Day of departure

Having slept just 3 hours I start my journey by taking the train to Munich at 8:30h to meet my fellow travellers Nadja and Katja.
Unfortunately we need to split rather soon in Oz. The girls decided to get back home a bit earlier than me Both girls worked at Sofitel in F&B and that’s where I met them. Some time ago they told me they wanted go to Australia for a year of Work’n Travel and after some contemplation I joined them. I wanted to go to Canada in the first place but the girls convinced me Australia being the better deal.

Anyway, we met at 9:30h in Munich to start our trip to Australia. Apparently we picked the right date as the sky was clear, temp being around 15 and icland’s volcano stopped erupting so that our scheduled flight was able to take off in time. One week ago a volcano blasted a huge amount of smoke in the air which drifted south and resulted in a complete chaos on the airports. All planes were grounded for several days in northern and central Europe stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers. On Tuesday the first flights were able to take off on a special permission before air space was opened for all planes on Wednesday, our day of departure. Basically we started our trip to Frankfurt without knowing whether the plane would take off at all.

As there are no non-stop flights to Australia and since we booked the trip via a travel agency we had to go to Frankfurt to take our flight with Korean Air to Seoul. Kati scheduled a meeting with her sister Silke in Frankfurt where Silke would take over the car. Fortunatley for Nadja and me we got a lift and didn’t have to take the train.

Way too early we arrived in Frankfurt and after having met with Kati’s sister and niece we drove to the airport. Havent been to Germany’s biggest airport before but I experienced it not that impressive.

In some forums you can read that people started their one year backpacking trip with 12-14 kg of luggage and I really don’t know how to reduce your essentials to that weight. Ok, most backpackers don’t have a computer and don’t use a trolley. Anyhow, the three of us checked in with 60,8 kg and Nadja was a bit scared of getting charged for being over the permitted limit. To our surprise we were told that the limit was 25 kg pp although it said 20kg in our e-ticket.

(Chris, Nadja, Kati looking forward to a great trip)

I bought my alleged “last” pack of faqs as I want/will/would like to quit smoking in Australia. I wanted to quit for a long time but never found the right opportunity (maybe I didn’t search hard enough). But since there is so much to see and do in Australia I figured it would be a good distraction. (Writing these lines two days later the craving is almost unbearable ;-) )

We said good bye to Kati’s relatives and went through the security check to wait for the boarding at 19:15h. I expected there to be a smoking area after the screening but I failed miserably by not asking someone. Instead, I assumed there was a smoking area. Of course there was no such thing and I was fu…

The flight KE906 to Seoul (Incheon) was scheduled for 19:45h in a 747-400. Never before I had the pleasure of travelling with a 747 and it is really a great plane. You have your own entertainment system with on demand movies , tv series and music. Everybody has his own touch screen and so there is not just one TV program for the entire aircraft. Flicking thru the movies I was impressed with the selection. There were classics like Forrest Gump up to the lasted movies. I quickly found the greatest hits of Boston and so I was happy for the rest of the trip.

Cliffnotes:

- Nadja and Katja my fellow travellers

- Flight from Frankfurt to Seoul w/ a great 747