I’m lying in me beautiful white bad, sleeping in this beautiful summer morning in the beautiful city of Christchurch, NZ, and I read emails from my family and mates in Europe, half a planet and 12 hours on the clock away. They all say ‘bring winter clothes, it’s bloody freezing up here’ and I think: ‘what an idiot I must be to leave NZ this time of the year, when the country is, weather wise, at its best, with camping on the beaches, mountains, wherever, with cold beer, ice blocks and open swimming pools, with girls in sun glasses and short skirts, with tennis and cricket, fishing for salmon, cod, tuna or marlin, sailing… What for? To going to the cold and expensive old continent. Prince William is coming to NZ while I leave for Europe. Guess who’s right!
Archive for the ‘LIVE MOCKOBLOG’ Category
How I’m Gonna Go to Europe and
Friday, January 15th, 2010How I’m Going to Travel from New Zealand and Maybe Back: 4 Days to Departure
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010Hey!
Here’s the deal: I’m gonna live on Sunday 17/02/10 (NZ time) from Christchurch, New Zealand and I am supposed to go to places like: Australia, the Emirates, Austria, Romania, Switzerland, Austria again, Dubai, Australia and back to New Zealand in about one month.
I am taking with me just a smarty phone with wireless capability and I wish to post via email all I can as mockoposts of my travel. I am emailing these posts, so they’ll have no tags and no pictures. However, I shall take photos on my way, using the same phone and I shall try to email them whenever I can, using #G or any other connection, to the alien who helps me, so he can publish the images later.
What you should see are texts from wherever I am, whenever I can post via em@il. Maybe pics later.
For the moment I’m weighing my luggage, as Emirates allow me 30 kgs 95% of the way but a cheap carrier in Europe only lets me take 20. Sorry, no presents for my auntie, I’ll leave the vice and sledge hammer behind.
Travel for Real: How I’m Gonna Go to Europe and Maybe Back – Part 4
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009(Later in that flight)
No wonder I couldn’t read the secret meaning of her bracelets. Something was terribly wrong! And it wasn’t then, no, then it was just beautiful, the comfort of the guilty feeling when you know for sure you can’t be guilty at all. The wrong part only comes now, as I write: I have just realized that it takes a wee bit of Dali and quite a strong dose of Picasso to make the hand and arm of the English girl in the KLM flight perfectly match the described position with her book, blue jeans, white fingers and the arm rest of my seat. She was young, all right. Attractive over the limit, all right (in a 22-hour one-stop flight who wouldn’t be?). But contortionist, no way! Russian ballerina, no way! How was she, actually?
Now, as I remember, she was asleep. Or so she seemed.
She moved slightly as the plane shook from some lateral wind and the light dimmed and most kids cried but only a few mums shushed. Her left leg crossed over my right one, which was a severe violation of my private economy class space but I could see no air marshals or even better looking hostesses, so I chose not to induce any panic on board and I did not complain. The light got dimmer but not fast enough to prevent me from seeing her fragile, almost argyle, agile, ankle. A while.
She was wearing sandals: vandal’s teeth marks, shark’s in her flesh, fresh. I didn’t like her much. So I didn’t touch. I looked at my watch. There was NO time. Just a chime. We were stopping soon, in Bangkok, at noon.
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NOTE: By mistake or just randomly chosen, the airliners featuring in this post and the previous one replace British Airways and its partners, with whom indeed I flew. This is thanks to a charge they applied to my MasterCard for trying to contact over their satellite (?) phone a number on the ground, as I was flying over. It was something like 30 US a minute for NOT getting through. I wrote to British Airways and that letter came back at some expense, too. But never mind, the girl was real. I just picture her in a plane belonging to a company I am more comfortable with.
Travel for Real! How I’m Gonna Go to Europe and Maybe Back – Part 2
Monday, November 23rd, 2009I don’t know what I’m writing about, yet I’m still doing it. So don’t take this information as the Gospel. However, some facts you will read in this series of travel and pre-travel mockoposts are not to be found in The Lonely Planet and the other guides. And they are certainly not meant to be commercial; at least not until someone decides my texts deserve a sponsorship or maybe legal action.
Here we go!
New Zealand has three main international airports. Two are in the North Island (Auckland, the largest and Wellington, a funny one, which resembles a carrier and where you don’t want to land with a cross wind). I live in the South Island and the only option here is Christchurch Airport. This is the main international gate for an island of about one million, not to mention the tourists and the migrants. The picture shows Christchurch International (and Domestic) Runways and the terminals as they were before the massive renovation and extension that’s happening as we speak.
The main carriers operating ex Christchurch are the Oceania-based Air New Zealand and Qantas plus two large Asian companies: Air Singapore and Emirates. The four could be perhaps listed in this ascending order when it comes to size, level of service and popular perception of pricing. I might be very wrong, but that’s my feeling and I had traveled with three of these airliners in the past ten years or so.
When you leave Christchurch going North, as most flights do, unless you are heading to Antarctica, you see the Waimakariri River and the Canterbury Plains.
After that, then the plane is too high for you to see anything else, really, except for the air hostess.
But how do you buy your ticket? Do you go through the agents, airlines or do you give it a go online?