Travel

Traveling across the world can be absolutely brutal. Yes, I know that I probably sound like a jerk with that statement. I have a 5-hour lay over in Detroit. I have another 20 hours of travel ahead of me. So what does one do in the Detroit airport for 5 hours you ask? Try to be as creative as possible!

Detroit has this long hallway that makes me think of some sci-fi movies from the 80’s. You move along the moving sidewalk and lights flash around you and trippy music is playing. I decided that it would be fun to go back and forth and take pictures of the glass that was lining the wall. You can see a couple of my attempts at being artsy.

I meet up with Jon and we board our plane to Amsterdam. I was a little worried when I sit on my seat and the women behind me immediately asks me not to come all the way back. I was a little frustrated since I have pretty long marionette legs. But I tried to be a friendly traveler and didn’t recline that far. The main reason was because the plane was amazing. I have never flown Northwest before, but I am very excited for their merger with Delta. The crew was great, we got free alcohol, and they had movies on demand. I watch I’m Not There (Bob Dylan Bio) and Cloverfield (terrible attempt at a horror movie). The gentleman sitting next to me was pretty interesting as well. I believe that there are 3 types of passengers:1: Normal 2. Sick (weird coughing and clearing of the throat) and 3. Weird (talk to much and ask inappropriate questions). I sat next to a Missionary from Tanzania. He was a mixture of 1 and 3. He started by pulling out his Iphone and showed me pictures of all of his family and giving me the rundown of them. Never did I think that the Iphone technology would be used for evil. It was like looking at distant relative vacation photos. He then started asking me about my political views and I going on about how great the freedom is in Tanzania. His example was that if you wanted to paint your house with purple polka dots, no one would say anything. I wanted to point out that I thought you could do the same thing in America? Instead I pretended to fall asleep and watched movies. I guess it was good he didn’t turn out to be too weird, but I really wanted to start conversations with “ Did I tell you the one about the Tanzanian Missionary?”

The transfer from Amsterdam went smoothly and had another great flight into Johannesburg. After customs and things we met Jon’s city contact. Liza is a Greek woman who grew up in Zimbabwe, but recently moved to South Africa. She came across as pretty intense. Since things close at 9 in the city, we struggled to find a place to eat. Liza wouldn’t be stopped! We found a Greek restaurant right before it closed and got some amazing gyro’s.

Overall it was a great day. Few problems and a comfortable bed to fall asleep in.