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Day 2: Thursday, July 20.
Frankfurt am Main – Milano.
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Frankfurt International Airport, Germany. |
11:15
MET
DST |
We landed at Frankfurt International Airport a few minutes ago and
I'm now taking a stroll in the very industrial transit hall. The hall is smoky, busy,
and full of people of all races and nationalities. I feel like I've reached a gateway
into another world. There are also security guards with machine guns here, reminding me
that the abstract conflicts I read about in my daily newspaper are indeed very real. While
window shopping, I see a Psion 3A (512KB) that goes for DM 998. This translates to about
$750. Yikes! That's about 50% more than I paid for mine, and mine has twice the
memory. The Duty Free liquor doesn't seem very cheap either.
Over by the gate, I try to take a nap while waiting for my next flight. I'm too
wired to get any sleep, and after a while a group of American "International
Crusaders" arrive and make any rest impossible due to their loud yakking. Sigh, is
there no escape? |
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Lufthansa flight
LH3520, Frankfurt am Main (FRA) – Milano (LIN). |
| 12:54 |
I'm back up in the air reading the Wall Street Journal and the US
tech stocks really took a beating yesterday. Microsoft dropped $11 in one day(!) and
everyone else pretty much followed suit. I calculated that I my amateur portfolio must
have dropped around $3,500 yesterday only. Ouch! Fortunately, it's still way up since
I bought the issues and I'm pretty confident that they'll come back up again. In
fact, I'm so cocky that I put in a limit order of $90 for MSFT and $20 for IOMG. MSFT
ended up at around $93, but had a low of $88 so I may just have become a stockholder of
the evil empire in Redmond, WA. |
| 13:26 |
Woof! I saw a lake down below which I identified as Viervaldstätter
See. Funny, I thought, according to the map, we're supposed to enter the Alps any
moment now, but I can't see... As my gaze moved to the left, my thoughts came to a
sudden standstill. Out of nowhere, a dramatic line of snowcapped peaks had suddenly
appeared. Oh yes, there they are! Let there be no doubt about it. |
| 13:45 |
Approaching Milano, there are red brick roofs everywhere. It looks very
Italian, somehow. I can almost smell the oregano and taste the olive oil tossed pasta. In
a few minutes, we'll be landing. I'm tired, but still awake. I'm also very
glad that Josh and Susan will be meeting me at the airport so I won't have to think
about what to do or where to go. Friends are definitely good to have, especially when
traveling abroad. |
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Milano, Josh &
Susan's Apartment, Day 1. |
| 22:14 |
Man, Milano in the summer is hot! It's late in the
evening, but the temperature is still hovering around 30 °C outside and quite a few
degrees more in here in the apartment. To make things worse, jetlag has finally caught up
with me and I'm fighting hard to stay awake. I'm amazed that I've managed
to stay up this long, but it's really have to catch some Z's soon. Strangely
enough, I was doing fine until earlier this afternoon when we sat down at a restaurant to
get something to eat. Then the fatigue suddenly hit me and I had to fight to stay awake
long enough to finish my food and get home. In pure desperation, I had a shot of very
strong espresso, but all it did was to make my stomach feel funny. It could be the heat
too — earlier today, it got up to around 35 °C, which is more enough for even
the natives to feel funny. Back at Josh & Susan's apartment, we've been
channel surfing for a while and I've decided that Italian television is basically a
mixture of Baywatch and the Home Shopping Channel: tits & ass + miracle products for
sale (preferably both at the same time). One of the more typical products is a butt
massager that wiggles your behind and presumably shakes off those calories at the same
time. I can't decide if the commercial was made for the women who the product is
targeted for, or the innumerous men who undoubtedly are watching the show. Then, there are
all these game shows that involve seminude women getting soaked in water or parading
around on stage with their well-dressed male companions. And I who thought that the
American car commercials were bad! |
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