Was feeling rather grotty yesterday (been suffering a 2 week long cold, thanks Dubai: stupendous heat + freezing cold air-conditioning = illness… still, better than avian flu I guess) so had no inclination to auto or manual post anything to this lil’ old blog of mine. Have actually made it to Frankfurt am Main from Wien, though the journey highlighted some minor irritations which collectively formed a “Lesson 101: How to piss Stan off Royally”.
- Case 1: Ticket validation
- On saying farewell to Susanne (thanks to her and her boyfriend Phong in putting up with me for a week :P) and boarding the 14a bus, purchasing the €2 ticket from the driver was followed with a mumble (from him) which I guessed was the need to validate the ticket at the machine. Alas, this machine was hidden in the depths of the bus, so was no exactly easy when lugging a 8kg shoulder bag with laptop plus 27kg suitcase in a crowded bus. Latvia manages (from what I recall) to sell public transport tickets which are already valid (why the fuck would I want to buy an invalid ticket anyway?), so such logical leaps in Western Europe surely isn’t that difficult is it?
- Case 2: Please do get out of my way, else I will run you over!
- On disembarking the 14a at the final stop, the next set of passengers were so eager to get on that they left no space for my good self to squeeze through. No real problem as my extra 35kg worth of stuff will break limbs when wielded correctly, alas I tried to be courteous and waited more or less in vain for them to make space. They weren’t going to get on the bus less I managed to get off first, since I (unfortunately, due to baggage) completely blocked the way anyway! However, the reason why crowds in Hong Kong would shift pretty quick when confronted by people with large, heavy objects must have been down to childhood imprinting. Cyclists with 6+ LPG canisters going a fair clip or illegal food hawkers running away from Police with their mobile stalls, more often than not containing large vat of boiling oil, are not under any circumstance, to be argued with! Indeed in Hong Kong, this is a good way to weed out the (older) Mainland Chinese since they are unaware of such “tradition” and will get in your way like the “Urbanised Europeans” do, leaving me to mutter in my head:
What’s wrong with you? It’s as if you just tripped and fell down from some god-forsaken, arse-backwards, red-neck filled village on the “Big Green” (Mainland China)?!
- Case 3: Stupid sign-posting
- Having (finally) barged my way off the 14a, it was time for me to head on to the U-Bahn. However, the exit right by the bus stop didn’t having escalators going downwards and there was no-fucking way I was going to shift my stuff down 3 flights of stairs. Managed to find a sign which said the lifts were to the left… however, “left” pointed across a road junction which forks with nothing particularly obvious as to where this sacred lift might be. Eventually did find the sacred lift some 100 meters way from where that sole sign was… grrr.
- Case 4: Tell me where I’m about to go, not tell me once I’ve got there!
- Public transport (less one is at a terminus) goes in both directions though just telling people which termnius said route goes without a routemap nearby is more or less utterly useless as most journeys will be to some intermediate stop. Showing me the routemap after I’ve made my descision will on the balance of probability make 50% of such choices be the wrong one…
- Case 5: Backwards process flows
- I decided to sample some modern technology in Wien by the way of their CAT, a non-stop train from the city to the airport complete with “in-town” check-in. However, when waiting at the check-in desk (it’s the first thing you see when you walk in to the room), only then did they tell you via a small board on the desk that you need a valid ticket first! Surprise, surprise… the ticket machines were on the opposite end of the room! Arrrrgh! Stan’s freebie fixes: Have the ticket machines before the desks, perhaps with the desks “separated” so that only valid ticket holders can go through (just like in Hong Kong… ;)) or the KISS method where you get offered to buy a ticket (if you’ve not got one already) at the point of check-in. The desks print boarding passes after all, so a simple train ticket surely isn’t a huge logical leap right?
- Case 6: Getting blood from a stone
- The CAT ticket vending machines refused to take €50 notes and the attempt to purchase them from the CAT “helpdesk” came with a rather forced, though prompt “no”. Asking for the €50 note to be split was akin to pulling teeth as the clerk mumbled something probably translating
it’s not my job to do this you know
then thumbing through her wallet 3 times, only then to pull out after all the previous fuss, 5 crisp new €10 notes! ARRRRGH! - Case 7: When 16 minutes isn’t 16 minutes
- The CAT’s advertising made a bit song and dance about the fact one could get from the city to the airport in a scant 16 minutes. However, this quote is literally absolute best case scenario, which for 99.999% of the time doesn’t happen. First is the simple fact there’s only one train every 30 minutes which means on average there will be a 15 minute wait. If you’re using the in town check-in, then add at least another 15 minutes, grant sometimes that wait will be during the time you wait for a train, so this is “unwasted” time. So real life times for city to airport will be 20 minutes if you’re piss lucky, 35 minutes typically and finally 50 minutes if today is just really not your day. One cool thing about the CAT itself though, is that it uses double decker carriages, however… when the whole train (aside engines) is just 2 carriages long, surely it’d have made more sense (not to mention cheaper?) to have 4 regular single deck carriages? The saved money could have gone into better staff or less retarded ticket vending machines and station layout…
- Case 8: Monumentally fucking stupid sign-posting
- Frankfurt am Main’s International Airport is utterly shit in terms of signposting, so perhaps one would have thought the brand new (relatively) Terminal 2 should fair well to make amends right? Wrong! Very, very wrong! Take the usually simple task of finding the hotel reservations desk… I was a little shocked to actually see a sign that said the hotel reservations desk was directly to my left. So that way I went and some 50 meters later, came across an identical sign, though this time with the direction I should be going as my right. Something is a little amiss here as the only thing between those two signs are airline check-in desks, nothing else. So I looked around and then saw an escalator off to one side. Perhaps the reservations desk is on the upper level? Spent a good 5 minutes looking around to no avail so gave up and looked at the electronic information desk to find out where this illusive desk was situated. Turns out the directions were neither a “left” or a “right”, but rather a “up one level, SkyTrain from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1, transit to Hall B, down a level, double back on yourself, look for the hotel reservations desk that’s sufficiently hidden that you’ll probably miss it if you were standing right in front of it anyway type of small”.
Raaar! Anyhoo, I think that’s enough misanthropy from me in one day though for doubters that insist Europe (and by proxy the Americas, assuming said places even have public transport) isn’t as bad as I say it is, just head out to East Asia to somewhere like Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei or some such and see for yourself first hand how crowded cites can work efficiently. Still, I conceed there are still times when a portable cattle prod would come in handy! ;)
