To be a kid again

December 17, 2023 Tigerotor77WA330, A380, Airbus, Eiffel Tower, La Tour Eiffel, Le Bourget, Le Bourget 2019, Le Louvre, Paris Air Show, Patrouille de France, Pyramide du Louvre, Trocadéro, VersailleLeave a comment

I started writing this post in 2020, when I thought I would be writing approximately one year after rejoining the North American workforce. Before I left Germany, I had three blogs in my queue. Now, approaching four years later, my queue [from my expat assignment] still stands at three. Weathering upended social norms and my fading memory of my years as an expat, my photos — as much as ever — give me now two senses of nostalgia: one of general pre-pandemic life, and the second of what a younger me felt when traveling.

In the summer of 2019, I attended my fourteen-year “returniversary” to the Paris Air Show. The first time I went, I clicked away in exuberant glee toward the static display of the Boeing 777-200LR, consuming in two days practically all the film I brought with me on my eight-week study abroad program. This time, I’d tie up a 64 GB SD card, thought hardly any of it on Boeing metal with the 737MAX grounded.

Continue reading “To be a kid again” →

Unexpected returns

August 17, 2019August 17, 2019 Tigerotor77W#thatwanakatree, Air New Zealand, Auckland International Airport, Blue Pools, Boeing 777, Cape Jackson, Cardrona Distillery, Grandview Mountain, Hapuka estuary, Isthmus Peak, Lake Wanaka, Makarora River, Matukituki River, Milky Way, Mount Aspiring National Park, Mount Cook National Park, Mt. Iron, Polaris Business, Roaring Billy Waterfall, Rob Roy Glacier, Roys Peak, South Island, Sunrise, Sunset, United Airlines, Wanaka, waterfall1 Comment

On the second of my two trysts with New Zealand, one enclave in particular attracted my attention, despite the weather being uncooperative both days of my stay. This year, when I should be galavanting around Europe to take in all I can before I commit myself to the insane asylum of localizing a manufacturing line to Charleston, I admitted defeat to there being too many unvisited places in Europe and booked a flight to New Zealand instead. I landed scrutinizing a rain shower and double rainbows to the north, but Auckland airport — and my luggage — remained, incredibly, dry.

Continue reading “Unexpected returns” →

Winter’s vengeance

May 26, 2019 Tigerotor77W9V-SQE, Boeing 747, Boeing 777, JumboStay, Kirsty Mitchell, Scandinavian Airlines, Schmidt-Aebi, Snow, snow-clearing, Stockholm, Stockholm Arlanda Airport, Stockholm Fotografiska, Swedavia, Swiss International Airlines, TJS-C, Volvo Construction Equipment, WonderlandLeave a comment

When I flew back from New Zealand, I came across an article about interesting hotels of the world. Most were the typical exotic types: posh rooms and lavish spas with four-digit price tags. The one that caught my eye didn’t include either feature, and its price also wasn’t sky-high. Apparently, a little more than a decade ago, a 747 came to its final resting place not in an airplane graveyard but rather as a hostel. I figured the chance of a consensual nap in the cockpit of a 747 was going to be rare if not impossible, so I took the bait and booked the trip. As London had been, it was supposed to have been a quick weekend: two nights sleeping in the plane, then back to Germany. The drive to Munich started off cloudy, and the Alps weren’t visible as I flew on to Zurich.

Continue reading “Winter’s vengeance” →

Culturally otherwise

May 12, 2019 Tigerotor77WAirbus A320, Blue Fin Building, Hamilton, London, Lufthansa, The Crystal, Victoria Palace Theatre1 Comment

After having lived in the Allgäu for almost four years, one aspect of big city life I miss is access to the performing arts. I really enjoying playing trumpet for several years and there is something to be said about the emotional high of putting on a production. Even with regular trumpet practice over, I can still derive joy from a seat in an auditorium. Although there are local musical groups, witnessing the thundering ballads of Broadway is a dream in time gone by. Unless… we consider all of Europe a massive stage of its own.

