It took a few days but the jet lag is passing and we’re getting back on our feet.
Interestingly, the term in Italian for jet lag is “jet lag.” That’s what we’ve been told.
Our Lufthansa flight from Washington to Munich earlier this week took off at 9:55pm. This seemed awfully late but we like the airline, we like the plane (an Airbus 330) and we like the Munich airport which is smaller and easier to deal with than the other European airports we've flown through. It turned out that the flight was only one-third full so we had lots of room to spread out.
We appreciate Lufthansa’s good service. The food was tolerable and wine and brandy were served gratis. Lots of water and juice were offered to passengers. At the end of the trans-Atlantic flight each woman passenger received a red rose.
We like Austrian Air for the same reasons.
At home smoking has been banned from public places and cigarettes have gotten very expensive. In Italy smoking is also banned in public places and packages of cigarettes carry a variety of blood curdling warnings in tall black letters on a white backgrounds such as “Il fumo uccide” (“Smoking kills”).
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| The Camel Smoking Zone at the Munich airport |
In the Munich airport we were reminded that smoking carries a social stigma in Germany, too, but it is expressed differently. In the German airports that we’ve traveled through we've seen what the Germans call Smoking Zones. These are small, glass walled rooms where smokers collect themselves voluntarily since smoking is not allowed anywhere else. The smoking zones have an exhaust that goes outside so there is no smell of smoke outside of the smoking zones, just the odd sight of a group of people standing in a hazy, smoky fog.
Two questions come to mind. 1) Who cleans the insides of the glass walls and what kind of olfactory experience must that be? 2) What will be the future health problems of people exposed to both first-hand smoke and concentrated amounts of second-hand smoke?
Since I was past due in this regard, I got a haircut the second day we were in Florence. Annette seemed happy with the results. While I was in the barber’s chair, a little boy, perhaps four years old, came to the door of the barber shop and waved to the barber. The barber smiled, went to the door, and let the little boy in. The boy stood still while the barber squeezed a rubber bladder and sprayed the boy's hair with the manly scent that he uses with his customers. The little boy smiled broadly. So did his mom who was now appeared on the sidewalk.
Later the barber explained that the little boy shows up every day for an application of his manly-scent-from-a-jar.
Later the barber explained that the little boy shows up every day for an application of his manly-scent-from-a-jar.
Italians adore children. They adore their own children and they fuss over everyone else’s children. It’s really touching. And the little boy’s hair must smell good.
This year Florence is warm. The flowering trees and bushes are all in bloom. Some years it has been well into March before the magnolias began to bud and bloom. This year the same blossoms will soon be gone. We heard that during January the temperatures rose to 70 degrees. This is remarkable since Florence has almost the same latitude as Syracuse (Florence = 43.8 degrees, Syracuse = 43.0 degrees.)
As we all know, the east coast of the US is in a deep freeze this winter. For us it’s a pleasure to get away from the piles of snow that made our driveway look like a tunnel. And the snow and cold continue according to what we have read.
Is the world getting colder like the eastern US? Or is the world getting warmer like Florence? Or is there no pattern?
A map from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration shows that most of the world was warmer than past years in January 2014. The cold on the east coast of the US is not typical of what's happening anywhere else. Many parts of the world had record warmth!
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A map from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration shows that most of the world was warmer than past years in January 2014. The cold on the east coast of the US is not typical of what's happening anywhere else. Many parts of the world had record warmth!
I’m sure that there are news sources that will explain that climate change is a hoax because of the cold weather on the east coast of the US. It’s a shame if this kind of irresponsible comment might distract people from what you might see if you travel almost anywhere else in the world this year. Or distract you from what you might learn if you look at the temperature maps of the world for November, December, or January.
