a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I stayed over this Thursday night since I traveled out only on Tuesday morning. I was very happy to step onto the airplane and yay! .. I even had an open seat next to me. It feels like luxury flying up front in first class these days if one happens to have an open seat.
It was a gloomy, gray July morning in Seattle, and there was a low cloud ceiling in San Francisco. We were put on a ground stop of an hour before we took off, but at the time of our arrival the sky was blue and the clouds rapidly disappearing.
(Yes, that’s a ‘Hotel California’ reference). Our Alaska Airlines ‘bird’ had a broken part last night, and the ground crew proceeded to tell us the flight was delayed from 4.00 pm to 4.30, then to 5.00, then to 7.00, then to 9.00, 9.30, and come 9.30, one more delay to 10.30. Several other flights to Seattle and Portland had already taken off by that time. We finally boarded at 10.45, wheels up at 11.00 and arrived in Seattle at 1.00 am. The veteran flyers all agreed that this was very unusual, and that they should have probably canceled the flight altogether by early evening. But with all the airplanes completely full for the morning with the 4th of July holiday weekend upon us, I guess there was no spare plane available, even on Friday morning. Anyway : made it home safe, even though it took a little longer than usual, is that not right? Then the delay really does not matter much.
I made my way to San Francisco this morning for work. At this time of the year, the airports are full of summer travelers – and lots of people that are not sure where to go, or what to do at the security checkpoint. In a way I envy them, the infrequent travelers!
I took a late-ish flight out Wednesday night .. had to allow time to get back to the airport from the East Bay. Luckily for me, I get to stand in the really short (TSA) security lines at Seattle and San Francisco every time I travel. So the long, long security line waits (2 hrs+ in some), do not really happen to me. Why are the lines so long, since surely there are not that many more travelers from just a year or two ago? There is more than one reason. 1. Back in 2008 when jet fuel was very expensive, airlines started charging for checking bags. They still do – and now more people hold on to their bags (to put in the overhead bin), and that slows down the security check points. 2. Not as many people as the TSA agency had hoped, has signed up for the expedited pre-cleared security lines at airports. 3. Back in 2013, as part of a bipartisan budget deal, 60 cents out of the $5.60 security fee for each flight, now goes into the Treasury instead of paying for screeners and new equipment. (Great, so my part of my travel expenses is used to pay down the national debt, each time I fly). 4. (Comment from Gail Collins writing in the New York Times). ‘The airlines have maximized profits by making travel as miserable as possible. The Boeing Company found a way to cram 14 more seats into its largest twin-engine jetliner by reducing the size of the lavatories. Bloomberg quoted a Boeing official as reporting that “the market reaction has been good — really positive.” We presume the market in question does not involve the actual passengers.
We worked late on Tuesday to prepare for our big presentation on Wednesday, and it was completely dark by the time I was out at the Ferry Building for the short ride out to the Waterfront where my hotel was.
Here’s the street car that ran me out to the downtown office this morning (from Fisherman’s Wharf). I see that I stated incorrectly in a previous blog post that these street cars were made in Italy : they were not. These models were designed by Cleveland street railway commissioner Peter Witt, and built in the USA in the late 1920s. The street cars were then exported to world cities such as Toronto, Mexico City, Madrid, and three Italian cities, Naples, Turin, and Milan. Ten of these street cars were then bought many decades later by the City of San Francisco in 1998.
I only had half of my weekend to spend in Seattle. I left early this morning, so Sunday found me already back in San Francisco, and in the office. I am working with a proposal team to finalize our materials for a presentation on Wednesday, and we needed all the time we could find before then.
The street car that took me to downtown to the office this morning is Italian-made, No 1893. It may have done service in Milan in the 1970s, since it said ‘29 posti a sedere‘ (29 seats) inside above its slatted wooden benches, and a ‘uscita’ (exit) by the back door. Check out this animated map from web site nextmuni.com, that shows the where the street cars are at any point in time, here.
Correction : these street cars are called Peter Witt-type street cars, and were designed and built in the USA. This street car has Italian signage because it was exported to Milan, and did some service there, before it was bought many decades later in 1998 by the City of San Francisco.
The Marina district is named after the San Francisco Marina on the shoreline. There is also a strip of green lawn called the Marina Green between the water and the built-up area. 
Buildings in the Marina district have suffered damage to earthquakes on more than one occasion the last century or so, but as Wikipedia notes : physically, the neighborhood appears to have changed very little since its construction in the 1920s.
Four of us from work went to an Italian restaurant in the Marina district tonight, and I did the very San Francisco thing of taking an ‘Uber pool’ ride home. (Smart phone app used to summon a driver, shown on the map with his name and his car, as well as whom you will share your ride with, what the cost is, and what the estimated arrival time of the car is. Wow! That’s a whole lot of technology coming together!).
