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I'm now at the airport. Lenore dropped me off around 8pm. Check-in was painless and quick. Hurrah for business class. I'm at the gate now... Well, honestly, I'm sitting in the bar next to the gate.

There's no wireless service. What kind of airport lacks wireless Internet service? The shitty little airport in Richmond, VA has wireless Internet access, but Toronto's airport--the largest in Canada--does not. Brutes, I tell you!

I had to show my ticket not once, not twice, but four times already. Getting on the plane will make five times. Every time I get to another section of the airport, they ask for my ticket. Dude, I got through security with the x-rays and the wands and the hey hey hey. Surely you can trust me to walk to the next book store in the concourse.

There's something about travelling internationally that is very different than travelling within North America. It is probably as simple as the fact that you leave late at night when the teeming masses have left the airport, but I do love the feel of being in the airport on the way out of the country.

My drink's here! Time to read what Amir Aczel has to say!

It's not charming yet.

I'm sitting in Gatwick right now, trying to arrange an earlier flight to Berlin, but I don't think I'll have much luck. I'll have to make my way to Luton airport (betcha didn't even know there WAS a Luton airport!), which is conveniently located on the complete opposite side of London from Gatwick. Note to those out to make a buck off of travellers in airports: I'd pay a lot of money for a shower right now.

The flight was good. Business class was definitely the way to go. I slept most of the way. For breakfast they tried to feed us each enough food for the country of Liechtenstein. I got about halfway through my veggie quiche before filling up; I probably finished less than a third of the basic meal. They tried feeding me scones, croissants, yogurt, rolls that probably would have been better served at dinner, and a variety of other delectable pastries. I'm not sure how anybody took them up on it unless they were hoarding food like Napoleon Dynamite and his tater tot pocket.

The quality of the food was good, but the sheer volume of it was impressive, enough to make an American all-you-can-eat buffet look like a fashion model's diet.

Tra la! I'm in London! I'll write more later.

(By the way, most of this entry was written on the plane this morning.)

In London, waiting for the train to Kings Cross, and then from St Pancras ("Saint Pancreas?") To Luton. Let's see if I can make the early flight to Berlin.

The weather here is lovely. Cool--maybe 5C--but bright, with a gentle breeze.

On the train to Luton.
Notice how the English
countryside looks nothing
at all like Southern
California

European trains haul ass. I'm in England--the slowest of the countries--and DAMN.

BTW, London looks remarkably like, well, London.

Amazing how a charmless block of flats in England actually looks charming. I picture the vast expanse of two-story suburban walk-up apartment buildings in Raleigh and contrast them against the cute brick or stone numbers here.

I mean, they still live way out by Gatwick (which is, I must state conclusively, superior to Heathrow), and by a rail corridor, but at least their buildings look nice as I am zooming by.

I'm northbound from St Pancras now. Met my first natives on the last train. One stop after Gatwick, three male late-30s footballers got on and surrounded me in my seat. They talked amongst themselves for the first couple of minutes, discussing what I gather was some sort of league match yesterday evening. I got the impression that they didn't do very well, but they didn't appear terribly broken up about it.

They seemed nice enough, and I was amused as they shared with me stories about their kids and their drunken friends and family members. I don't think I ever caught their names, and they never asked me mine. They seemed indifferent to the fact that I came from Canada; they stopped at that conversation point just long enough for me to enunciate those three syllables before trundling along to the story about their friend who got ass-bending drunk at the pub, took his shirt off, started dancing, and threw up on his own chest. Apparently the owners tried to throw the guy out of the pub but were unsuccessful. They barricaded him in the washroom instead.

Oh, and they all spoke like Eliza Doolittle. "The rayyyyn in Spayyyyn falls mayyyynly in the playyyyn." Nice guys.

I love the smell of Europe in the morning. It smells like cigarette smoke.

No, I didn't make the early Berlin flight. I'm sitting in the Luton airport across from an older Italian couple either carrying on a heated argument or talking affectionately about their relationship. It's hard to tell in Italian. The Russian woman sitting next to me is reading "Eats, Shoots and Leaves."

PS: Luton airport == ass

Also, it should not be referred to as London Luton, given that it is in, uh, Luton: about equidistant between Oxford and Cambridge and not even remotely close to the London metropolitan area. I should have flown from Gatwick. I thought Gatwick to Luton was going to be like going from Dulles to Reagan or JFK to LaGuardia. It's more like going from Toronto to Buffalo.

I'm sitting in a seat near the outsize baggage entrance. There is a very irate man complaining that he has to pay a fee to take his luggage even though it weighs more than the weight allowance. He's saying "bloody" a lot and is engaging in that stupid class superiority thing that the English do, treating the service people like a nickel pail full of cow shit. I want to kick him in the box. I'll bet the baggage people would applaud me.

BT has these telephone/.
Internet terminals in
the airport. Typing
normally on the keyboard
is like trying to
open a giant steel door
by scratching at it
with your pinky
fingernail

My flight to Berlin is late. I am posting from one of BT's retro-space-age-looking public Internet kiosks. It doubles as a public phone and looks like something out of THX-1138 or Woody Allen's Sleeper. The keyboard is brushed nickel -- including the keys themselves -- just like the buttons on a standard public phone. Imagine QWERTY typing on a phone booth keyboard. My pinky finger is barely able to hold down the shift keys; the keyboard is designed more for hunt and peck typists, or perhaps typing with one's elbows. Still, there's a power outlet next to it, and I'm charging my iPod so that I can listen to PVD's Vorsprung Dyk Teknik on the flight to Berlin. Ich bin high!

Luton airport doesn't suck nearly as badly once you get through the security checkpoint; in fact, it's pretty nice. It looks like ass when you're in the entrance area with check-in, though: it makes the Brussels train station look positively cheerful by comparison.

I have some photos to post and will be making all of these entries public once I have wireless access at Swissotel.

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