da plane! da plane!

holy crapness the holidays are finally over. man you plan for that shit for a whole month and then whoosh it's over and you're like wtf i'm back at work.

seriously my holidays are never a vacation. why? 

sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents in berlin. 

mother in los angeles.

father in calgary. 

thus my holidays are spent half the time in airports, planes, taxis, dragging my bag around, sleeping on lumpy couches. i love my family and i'd do anything to see them, since i see them once a year (if i can afford to go to berlin) so i do it. also because i'm the youngest apparently this means i'm the only one who can put my life on hold and fly all over the place. that being said, having everyone try to cram into my house with 3 roommates would be a terrible idea so i make the trips.

i won't bore you with the usual holiday stories but concentrate on the flying part. the airport part. the fuck i hate traveling part.

my first plane ride was in 1992 going to canada from germany. i was 6 and didn't understand that going on the plane meant not coming back. i was with my dad and sister, my mom was already living in edmonton for the past year. i wasn't scared, i got on the plane, put my head in my dad's lap, focused on the brown seat in front of me and fell asleep. i ended up sleeping through the whole 10 hours flight. i woke up when everyone was clapping that the plane landed. apparently back in early 90's flying overseas was a huge feat. especially coming from east germany.

i didn't fly for awhile, some family trips to germany and florida where i fought motion sickness by frantically chewing gravol gum for kids and asking for apple juice the whole time. flying as a kid in the 90's was awesome because:

- free coloring books

- trips to the cock pit

- candy from the flight attendants

- kid package that included toys and stuff to pass the time on the flight, plus the famous "wings" pin.

also, if you fly alone as kids, you're a UM. this is awesome because if you have a connecting flight the flight attendant will escort you through the airport in one of this golf carts and they let your parents in through the security so they are right there to pick you up when you get off the plane.

once my parents were divorced and my mom had the brilliant idea to move to quebec my sister and i started flying. a lot. back and forth between calgary and ottawa every 3 months. i got so used to the sensation of flying that i could fall asleep during take off and landing. by the time my sister turned 14 we didn't need UM anymore, you were then old enough to fly by yourself and with kids.

i have now flown so many times i can't count it and i also ranked up so many ridiculous stories that my best friend jo refuses to fly with me because of my bad luck. i'm not lying when i say almost everything that could happen on a plane has happened to me except crash. here are some highlights of my experiences and my family's.

- flying back from florida to ottawa during ice storm of 1998, getting caught in newark without no flights going to ottawa. i was 12 and started balling my eyes out until the airport staff found one flight going to montreal so they put my sister and i in first class to shut me up. once in montreal we waited another 6 hours during the whole night for a plane to show up to get us to ottawa. so many weird people on that flight. once on plane to montreal we waited 3 hours for the plane to be de-iced and my mom was freaking out where we were in ottawa that she somehow managed to get connected to the pilot of our plane who reassured us we were in the aircraft.

- flying back from florida AGAIN to ottawa and being stuck in toronto airport during legendary snow storm. if anyone remembers the news reports of this and the 3 km lineup to check in or rebook your flight, i was in that line. for 6 hours. only to have my flight canceled. next day waited in same line. flight canceled again. my mom ended up driving to toronto to pick my sister and i up.

- stopping over in georgia atlanta, while landing we get hit by a near hurricane like storm which resulted in our plane getting hit by lightning, pilot losing control and having shit fly everywhere and a large black woman scream 'PRAISE JESUS!!!!' and having such bad turbulence 2 people puked. we somehow landed but had to wait 2 hours on the runaway until it was safe to move the plane and the storm was over.

- my sister taking off but a bird flies through the jet so they perform an emergency landing.

- my stepdad's plane taking an emergency landing after some douche wants to have a cigarette, gets angry at flight attendants and screams he has a bomb.

- my sister flying all the way to canada from germany with a bunch of horses on her plane hidden behind a wall that passengers were only informed about after landing.

- flying to berlin on christmas eve only to have it snow for the first time in years resulting in use circling in the air for 2 hours while they cleared the runway. we were the last flight in, there was a guy dressed in a santa suit, free champagne was given, we landed at midnight, it was a mess. and all the bags were lost and not found till the last day i was in berlin. thanks lufthansa.

these are only a few of the many, many random things that have happened. not to mention that even during this holiday i was stuck at the airport trying to get to calgary during the vancouver snowstorm 2008. also because of all the flying i do, i have become so paranoid with the thought of "this flight is the flight were the plane crashes, it's the only thing left that can happen" that i have several weird habits:

- never listen to any songs about death, irony or planes before flying.

- wear same pair of socks (i've had them since i was 13. worn them every time)

- wear same necklace.

- never wear anything red after once having a dream where i crash and i was wearing red.

- never EVER listen to the safety instruction (if i listen to them just this one time, i'll need them later)

i'm an idiot.

ta!

julia gulia