“Third Flight”

We left Amsterdam at 10:15, Sunday morning, July 30. Another eight hour flight was ahead of us.

This time I sat next to Kari. She had the aisle seat, I was in the middle and next to the window was a rather eccentric man. He traveled a lot and worked on some commission of water for African nations. He was probably in his late 50s or early 60s, thin as a rail and agile. When he wanted to get up from his seat, he just jumped up on the armrests and walked over the top of us.

He was very kind though. When we flew over the Alps, and he found Kari and me straining to look out the window, he offered to take pictures for us. Kari handed over her camera and he started snapping shots. Good thing for digital cameras, because I don’t know how many pictures he took. Kari kept looking at me, clearly saying with her facial expressions, “how am I going to get my camera back?”

The airline did seem to feed us pretty well, I thought. Not that the food tasted all that great, but they did keep offering it to us. Lunch and supper each came in a little box with a little pencil and a sudoku puzzle on the lid. By afternoon, the stewardess even brought candy bars around. Once we found out where the stash of more candy bars was in the back of the plane near the restroom, we decided that Northwest Airlines was all right.