Here are pictures from my day in San Francisco outside of working at the office.
I’m in San Francisco .. a small team has started on a new follow-up project at the same gas company.
I traveled in this morning, spent the day at the our office in Three Embarcadero Center, and then made my way to the hotel in the Waterfront. It was a scramble to get out of the house this morning, and then for some reason the Uber app canceled my trip as soon as I got into the Uber driver’s car (maybe I inadvertently pressed a button on the phone, I’m not sure). So anyway .. let’s just go! I said, I will pay you in cash, which is what he did.
I’m home! The travelers from Frankfurt arrived into Seattle shortly after noon Pacific Time. I sat next to the window, and looked out at just the right time to see a beautiful view of the Columbia river as we crossed it in Canada, right after the British Columbia border.
I made it to Frankfurt .. Next stop Seattle.
[From Wikipedia] 
Hamburg, a major port city in northern Germany, is connected to the North Sea by the Elbe River. It’s crossed by hundreds of canals, and also contains large areas of parkland. Its central Jungfernstieg boulevard connects the Altstadt (old town) and the Neustadt, passing Binnenalster lake, dotted with boats and surrounded by cafes and restaurants. Oysters and traditional Aalsuppe (soup) are local specialties.
I did the best I could with the day-and-a-half and rain/ freezing rain at times in Hamburg! I will have to try to come back in summer some time, when the weather is warmer. The HafenCity* area’s development continues, even after 15 years since it had started, and I would love to spend more time there when it had been completed.
*HafenCity is an urban center with many shops, restaurants, hotels and cultural venues as well as rising visitor numbers. More than 2,000 people now live in HafenCity as a whole; there are more than 5,000 students at the various academic institutions; upwards of 10,000 employees work in more than 500 businesses. It aspires to generate and use clean energy and be a model for the new cities that will have to be built around the world this century.
I learned on Monday night that Wednesday – the day of my scheduled departure from Frankfurt to Seattle – is going to be an ugly day at Frankfurt airport. A massive service workers’ union strike forced Lufthansa to cancel 350 flights at Frankfurt, including the one I had to get there for the Frankfurt to Seattle flight. So I pushed out my return by a day .. and thought to squeeze in one more train trip : one from Copenhagen to Hamburg. (I plan to fly early Thursday from Hamburg to Frankfurt). The train ride was quite something. When Deutsche Bahn engineers design and build tracks for their trains, they stop at almost nothing. The train track runs across bridges to cross rivers and narrow channels, and into tunnels to go through hills, or underground. And for a ferry crossing, such as the one between Denmark and Germany that crosses the Fehmarn Belt Strait, they built a train track right on the ferry’s deck, to ferry the whole freaking train across the strait. Or at least half the train. At our final station in Denmark (Roedby), the front four cars were disconnected from the rest of the train. As we reached the ferry, the train cars were run onto the ferry, passengers and all. Then we were shooed off the train (the train is locked for the ferry crossing) to go onto the ferry itself during the crossing, and we boarded the train again before the ferry docked. And the train ran off the ferry onto the track and into Puttgarden station. ‘Welcome to Germany’ announced the conductor.
I could see a bridge far away from my hotel room and discovered that it is the Øresund Bridge to Malmö in Sweden : a combined railway and motorway bridge across the Øresund strait between Sweden and Denmark. The bridge runs nearly 8 kilometres from the Swedish coast to the artificial island of Peberholm in the middle of the strait. So! I have to go, I thought, and besides, my feet and legs needed a break from walking all over the city of Copenhagen in between bus rides and train rides. I literally just had time to make the ride out there, look around the Central Station for 15 minutes, and then catch the train back again.
Here are some of my favorite pictures from Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Yes, the Danes are very friendly and laid-back, and they speak good English. Watch out for bicycles : they go fast, so do not step into the bike lane or cross it before looking both ways! The public transport is top notch. Even the buses have display screens for the routes, and the connections at the next stop.
I am spending a few days in Copenhagen* before heading west, home. The flight from Frankfurt to Copenhagen this morning was just an hour, but it took a while to get here : there was trouble with the on-board computer of the incoming plane, and another one had to be found.
*I thought I would check up on ‘The World’s Happiest Country’ .. as Denmark is frequently referred to when ‘happiness indexes’ are compiled.
I made it into Frankfurt. We left Cape Town more than an hour late, after midnight.
We arrived into Paris some 11 hours later, shortly after noon on Friday. From there, the Hop! Embraer 190 commuter jet took us to Frankfurt.