When I clicked the confirm or pay or whatever the button is to finalise a flight on the QF site I wasn’t really filled with dread. In my heart of hearts I knew QF would look after me on an all Y return trip to LHR. There was a little part of me that that thought QF won’t make me sit there, they are bound to squeeze me into Y+ or J. 
...but let’s take a step back. Why was I even contemplating a trip in Y to the UK? Well times were tough, business a little slower than I would have liked and I had two other staff members heading to the UK. I needed to keep my costs down and this was an unbudgeted and last minute trip...and yes it was a necessary trip.
My final destination was Berlin, but I also wanted to take the opportunity to see some customers in the south of Germany. To make the trip even less appetising I would need to fly BA’s EuroTraveller class. Mmmm nice! The European excursion would have me taking a LHR-MUC flight, a train...yes public transport..to Berlin, and finally a TXL-LHR flight...or so I thought. Six hours by train from Munich to Berlin was not something I had any intention of trying so it was time to have a stab at AB.
Expertflyer was almost permanently on my screen for the week before QF9/1 beckoned. (Why on earth had I thought the extra 20 SC’s I would earn by splitting my flights was necessary I have no idea.) My confirmed seats were 66A on QF9, 48C on QF1, and 35K on QF2/10 on the way back. It was clear that QF9 MEL-SIN was oversold in Y so it was not much of a surprise when EF showed 66A as empty on the day of travel.
An upgrade to Y+ was confirmed at the ever wonderful F check in desk, and the next task was to eat and drink my way through the F lounge in order to avoid Y+ food....not that there is anything particularly wrong with Y+ food it’s just the F lounge dining is so much better.
In the lounge I had a wonderful catch up with chocsaway and dot.
Like me dot had been upgraded to Y+, whist chocsaway was turning left into Emerald City.
It had been more than two years since I had travelled Y+ on a QF 380 and to be fair it is not a bad experience at all. The drinks flowed...hic...and time hurried by. The service was pretty good although the CSM didn’t pop by with a personal greeting.
SIN presented a new challenge...find the EK lounge. OK I understand that this should be relatively easy, but you have to remember I’m 9 hours, including lounge time, and two and a half bottles of red into my journey. My brain is normally on auto pilot. Straight down the concourse turn left at the end and then left again up the escalator. Now it was straight down the concourse, veer a little right and up the escalator.
Oh my! What a change! An uncrowded lounge, fillet steak, fast wifi. I like this change.
Expertflyer was showing one seat available in Y, otherwise a full plane. Oh how smug I felt to see an X on EF next to my seat. The smugness lasted for about 9 minutes and three screen refreshes. The plane was absolutely full. 
I was eager to board, even though I knew full well that the boarding process for those sitting in row 48 was no longer the one originally planned by QF I hoped against hope that the message had not filtered through to the CSM. With the Archbishop of sydney on board the prospect of seeking a blessing whilst quaffing champagne and wandering through F, (I assume he was in F) quite appealed to me.
Alas, and not unexpectedly it was not to be. The CSM had already spotted I was a P1 and once the vast majority of Y pax had tramped past me to their seats I was presented with a glass (yes glass not plastic cup
) of champagne from F. Hic.
Once we were up in the air and the seatbelt sign was off the cabin supervisor popped over to see me with the offer of a red from F, a cheeky little Pinot Noir accompanied by a bowl of nuts. Very nice. No need for dinner for me!
Y travel meant a change in electrical devices. The little tray tables meant I needed an iPad mini rather than the full size effort, and I didn’t take my brand spanking new 13” MacBook Pro Retina either, it was the trusty 11” MacBook Air that came with me. The iPad Mini worked a treat and after a five hour, slightly unsettled, snooze it was time to watch some movies and TV.
For the majority of the flight my fellow Y pax stayed well away from the acres of space in front of me, and then as if everyone received an invitation hordes of pax decided to visit the galley and stand directly in front of me drinking hot chocolate. This lasted for about an hour and then peace and quiet resumed for the remainder of the flight.
I did take the breakfast, and to be fair the pale looking sausage tasted significantly better than it looked, although this could not be said of the somewhat stodgy looking scrambled eggs.
We arrived early and surprisingly LHR ground staff managed to cope with this. The F pax all prepared for their exit through the forward left hand door, which was a little bit of a shame for them because we actually disembarked through the second door and there was a touch of farce as Y pax were now blocking the way. Fittingly, in my mind anyway, I managed to disembark first.
Ordinarily I would race to the AA arrivals lounge for a shower and a decent feed, but on this occasion my P1 status counted for nought. My trusty Priority Pass card came out and it was off to the Air Canada arrivals lounge. It is not a bad arrivals lounge, the food is limited, but the showers are mighty fine, and it is not as crowded as the AA lounge.