Continue reading “Culturally otherwise” →

Splashes of color

May 1, 2019 Tigerotor77W#thatwanakatree, Air New Zealand, Airbus A350, Airbus A380, Aoraki, Arrowtown, Camp Stream trail, Hooker Lake, Hooker Valley Track, iceberg, Isthmus Peak, Lake Pukaki, Lake Tekapo, Lake Wanaka, Mount Cook, Mount Cook National Park, Mt. Sibbald, Sealy Tarns, Singapore Airlines, Snow, South Island, Southern Alps, Sunrise, Sunset, Tasman Glacier, Tasman Lake, Te Araroa Trail, Tekapo, WanakaLeave a comment

If my first post about New Zealand gave the impression that the entire two weeks was colorless, I have some contrasting news: they were not. When I flew toward my layover airport of Singapore en route to Auckland, we floated among azure skies. Even if grey marshmallows occasionally interrupted my view once on the ground, the peacefulness of streaking above the clouds didn’t end with the bump of landing in New Zealand.

Continue reading “Splashes of color” →

Anything but emptiness

April 4, 2019 Tigerotor77WChristie Falls, Deep Cove, Doubtful Sound, fiord, Fiordland National Park, Great Walks, Iris Burn, Iris Burn Falls, Kepler Track, Lake Manapouri, Lake Te Anau, Luxmore Cave, Luxmore Hut, Milford Sound, mood, Mt. Luxmore, New Zealand Department of Conservation, Queenstown, sheep, South Island, waterfalls, West Arm, Wilmot Pass1 Comment

I’m not sure I’ve ever started a blog post shortly after any sort of tragedy. My heart goes out to Christchurch and the victims of the recent massacre.

When I visited New Zealand in 2017, I was at the same time impressed — enough that I knew I’d want to go back — and dejected, because I didn’t know when I’d be able to do that, or more specifically, that I’d be able to do so before replanting in Charleston. I ended up finding good fares in late 2018, though, and after much contemplation of how best to use my time, planned two weeks squarely on the South Island. You might expect that the first description I’d write about the place is that two weeks isn’t enough, and that’d be entirely correct. Two weeks, it turns out, is wholly insufficient for a 1700 km one-way journey in a land I had anticipated to be emptier than the North Island before I traveled there, largely because in every sense of the word it is anything but empty.

Continue reading “Anything but emptiness” →

Counting down my sunrises

January 28, 2019 Tigerotor77WAllgäu, Allgäuer Alpen, Hochfrottspitze, Mädelegabel, Riedberger Horn, Sunset, Trettachspitze1 Comment

I’ve long preferred sunrise to sunset, and being a morning person never had to force myself to reconcile the difficulties in waking up and stepping outside before the first light strikes the horizon with the beauty and stillness that embrace the early riser. But waking up early, even in the middle of winter when the shadows are at their longest, doesn’t come easily, and sunsets sometimes offer the more attractive solution, especially when the ski lifts stop humming and the pistes are empty but for the snow groomers. The Riedberger Horn brims with activity during the day, but during either twilight a beautiful silence descends on its slopes.

Continue reading “Counting down my sunrises” →

Tiptoeing southwest

January 19, 2019 Tigerotor77WAnish Kapoor, Artur Olivera, azulejos, Capela do Senhor da Pedra, carpenter, Casa da Música, Cloud Gate, conservation, Golden City, lathe, Miramar Beach, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Ponte Dom Luis, Port wine, Porto, Porto Cathedral, Porto Museum of Contemporary Art, responsibility, Ribeira, São Bento, Sé do Porto, Sectional Body Preparing for Monadic Singularity, Serralves, Serralves Villa, Sky Mirror, tourism, travel, turner, Vila Nova de GaiaLeave a comment

My standard October holiday is southwest of Kempten, but I’ve also been meaning for some time to venture past the Swiss border — past the Alps entirely, even — to Portugal or Spain. Disappointingly, Lisbon seems to attract only extremely high airfares, and when I learned more about Porto, a calmer, smaller, but just as atmospheric city to its north, I booked a ticket almost immediately and tried not to peek at Zermatt weather to see what I was missing. With a great deal of squinting, maybe I could make the case that visiting Porto was almost like starting to prepare for a return to Charleston in 2019.

Continue reading “Tiptoeing southwest” →