Tag: Egypt

Come Fly With Me

Today’s writing prompt: What is something you would attempt, if you were guaranteed not to fail?

What wouldn’t I attempt? Without question, the biggest challenge I would tackle would be to become a pilot. The urge to travel and fly was in me from an early age.

At 17, I applied to be an airline stewardess with a small regional airline in the Eastern part of Canada. The rejection letter was partly disappointing and partly heartening. I was too young to be hired they told me. But they encouraged me to apply again when I turned 19.

As fate would have it, by the time I was 19, I had been accepted at university. That sealed my fate for the following four years and many years that followed. Still, I worked in a good deal of flying in those university years.

I travelled twice to Europe twice between academic semesters. At the end of third year, I spent a summer in Egypt on a student seminar with about 50 other Canadians.

Following graduation, I travelled to Asia and throughout Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. You may have read of my trek through the Himalayas .

My husband was a commercial airline pilot. The irony and suitability of our union has not been lost on me. While I was schlepping from country to country on this airline or another as a passenger, he was actually flying the planes. Our paths never crossed in those days but we laugh at the possibility that they certainly might have.

My husband was a pioneer in the age of commercial flight. He flew for Pan American World Airways for 20 years until its’ untimely demise in 1991. The death of that iconic airline marked a sea change in the history of aviation.

Pan Am set the bar for class, luxury and service. I marveled that prime rib roast was not only served at seat side in Pan Am’s first class section, but had been roasted in the airline galley. Passengers got to choose their preferred cut. The wine selection rivaled a 5-star Michelin restaurant. Caviar was a standard “appetizer.”

My husband tells stories of the many glamorous passengers he ferried back and forth across the oceans. Elizabeth Taylor. Maggie Smith (who hated to fly). Flip Wilson (funny as hell.) Duke Ellington (wore a dewrag.) Burt Lancaster (shorter than he looked onscreen).

In one poignant story about a stewardess he tells how excited she was to serve Rock Hudson in first class. But her heart quietly broke after sharing her excitement with her galley colleagues. It was only then she learned Hudson’s male travel companion was also his boyfriend.

I had heard of Pan Am off in the distance. Ephemerally. I never flew on it. As a Canadian, we had other choices for European and international travel. It is my loss. The Pan Am logo on the side of a 747 was an iconic symbol in countless movies and TV shows. My husband refers to the cockpit of a 747 as his “office.”

Pan Am stories still drift through the world and are recounted by many people we meet – whether travelers or employees, always recounted with a certain wistfulness and joy. Pan Am employees seemed to universally love working at Pan Am.

My husband’s stories are full of glamor and fun they had both on the aircraft and during layovers. Pan Am employees believed – it is said – that “the world is my oyster.” When Pan Am declared bankruptcy in 1991, and went out of business, some employees committed suicide.

There are still Pan Am clubs in many places where there are still enough ex-employees to justify them. There is a Pan Am museum in Florida. You can still buy Pan Am “merch” and memorabilia online.

Today there are many female commercial airline pilots. Had I been born later, I might have been one of them. My husband and I often talk about the unlikelihood of our meeting in the first place. It was on an online dating site, not a normal domain for either of us. I was in Canada. He was in the US.

Along with the mysteries of falling in love, we talked with familiarity about restaurants and sites we saw in Buenos Aires, New Delhi, Rome, Paris, Munich and many other international capitals. In one conversation, he finally gave up asking me which countries I had visited: “This might go faster if you just tell me which countries you haven’t visited.” It still makes us chuckle.

No chance of failure? I’d be in a flight simulator somewhere in a New York minute. I’d abandon a lot of other dreams to pursue the goal of becoming a pilot.

And who knows? I ain’t dead yet. The game isn’t over until the fat lady sings. Of course, that phrase means one should not presume to know the outcome of an event which is still in progress.

Which is – in this case – my life.

So we’ll see.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I’d like to say all my bags are packed and I’m ready to go. I’m not. That is what I will do today.

I used to love travel. I remember the excitement in getting ready for a big trip. And there were some very big trips in my life.

From my home base in Canada, I flew to Sri Lanka for a three month walking trek and sojourn through India and Nepal. On another occasion, I flew to Seoul Korea to connect with my family on tiny and dazzling beautiful black sand Jeju Island off South Korea’s coast.

Then there was the southern sojourn to Argentina to take a ten day horse trek across the Andes. And I once flew due North and landed in Iqaluit, Nunavut for several frost filled days to attend the Arctic Winter Games.

Many writers laud the benefits of travel. I do. It changes you. It broadens your perspective on so many things. It can shatter the illusion of cultural superiority that some secretly harbor if they have not travelled very far from their home base.

One look at a carved monument in almost any country should knock that out of your system pretty quickly. Not always, of course. But often.

