Gothenburg, Reflections

Back in the US....back in the US....back in the USA!

Other than having to leave the hotel for the airport at 0-dark-30 (4:45am CET but made somewhat easier since I got a ride in a Volvo stretch limo!!!) the flights home were uneventful. The flight from G'burg to Munich took about 1.5 hours. I had a 3 hour layover in Munich; which was ample even considering that I had to go through German Immigration (interestingly the Germans stamped my passport each way while the Swedes did not at all). The flight to Charlotte took about 10 hours and fortunately I didn't have any trouble getting through US Immigration and Customs. Then I had a 2 hour drive to get to the house so Don was a tired puppy when he got home.

I am still amazed at the level of service that one gets on a trans-Atlantic flight; or the connecting flight from Munich to Gothenburg for that matter. Alcohol is free on the trans-Atlantic flights and Lufthansa does a very good job of making sure that you have what you want. The meals and snacks served were far superior to what the American public has come to expect on domestic flights as well. Even the "snack" served on the Munich to Gothenburg flight was a very nice sandwich as opposed to a tiny bag of some kind of high carb mix (Lufthansa give you this in preparation for the first round of drinks right after they get to cruising altitude on the trans-Atlantic flights) like we get in the states. My flight 10 years ago on KLM was the same way (we won't go into the disaster that the return flight on Northwest was). And the domestic airlines wonder why they are losing money...

Here are some final pix from the trip. And perhaps not what you'd think I'd be taking pix of. But I am an engineer and new/different things interest me so...

First are a couple of shots of the shower in the hotel room (there was a tub as well). Notice that the "shower curtain" is a curved piece of glass that pivots on the wall. You pull it out for use and push it back out of the way when you are through with the shower.



Standing in front of the spray from the nozzle you don't get a much water on the floor outside the "curtain" as I would have expected. You certainly could if you were messing around, but I didn't have any trouble with it.

Another interesting thing was the control valve for the water, both in the shower and the tub. If I ever build a house I'm going to try and source these. They may be available in the states but I've never seen them before.


The control knob on the left regulates the mount of water coming from the showerhead/faucet.


The control on the right regulates the temperature of the water. There is a preset temperature, but by pushing the red button you can turn the knob and set the temperature to your liking. Once that is done, all you do is turn the water on and off via the left control knob. There is no constant fiddling with the hot and cold controls to get the temperature right. I love it!


And one last thought related to our "airport security" (I guess I can tell this now that I'm home...): while I'd taken my prescription sunglasses with me, I grabbed a pair of clip-on sunglasses out of the console in the truck just in case something happened to the prescription pair. I had both pair in my carry-on backpack. Remember that...

Imagine my surprise when, after going thought security in Charlotte and again in Germany on the way over, I found a live .40 S&W hollow point round in the clip-on sunglasses case! I guess that it slipped into the case when I cleared the chamber as I was changing from hollow points to FMJ rounds in the XD40 and dumped the round into the console for loading back into the clip later. Aside from scaring the hell out of me, now I had the problem of what to do with the round. I'm not going to tell you how I solved the problem but someone, at some point in time, is in for a surprise (there was a piece of sculpture just down the Avenue from the hotel depicting a revolver with the barrel tied into a knot. It was titled "Nonviolence". King Gustav Adolph must be spinning in his grave...).

This just serves to point out that the American public has been fed a line by our Guv'ment in regard to air traffic security. The whole thing is basically a scam, as we are concentrating on things that probably aren't going to be tried again (shoe bombs, explosives in liquids) while what we really need to be doing is what Israel is doing: profiling. I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Left now. But there will come a time when we're going to wish that we hadn't been so PC, mark my words...

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