I love flying. I know most people talk about how miserable it is but I like just about every part of it. There’s the excitement of figuring out when and how to get to the airport, checking the bag, the TSA checkpoint. Okay, I don’t love the TSA checkpoint. I love walking to the gate and seeing all the people and stores, checking if the flight is on time, and just wandering. Part of why I enjoy it is that I always get to the airport before it’s really necessary.
When I was young, my family traveled a lot. There was usually a lot of scrambling at the last minute to find something or somebody. We frequently arrived with just minutes to spare. My parents told me that once when they were in Eastern Europe in the 1960’s they were so late that the airplane had started taxiing. My father was good at dealing with situations like this. He convinced them to stop the airplane. They brought my parents out in a car and pulled the stairs out for them. They certainly wouldn’t do that today.
My reaction to usually being late to the airport (or train station) as a child is that I am now almost always early. I relish the extra time at the airport. I also enjoy being in the airplane and either talking to the person I’m traveling with or if I’m traveling alone meeting someone new. Then there’s the excitement of being in a new city and figuring out how to get into town. I know it sounds crazy.
I often pay for slightly more room on the seat or use frequent flyer miles to get business class but even economy class isn’t that bad.
On the flight to Munich, I met a wonderful 22 year old who was born in Ecuador but is a citizen of Sweden. On the flight from Munich to Dubrovnik, I met a man going to a conference for a pharmaceutical company. He had been to many more countries than me, which is a lot. His son was in the top junior soccer league in Holland and has a good chance at a professional career. The guy on the plane and I could have spent days sharing travel stories.

I had a one hour layover in Munich. This store gave me a brief feeling of really being in Germany – beer steins, lederhosen, and Swiss army knives.

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Dubrovnik was the second place on this trip that was way more beautiful than I thought. The other was Venice. The medieval towers and shimmering ancient pedestrian streets blew me away.
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On arrival in Dubrovnik, I got a text from ATT that Croatia wasn’t part of their international plan and it would cost $19.97 per MB for data. So 2 GB would have cost $40,000! It took me a while but I found a T-Mobile store who sold me a 2GB SIM card for $18. However, the next day, I had to go back to the store and pay a few more dollars since they screwed up.
I took a while to decide where to go these three days. My choices were Prague, Berlin, Dubrovnik, or more time in Paris. My son helped me decide on Dubrovnik and I’m extremely happy with the decision after just a few hours here.