Blog Entry One - Istanbul

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Blog Entry One

Welcome ... This will be a brief seven (7) day blog documenting my trip to Istanbul during the American Thanksgiving Holiday 2014.

As always, I would love for this blog to be interactive, so please comment. That being said ... if you think you have a "turkey in Turkey" joke I have not heard ... trust me ... I have heard it.

So the trip over was uneventful. I flew on a recently refurbished United 777 from Chicago to Frankfurt (which compared favorably with the Qatar Airlines 777 I was on about a month ago ... please see www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Madison-Nepal-Group) and then on a 2.5 hour Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Istanbul.

As you know ... I am not a guy who likes to stereotype an entire people ... but the Germans have always struck me as a very efficient bunch (0k, maybe I am a guy who likes to stereotype an entire people).

Anyway, the Germans ... they are efficient ... or at least I thought they were efficient ... until they decided to move me and a number of other "transit passangers" from the International Gates in Terminal 1 Section A of the airport to the International Gates in Terminal 1 Section B.

Anyone who has changed planes at an international "hub" understands the experience of being a "transit passenger."

"Transit passengers" live in a no-man's land ... unique to international airports ... where they are in a country (in this case Germany) ... but they have not passed through customs and immigration so they are confined to the "transit" areas of the airport. This confinement often leads to very long and convoluted movement throughout the airport. Anyone who has been on the death march from the United gates in Terminal 1 Heathrow can tell you that.

As a side note ... and this is super annoying ... I just jumped out of travelblog.org to google (or "the google" as my mother used to say) so I could copy a map of the Frankfurt airport I intend to attach to this blog, but I forgot to save the text and so now I have to do it all over again. You should assume that what I wrote originally was brilliant and that the remainder of this blog is not as good as what I had written originally.

So anyway ... back to being a "transit passenger" in Frankfurt.

I arrived at Gate A-60, an international gate in Terminal 1, Section A. I had to go to Gate B-27, an international gate in Terminal 1, Section B.

Simple right?

Well maybe not.

You see there are a series of domestic gates between the international gates in Section A and Section B. So, in order to remain an "un-contaminated" transit passenger, you first have to go upstairs to Section Z, a new section of Terminal 1 that has been built on top of Section A and Section B to accommodate the new "super jumbo jets" (the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 747-8 ... can we all agree that "Airbus" is the both the coolest and most descriptive of any corporate name on the planet ... so much better than Boeing).

First we climbed up to Section Z, and then we began a 17 mile hike across the entire airport, leaving Terminal 1, entering Terminal 2, and then crossing Terminal 2 until we reached the Sky Line Tram between Sections D and E in Terminal 2.

We then boarded the Sky Line Tram and traveled ... wait for it ... back to Terminal 1 (you think I am making this up ... but I'm not).

When we climbed off the Sky Line Tram and descended a set of steps, we were about 50 yards from where we started, but we never left the "international - transit passenger" section of the airport.

The entire journey took about 3 hours, but in fairness, about an hour of that is when we had to stop for breakfast.

On to Istanbul. Stay tuned.

I am attaching a link to a map of the Frankfurt Airport.

http://www.frankfurt-airport.com/content/frankfurt_airport/en/misc/container/terminal-1---2/jcr:content.file/uebersichtsplan-terminals.pdf

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