Wrap up: Flight, qualitatively

A few days ago I listed the flights I had taken and their distances. But today I want to recall the nature of these experiences on budget airlines, mostly Ryanair.

  

Ryanair plane exterior and interior.

"We love Ryan" - My Italian friend (We hate Ryan but still use it.)
The Ryanair legend goes like this: Flights are so cheap that you can hop on a morning flight to London, have lunch with a friend, and hop back home by evening.

In reality, most one-way Ryanair tickets probably cost $50 for intracontinental flights of 45 minutes to 2 hours long. However, there are many many hidden costs of using Ryanair.

• Ryanair uses "secondary airports". These are pretty much cargo airports before Ryan came along. They're often REALLY far from the actual city that Ryanair advertises. Why these airports? They're airport usage fees are lower than those of the well-known passenger airports. There is frequently no convenient public transportation from the city center to these airports. You have to take a bus for an hour and costs anywhere between 10 - 15 euro.
• Ryanair flights extremely early. I bet that the 6am flight at any airport is a discount carrier. Think backwards: 6am flight 4am arrive at airport 3am bus to airport .... 2am wake up and check out of hostel. It's like not sleeping at all. Pretty much every trip I took, there were nights like this for me. Even if the airport is accessible via public transportation, you can be that they don't run at 3am. Instead of taking a city bus/metro to the airport bus stop, you have to take a taxi. Plan on another 10 euro, if you split it with your travel companion. 
• Or they flight extremely late. When I flew Pegasus airlines from Marseilles to Istanbul, my 3-hour flight was schedule for 2am and then delayed until 3am. I arrived in Istanbul at 7am without having slept a wink and spent 1/3 of my time in Istanbul as a zombie.

MP2, you know, not Marseille Provence airport but the other one. The 2 stands for second-class discount airlines passenger.

"It's like a bus. With wings." - My Vietnamese friend (I've taken nicer buses.)
It's like a bus because you fight for the seats and you should bring your own food.

Ryanair virgins will scrutinize their boarding pass (web checked in and self-printed, of course) and realize that there is no seat number! That's right. You have to fight for your window or aisle seat. Part of the seat-seeking strategy requires calculating whether to board via the front or rear door of the plane. Yup, the plane is always on the tarmac and not connected to the airport proper with the passageway.

They do sell food on the flight by at highway robbery prices.

I have taken very nice buses with assigned seats, free coffee, and seats that recline to almost flat.

The dreaded luggage box (Pack light. And wear all your extra clothes on your body.)
Passengers are permitted ONE carry-on. Purses, cameras, duty free store purchases must all fit within one piece of luggage, which must itself fit in the Ryanair Cage.

source

At Beauvais airport, a young woman in front of me managed to stuff her duffel bag into the box. But while pulling it out, the handle broke off. No emotion from the Ryanair staff looking down at her kneeling on the floor trying to pull out her broken bag.

I am very proud of being able to travel for 14 days with only this backpack, in which I also put my blocky DSLR case and an empty big brown purse. As you can see, it's a school-size backpack, not a hiking pack.

Tips of getting around the luggage restrictions: Wear 5 layers of clothes. Most flights within Europe aren't more than 2 hours long so you'll only sweat for 2 hours... Also carry a coat with lots of pockets where you can put the heavy items and your snacks for the flight.

No customer service.
Some of you may know that my trip to Lisbon was unplanned. This was due to the volcano ash cloud over southern Portugal that caused Ryanair to cancel my flight. While the ash cloud was beyond Ryanair's control, the ticket rebooking fiasco could have been prevented. Ryanair's website screwed up. Instead of allowing passengers of canceled flights to rebook for free, the website charged us as if we just decided to change our tickets. This lead to a two hour wait at the Faro airport where Ryanair did not have a dedicated ticket counter. Instead all our rebooking requests were handled by a single overtaxed airport employee. Because we didn't use the internet to rebook, we were charged a 10 euro fee, even though the Ryanair website screwed up and we couldn't have rebooked online anyway...

