Travel day.

My head is rebelling against the treatment I subjected it to yesterday and I am paying for it with a migraine that has been with me for about 24 hours now. Yesterday, I had an early start, up before 5 am, to get to the airport. No proper breakfast, just a couple of crackers with peanut butter and protein powder mixed into mineral water. Not as bad as it sounds and it gets all foamy, like beer. It reminds me of the "Beer bad" episode of BTVS in which the one lesson that neanderthal Buffy learns about beer is that it is "Foamy!"

The Lufthansa flight to Munich was short and pleasant. The German countryside looked pretty and orderly, reminding me of the two years we spent in Göttingen in the late 70's, early 80's. Though the flight was smooth, we all got a little jolt when the flight attendant told us we were about to land in Copenhagen. As we were about to leave the aircraft, we were instructed that those of us with connecting flights to the US should proceed to our gates immediately as the process of getting through security will be particularly lengthy. As I was leaving, the flight attendant asked me if I had another long flight ahead of me. I said yes (I wonder what expression I had on my face) and I asked whether the lengthy security process also applied to flights to Canada; she didn't know but seemed to think so. I had a fairly short connection in Munich so after I got off the plane, I rushed through the airport seeing but not stopping to buy some of the tempting tasty-looking sandwiches and salads available there. As it turned out, all I actually had to do is get through passport control and then find my gate, there was no other prolonged security procedure. After a long treck from passport control, except for some chocolate and nuts and water for sale at the duty-free shop, there was no food of any kind available at the gates. To add insult to injury, the flight was delayed so I would have had time to pick up food to feed my hungry brain and I could have also got something for later to have in the plane.

Anyway, we did get a small lunch on the plane and then after about another six hours, a small snack.

Apart from the hunger-induced headache, the flight from Munich was pretty good. I had been assigned a seat between a young woman and her grandmother, one seat in from the aisle. The strangeness of this arrangement was explained to my by the young woman (whom I initially took to be a child because she was so petite) with the words "I tend to get on her nerves." My expression must have let on that I really wanted to switch with her so I could have the aisle seat because she immediately offered it to me and I gladly accepted.

The plane was quite cold so I was glad that I had a shawl I could wrap myself in. Ever since I cut my hair really short and let the grey grow out, two things happen: my head gets cold and some people at first glance mistake me for a man. I experienced both on the flight; there was cold air blowing on my head and one of the flight attendants was about to call me sir when she realized her mistake. The flight was fairly smooth, which I like, I didn't get any sleep, which was too bad, but overall, it was fine.

After a bit of difficulty, I found the hotel shuttle bus and made it downtown to the hotel here. It is no five star establishment like the one I treated myself to in Bratislava but it has more aaahhh-menities (that's for you Zuzka) then the hostel-like Hotel City Centre in Prague. I can make tea here and I can access the internet from my bed.

I did finally have a decent meal for supper yesterday, poached cod with yummy vegetables and roasted potatoes and now it is time to get up, get cleaned up and dressed so that I can go and forage for some breakfast which will hopefully get rid of this headache.

I hope to blog more about my experiences in Prague and also post some pictures, but at the moment, my camera and my computer refuse to communicate with each other and I have to figure out why.