Avis delivered a car in the booking class I had ordered. It was unfortunately French though. I shouted in English at it constantly and felt much better about it.
Eighty Seven quid bought me a room at the LHR T4 Hilton. I can’t say often enough how good the Hilton Diamond status match with VA was. A couple of whiskies in the Exec Lounge probably wasn’t what the doctor ordered but was certainly most welcome. Hic!
So far so good, I had survived my flight to LHR, it was not as bad as it could have been. It was obviously awful, but it could have been much, much worse. Things started to go wrong shortly after joining the “express” (you have to love the British sense of humour) security lane. There never seem to be enough staff at LHR and the ones that are there tend to be standing around doing nothing. [Sarcasm]Shock, horror[/Sarcasm] my backpack was selected for secondary screening. Yes I do carry a fair bit of electronic stuff and I do accept that this will happen relatively regularly but there must be a more efficient way of carrying this out. Each item was meticulously removed from my backpack, prodded with what I assume was a device for detecting explosives, and then placed in a tray.
The tray was taken away for a second x-ray.....and this is the bit that worries me a little. Should I insist on going back with all my bags so I don’t lose sight of my possessions? The tray came back and I emptied it into my backpack and scuttle away to concourse B and my, by now, imminent flight.
BA does PB well. (Are you reading RedRoo? ) I didn’t get time to bask in the glory of effective PB because I was preparing for the flight, this involves switching off a Blackberry, iPhone4, iPhone5, and an iPad Mini.....or would have done if I could find my iPhone5.
Munich was cold and there had been a heavy snowfall, so heavy that the chap meeting me was going to be one and a half hours late. Now patience is not something normally associated with me...but that one and a half hours was to prove very useful. It was an opportunity to ring lost property at LHR. “Sorry you’ll have to wait, we don’t log items that have been handed in for two days.”
"Golly gosh", or something along those lines, I thought, as I paid 4.95 Euros for the t-mobile wifi and looked up Optus’ website.
I had turned the mobile data off on my iPhone5 because I had yet to buy a UK prepaid nano sim.. So no "find my iPhone"! One international call later and Optus had blocked/cancelled or whatever they do to stop the phone being used. “What larks” I would have thought to myself had I not been thinking a string of foul profanities.
Southern Germany in snowy winter is like a scene from a Christmas Card, what I don’t understand is why there is not complete and utter carnage on the roads. I think I came close to death twice on the 170 KM journey north from Munich. Icy and wet roads and 155KM/H left me with cramp in my right hand from gripping rather too tightly on the door. I would like to tell you about the beautiful scenery but my eyes were closed most of the time.
Some of you may remember that I am not overly keen of leaving hotel bookings in the hands of others. Mmmmm no carpet on the floor, a TV with a screen not much bigger than my iPad Mini, no wifi in the room, and a single bed. Not a good start......however there was a redeeming feature so great that I could happily live with these inconveniences. The hotel had it’s own brewery...yes it’s own brewery...hic....
After trout soup, that’s correct, trout soup, it was delicious by the way, I feasted on three beautifully cooked medallions of “Bambi”. Washed down with, yep you guessed it, beer brewed in the onsite brewery. Did I mention that this hotel had it’s own brewery?
I was a little less grumpy by the time it came to fly to TXL. Two days had gone since my iPhone had gone missing. The lost property office at LHR had not had one handed in, but I was told it might take four days. I held off reporting my phone as stolen and decided to visit the lost property office upon my return to LHR.
AB was OK, I was on a 737 sitting in row 2 with a “shadow”. Nothing fancy but AB seemed keen to honour it’s OW requirements faithfully. I had been naive, having looked at the website I asked at the check in counter if I could take my rollaboard as carry on along with my backpack. “Nein” I was told. (Well actually I was told “no”, the rather attractive young lady behind the counter spoke excellent English, which was good because my limited German would have only raised concerns that there may be a British World War II fighter aircraft overhead.)
I had to check my rollaboard in! When I boarded how I wish I had not asked at the counter, I swear that one chap was boarding with a trabant under his arm!! It was worse that the USA.
Berlin is a place I had not been to before, and whilst it was dark when I arrived I was a little surprised at how run down parts of the city were. My assumption was that these parts had previously been in East Berlin. The Hilton was excellent. A King Exec was my upgraded room and the exec lounge was one of the best I have been in on my limited Hilton stays. The mini cheeseburgers and mini pizzas were quite "moreish".
Unusually for me I did take some time to site see and walked down to the Reichstag and The Brandenburg Gate. I do like the Germans and I pay them the ultimate compliment of being the antithesis of the French.