Ryanair is almost more trouble than it's worth. 
Ryanair is planning to eventually go transatlantic. It'll be the worst 8 hour flight in the world. But it means I can go visit all my lovely Europeans friends.

All Chinese people wear coolie hats.

I follow the Disgrasian blog on my google reader and today the blog posted this AP photo from a German Rose Monday parade. (Like many European countries, Germany celebrates the days leading up to Lent with parades, dressing up, and other festivities.)
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It's supposed to satirize U.S.-China ties. But srsly? Can we PUH-lease ditch the coolie hats?

Apparently not because Danes think Chinese people wear coolie hats too, specifically, Danes WHO HAVE ADOPTED CHILDREN FROM CHINA! I wish I had a photo of these shirts to show you all. I was at a Chinese New Year celebration at the Århus concert hall last Sunday. One of the tables set up in the foyer of the music hall was an organization of Danish parents who have adopted children from China. In addition to displaying pamphlets, they were also selling t-shirts with their organization's name and a "cute" graphic of an Asian child WITH A COOLIE HAT! Srsly?? Presumably all these parents had been to China to pick up their kids. Hm? Was everyone there wearing coolie hats? I think not

I need to read more books.

I have never had so few books for my classes! It's insane that I only have two required books for all my classes this semester. Printed course packs of essentially powerpoint slides or lab instructions don't count as real books. The only two (TWO! TWO!) books I bought were an immunology textbook and a genetics textbooks.

In previous semesters, I've always had one or two James Madison classes. We read probably at least 6 books in each class. I loved how I'd buy all the books and line them up on a bookshelf or crate so I could visualize the whole semester.

But now, I only have two textbooks and a few flimsy notebooks in my stackable crate. This is sad. This is probably why I have been thinking so much about reading for pleasure lately.

Things I've been thinking about:

I heard about this satirical novel called How I Became a Famous Novelist. The author, Steve Hely, was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air today. Basically the novel is about a guy who wants to write a best-selling novel just for the money, so he gathers up all the tropes of best-selling novels into one novel and writes details that will appeal to the most demographics. Examples: natural disaster, secret love affair, clubs, a scene of driving on a highway to make driving poetic and magical for audiobook buyers, a folk singer for music merchandise tie-ins. I would add that he should add some pseudo-historical conspiracy a la Dan Brown.

I heard that the Madison freshman summer reading book was Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. I want to read it!

Should I read Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake before I read After the Flood? They're set in the same universe, I think, but this new book is not necessarily a sequel to Oryx and Crake.

Has anyone bought a non-Harry Potter, non-Dan Brown book the day it was released? I'm counting down the days until September 22 because I really really really really want to buy After the Flood and Nocturnes the day it's released.

Reason 492393 Not to Read/Watch "Twilight": Edward eerily reminiscent of anatomy lab cadavers

I have a dilemma. I want to properly ridicule the Twilight books and movies. But to do so requires me to actually read the books/watch the movie. I don't want to read the books/watch the movie. So I have to settle for taking bits of other people's critiques of Twilight and reposting them here.

From a Salon review.
His body is as hard and cold as stone, an ick-inducing detail that this reader, for one, found impossible to get past.

WTF?! Edward is COLD?!

Ok, I get that Stephanie Meyer otherwise describes Edward's appearance in cliche but flattering terms. Well maybe except for "sparkle". Otherwise, he's supposed to have a good jawline and nice hair, or something like that. But it makes no sense in real life to have cold people!!

Hey Tween girls, the reason you still like Twilight is because you've never cuddled a real person! Living people are warm! Cold people are freaky. Not just freaky, THEY'RE DEAD! This is the most unerotic thing ever. Having sex with Edward is like screwing a corpse? Ugh. This reminds me of the cadavers I cut up last semester.

Is Your Boyfriend a Normal Living Human, Corpse, or Vampire?