The Adventure to Poland

Well as im sure anyone reading this will know, my current employer, Motorola is closing its Perth operation. As a consequence, my (and some other) projects are being transitioned to Krakow, Poland. The plus side of all this is that I have the oportunity to travel to Poland for five weeks to provide some training and project transition activities, the down side…near on 30 hours of travel time to get there, which is somewhat offset with the prospect of Business class travel.

The adventure started at ’lil old Perth International Airport (the big tin shed), with my flight leaving at 4:50pm (Saturday 22nd March), I had an hour to use up…lounge time. While its not as facny as others, it provide some basic ammenaties such as beer, scotch and cheese, you cant ask for much more than that.

The flight to Singapore was uneventful, basically using it to prepare some materials for Poland (work on a plane? crazy i know) and watch a couple of movies while being fed and offered beverages of various kinds. Flight time was about 6 or 7 hours, cant remember at this point in time. The lady next to me was reading a book, with a title something like “Will he really leave her for me?”, who would have thought such a book existed!

The next 3 hours was spent in the singapore airport ‘Kriss Club’ lounge. Very nice inside, but couldn’t eat anything after the amount I ate on the previous flight, I did enjoy a few mugs of Tiger Beer (which was on tap) while watching the tenis (Nadal) and F1 qualifying. Next came the long stint. Singapore to France…

To my delight, the plane was pretty empty, and more importantly, had the new style business class seats - the type that fold flat to make an actual bed. I felt sorry for those back in coach, struggling for leg room - but only for a moment. I was quickly distracted by the flight attendants offering various beverages along with a tutorial on using the seat / bed. We took off at about 11:50pm singapore time (12:50am Perth). Once again I felt obliged to sample the goodies on offer, apparently it was “Supper” time. After a couple more drinks while watching “Juno”, it was time for sleep. The bed was just long enough to sleep diagonally (your feet go into a little nook down there), and although woke a few times, managed to sleep for about 8 hours.

Upon waking up and transforming my bed back into a chair, I had a nice warm towel to wash my face with, and breakfast was on its way, omlette, cerial and yogurt. Thats the way to start the day. Arrived in France at about 6:30am local time, about thirteen hours after leving Singapore.

Getting off the plane  was all good and easy as you would expect, however, this airport (France) is by far the most confusing, and convoluded design I have ever seen. Its not aided by the ‘helpful’ nature of its locals - but maybe thats because I was using my UK passport. I spent about an hour trying to find my way out - signs said I should go one way for transfers, when in fact I needed to go the other.

Finally I escaped customs. Next, finding the Lufthansa check-in desk (to pick up my boarding pass). This thankfully was not too painful, although it took the help of several non-english speaking customs officials to point me in the right direction. I think this airport was an attempt at modern art or something, either way, it failed. When you get out of customs, you have to go up a travelator (glass surronded, with other travelators going in every direction above and below you) and down a lift to get to the check-n counters.

Finally I had my boarding pass thanks to my first experience with a nice and helpful local, the check-in girl, which I’ll admit was wothy of checking-out . There had to be one (helpful person, not hottie) I’d run into eventually. Next was getting to the business class lounge, and to do this, I had to enter though customs again, being greeted by the same people who directed me in somewhat the right direction earlier. They did have a slight “so you made it huh” grin on their faces and waved me though. Once though, on my left was the terminal tunnel I arrived from Singapore though. After all this time I was back to where I started, however, I had the all important boarding pass. It was akin to Charlie finding the golden ticket, except my prize was entry to the lounge and a cold beer, not a chocolate factory. Not much to do in this lounge just wile away the time until the final flight to Krakow in three hours time.

The final flight from France to Krakow was pretty straight forward, except for the flight attendant having a nap in the seat infront of me once we had taken off. Can’t really blame her, there was about 6 people on the flight. When arriving in Krakow, the plane taxi’ed in front of a bunch of old military prop style transport planes, almost like they were on display in both classic camo, and blue paint effects. Upon departing the plane, I was directed onto a waiting bus, for what I expected to be a several minute bus ride to the terminal. Instead, the bus moved about 80 metres, and opened the doors again for entry to the terminal, not sure what the point of that was.

After flashing my EU passport to the local customs agent I was in, and grabbed a taxi to my hotel. Along the way were some interesting sites (a lot of churches and monestaries), and many “Alkohole” signs along the pot hole and cobblestone lined streets. After the 30 hour journey from Perth to Krakow, it was time for a sleep in a real bed…