport.    The pictures show the highlights of my day, all done with the U-bahn.   I stayed at the Marriott Courtyard in Nordwestzentrum (pink line at top of map).    The center of Frankfurt is at Hauptwache station (second stop to the right from the main station Haupt Bahnhof).    The Hauptwache is one of the most famous plazas in the city.   That’s where I found the church (I forgot its name!).  Check out the red velotaxi in front of it – a pedal bike with a seat for a passenger to be pedaled somewhere close by.    The spectacular glass and steel building with curved surfaces inside and out is there as well, next to the Kaufhof (department store).    Look for me in the red shirt !  on the overhead picture as well as taking a picture of the curry wurst with thick pommes* smiley face.  *Very popular/ most popular fast food snack in Germany.     Then I went to check out the main station.   Atlas on the roof is carrying the world on his shoulders.    The final few pictures are all from around Römerberg the plaza with the Rathaus (city hall) .. there is some very beautiful detail on some of the doors and walls and windows to be seen.

We arrived on time at 5.20 am in Frankfurt.   I sat on the upper deck of the ‘big bird’ Airbus A-380 that brought us here.   These pictures are wall panels at the baggage claim at Terminal A.    The 1970 aircraft tug with 600 hp will NOT do and instead a 1,400 hp tug pushes back the A-380.  (The Germans did not translate PS in the pictures.  It stands for Pferdestärke!  Horse power!)    And fuel is now pumped into the belly (and wings?) of the plane at 7,000 liters/ min compared to a typical 300 liters per minute.

I’m catching a few winks at a hotel and then I will go see the city before I ship out to the USA and Seattle in the morning.

 

 

 

Marlien and I went to the Victoria &Alfred Waterfront today.   It was not cold, but a little blustery as the pennants and the South African flag in the picture shows.   That is Table Mountain in the backgroud, of course : Cape Town’s signature landmark.   By the time we left an hour later, a thick blanket of cloud was rolling over the mountain.

I picked up a friend at Cape Town International Airport today, which is where I found this life-size bronze elephant.  The beast was created under the direction of Jean Doyle and the Doyle Art Foundry, with the help of a fellow sculptor.   The project took a full 2 years to complete.      Donations from the public can be put in the tree stump collections box for the Out of Africa Children’s fund.    The elephant is not a permanent fixture :  it will be auctioned at the end of the year and the funds raised will also go to charity.

That’s me, hitting a few balls against the wall on the tennis court at my brother’s house.    Tessa the Jack Russell terrier is trying to nab the ball.     The oak trees lining Victoria Avenue at the University of Stellenbosch campus (it’s my alma mater) have no leaves this time of year.    And the sidewalks will fill up with students on Monday when they return for class after their winter break.

We have beautiful calm and mild weather here in Stellenbosch.    This oak tree found itself in the wrong spot when the road was built a long time ago, but was left in place (kudos to the road builders).     Just be sure to pass it on the left !   We drive on the left side of the road, the same way the British do.

 

 

Cape Town International Airport was fogged in as we approached it at 9 am local time, but we landed nonetheless.   The pilot announced afterwards that the smooth landing was thanks to Boeing’s automatic landing system on the aircraft.       Of course, the pilot has to be certified and the airport’s ground systems have to support the whole process as well !  I think we did a Cat II  landing since the visibility was about 300m (1,500 ft).  The sequence of cockpit shots are from a video clip I found on-line.

Here is a rundown of the Instrument Landing System (ILS) Categories  :
Cat I :  200 feet Decision Height* (DH);  2,400 feet (or 1,800 ft) Runway Visual Range (RVR)
*The height at which point a decision must be made to either continue the approach or to execute a missed approach (abort the landing).
Cat II Restricted :  150 feet DH;  1,600 feet Runway Visual Range (RVR)
Cat II :  100 feet DH;  1,200 feet RVR
Cat III A :   No DH (alert height generally 50 feet);  700 feet RVR
Cat III B :  No DH (alert height generally 35 feet);   600 feet RVR
Cat III C :  No DH,  zero visibility – a “blind” landing.    This one is almost never done, since the pilot will not be able to find the gate after landing !

The first picture is of Lagos coming in from Frankfurt (6 hr flight).    In the next one we’re at the arrival gate.   Murtala Muhammed is a former military head of state that the airport is named after.     So .. how did it go in Lagos airport?  Well,  was quite an adventure!    The passport check point is as basic as it gets : 2 uniformed officials behind a bare counter top inspecting our passports and the blue arrival cards that we filled out.    NO passport scanner, NO camera, NO computer.   Not even a pad and a rubber stamp !   And where’s my visa?  the official asked.   My heart jumped – ‘Uh – I’m just connecting, on my way to South Africa’, I replied.    Ok, said the customs official, we will hold your passport.   Go and collect your luggage and come back here.      The two baggage claims are not marked, there is no air conditioning and it is crowded.   But lo and behold, my luggage did show up, and now I clamber back up the stairs man-handling my bags.    The person that took my passport is no longer at the desk – turned out it got handed over to a person in another room.    The guy with our passports tells 4 of us to follow him.    We go outside onto the tar road in front of the terminal, dodging the taxi drivers soliciting rides, then back into the terminal, up another flight of stairs.    By now I’m sweating the way I do after eating mildly spiced Mexican or Thai food (a lot!) .    Inside there is another crowd of people clamoring at the South African Airways check-in counter.  No problem : our escort yells at the officials in charge of the check-in line,  and gets us right in front.     Finally he hands our passports back to us and shows is to the security check point for the boarding gates.

So the ‘passport separation anxiety’ we felt was not warranted – the official was very helpful.   We would have been totally at a loss as to where to go next, after going through the passport check.   Should we have tipped him?  I don’t know – I didn’t.   I didn’t have any local currency anyway.   But if the airport had been modeled on Schiphol airport from what I read on-line, there was none of that efficiency visible.    The airport suffers from badly designed passenger traffic flow; it needs to install electronic systems, and it needs some serious sign posting to be installed as well.

The cool African mask is from inside the lounge at the airport.

Another 6 hrs got us in at 6.00 am at Johannesburg airport.   I had to hustle to make my 7.00 am connection to Cape Town (another long passport control line + re-check bagagge + run to the gate).    But hey, I made it, and so did my baggage : 3 international connections and 36 hrs of travel time!