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Today I almost bought tickets, but the verification step didn't work, so tomorrow I am going to talk to the credit union about it. If the same deal holds, I'll be leaving from Oakland on Norwegian on August 11 and leaving from Prague on Norwegian on August 28. No extensive layovers this time. I could have scheduled a day in Amsterdam on the way out, but it would have been on the order of five or six hundred dollars more. So fooey on it.
I don't know how other people choose their tickets. But since time is not of the utter essence for me, I do look for a long daytime layover and take it if I can get it. It's like adding another jaunt in the travel. Also: I decided as of this year that I'm avoiding ridiculously early or late takeoff or landing times. I'm an old lady and I don't want to be taking the bus to and from the airport in Prague at a stupid hour, or asking my stateside friends and family to drive me to and from Oakland at those times. Another thing I look for is I don't want the homeward bound stop to be in the US. I want to go through customs at the last airport, thank you. I do not want to go through customs and also catch another flight. Customs on the European end are trivial. I decided to go cheap and not reserve specific seats or a meal. I'll carry my own food and buy water from the flight attendants. And though I love a window seat, I usually need to go to the bathroom a lot of times, so those preferences cancel out and I can just take what I get.
So the other thing I am working on is a visit to Chemnitz. I'm not longer certain that my last name being Kemnitzer means a definite connection to the city. My grandfather found no traces of our ancestors there. And once you know the name is Slavic (probably Sorbian or some other Western Slavic dialect) rather than German, you discover -- it's not a rare name, for one, and for another, there are dozens of place names that are some variation of Kamenice. So it's possible that my name was never spelled with the Ch, that my ancestors came from any one of these places scattered over Central and Eastern Europe: and even Southern Europe, though there's no reason to think we came from there: the folks who came here were German speaking and told their children they were Germans.
But anyway, when my father visited Chemnitz, he came back with a glowing description, and I've been wanting to see it ever since. I want to see the giant Marx head and the Museum of Industry, tootle around the quaint streets, pick up a children's book written in Sorbian, eat some Saxon food (much of it, according to my research, is precisely what you'd think it is). And Chemnitz is a four-hour drive through the mountains from Prague. I won't be driving, naturally. Apparently the way to get there is to take a train to Dresden and tghen another one from Dresden to Chemnitz. So I could make it a twofer, and see Dresden. Did I tell you they sell chocolate and marzipan Karl Marx heads in Chemnit? they do.
I don't know how other people choose their tickets. But since time is not of the utter essence for me, I do look for a long daytime layover and take it if I can get it. It's like adding another jaunt in the travel. Also: I decided as of this year that I'm avoiding ridiculously early or late takeoff or landing times. I'm an old lady and I don't want to be taking the bus to and from the airport in Prague at a stupid hour, or asking my stateside friends and family to drive me to and from Oakland at those times. Another thing I look for is I don't want the homeward bound stop to be in the US. I want to go through customs at the last airport, thank you. I do not want to go through customs and also catch another flight. Customs on the European end are trivial. I decided to go cheap and not reserve specific seats or a meal. I'll carry my own food and buy water from the flight attendants. And though I love a window seat, I usually need to go to the bathroom a lot of times, so those preferences cancel out and I can just take what I get.
So the other thing I am working on is a visit to Chemnitz. I'm not longer certain that my last name being Kemnitzer means a definite connection to the city. My grandfather found no traces of our ancestors there. And once you know the name is Slavic (probably Sorbian or some other Western Slavic dialect) rather than German, you discover -- it's not a rare name, for one, and for another, there are dozens of place names that are some variation of Kamenice. So it's possible that my name was never spelled with the Ch, that my ancestors came from any one of these places scattered over Central and Eastern Europe: and even Southern Europe, though there's no reason to think we came from there: the folks who came here were German speaking and told their children they were Germans.
But anyway, when my father visited Chemnitz, he came back with a glowing description, and I've been wanting to see it ever since. I want to see the giant Marx head and the Museum of Industry, tootle around the quaint streets, pick up a children's book written in Sorbian, eat some Saxon food (much of it, according to my research, is precisely what you'd think it is). And Chemnitz is a four-hour drive through the mountains from Prague. I won't be driving, naturally. Apparently the way to get there is to take a train to Dresden and tghen another one from Dresden to Chemnitz. So I could make it a twofer, and see Dresden. Did I tell you they sell chocolate and marzipan Karl Marx heads in Chemnit? they do.
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We had no choice in hours. We had to arise at a very early hour in order to make the 3 + hour drive to the El Paso airport to catch the MST 2 PM flight to the Dallas airport in order to then fly to LaGuardia.
We were further hampered in that travel time due to the Texas police state, stopping us THREE times between Marfa and El Paso to check whether were were citizens, whether we were terrorists, etc. etc. etc. Each stop was lengthy, all identity documents had to be delivered into their hands, and then they spent a very long time checking them all against various databases, after a lengthy interrogation.
I believe traveling in the Euro Zone is much more pleasant, easy and convenient. Getting into the U.S. is a "security" hell, getting to fly is hell, and driving now too is hell.
Love, C.
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Three times between Marfa and El Paso? And yet when I set foot into Czech Republic, nobody looks at me at all. Except once, the transit cops looked at my metro pass to make sure I wasn't cheating (you don't show your pass to anyone most of the time, except in these random checks they do. The passes are very cheap, and the fines for riding without one are very expensive).
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The last-name issue is, as always, interesting to me on a personal level.
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I'm kind of doing anti-genealogy here, aren't I?