Travel is a kind of education that you cannot replicate by reading books. Books stimulate the imagination. Travel stimulates the senses. Nothing could replace the overwhelming sights and sounds of a spice market in New Delhi, India.

Celebrating Holi, the festival of colors, is one of the most unique occasions I’ve ever taken part in. In under an hour, me and my traveling companions were physically drenched in a dozen colors from handfuls of special chalk thrown at us. Deliberately!

As you wander the streets of New Delhi (or anywhere in India on that unique, special holiday), everyone is equally streaked with multiple colors of dust.

Indians generally have a great sense of occasion. Nothing can match the style and splendor of an Indian wedding drenched in rich fabrics, brilliant colors and enticing smells.

When most of my college buddies were working at traditional summer jobs after the term was over, I spent every summer traveling on some pretense or another. Europe. First as a waitress in a massive tourist hotel and the following summer as a student. Then Egypt as a student after my third year.

After graduation, I spent several months traipsing through Asia. So many indelible memories. So much experience and learning – mostly good.

I am leaving my country again. This time, on a more permanent basis. We cannot predict the future with flawless accuracy but we can make some educated guesses.

For me that means the next few years will be spent among my continent mates directly to our South. Living in the USA at this juncture in history is an ongoing daily education. I won’t make a qualitative call on what I’m learning there.

Travel brings you home with new eyes. You see everything that was familiar and there before but differently somehow.

It is easy for me to appreciate the old song, “How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Pa-ree?” Travel was like an addiction where the more I did it, the more I craved. I deemed it a healthy addiction and only now see the cravings diminishing somewhat.

Hours from now, I’ll be winging my way South to rejoin my husband and put this country in the rearview mirror for awhile.

When the jet place departs, I fully expect my bags to be packed and ready to go.

As ready as I’ll ever be at any rate.

Around and Around

Lately, I’ve cast my mind back on all of the international travel I did. I sure saw a lot of this old world. I’m still able enough to travel. Just not as motivated.

The first time I flew overseas I worked in a massive Waldhotel (country hotel) in the German Rheingau (Rhine Valley). All around for a full 360 degrees, vineyards bearing plump white grapes were everywhere I looked. This is the home of Liebfraumilch, the famous Blue Nun white wine, among many others.

The massive hotel restaurant I worked in mostly served tourists as its main clientele. Busloads would arrive shortly before noon. Getting all of the travellers fed and watered in a timely manner was a challenge. We would be running between the kitchen and serving tables for the better part of two-hours over the lunch period.

I struggled with German at first having set off from “Kanada” with only one year of university German under my belt. Luckily, the menu wasn’t too complicated and I could rhyme it off easily enough. In any case, the tourists were more interested in their food and drink than my German skill. As long as I got their orders right.

Had a bit of culture shock as a young foreign kellnerin (waitress). I remember a group of nuns who all ordered beer with their meals. Nuns drink alcohol? I saw a four-year-old boy sway back and forth as he whined to his father he was betrunken (drunk) after imbibing too much wine with his meal.

I flew over to Germany again in the summer after my second year of university. This time, I was a student attending Freiburg University with a bunch of other Canadian kids. My German picked up much more quickly. The in-depth studies were more rigorous and demanding on my German proficiency than reciting the choices off the daily Nach Eigner Wahl (a la carte) menu.

The summer following my third year, I went to Cairo, Egypt. I had been chosen as the UNB (University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada) representative on a national World University Service of Canada (WUSC) scholarship. Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had previously gone on such a seminar elsewhere in Africa in his student days. Trudeau became a lifelong WUSC supporter.

I studied Egyptian small business and tourism during the seminar. Our “downtime” was spent roaming the streets of Cairo stopping for shawarma and visiting places such as the Cairo Museum. All of downtown Cairo was a study in antiquities. We had field trips to Alexandria on coast of the Mediterranean Sea and down the Nile to Luxor before the area was flooded for the Aswan Dam. We sailed in an Egyptian felucca on the Nile River. On another day we took part in a Nubian feast deep in the desert.

Summer approaches and there have been discussions in our house about summer travel again. ehave talked about returning to Florence for a month or two. My husband paints in oil and was trained in a Florence art studio some years ago. He would like to go back. We are only at the dream stage at the minute. But haven’t I already said that is how most dreams start?

A cross-Canada train trip is also a possibility. I have travelled from Toronto to Jasper, Alberta. Once you get past the unending horizons in the Prairies, the Rockies loom large and imposing. There are few sights more breathtaking than a first glimpse of the towering Rockies. It is no wonder that Banff and nearby mountain towns are awash in tourists for a good part of every year.

So we’ll see what actually happens.

My compass has turned to more internal exploration these days. That particular element was missing in my earlier travel exploits. Did I ever make some major culturally inappropriate decisions. I am much better now.

I have said that I learned that wherever I go, there I am. Happily, now that I’ve been around the world and back, those destinations will now live in my memory until I die. By writing down some of my travel stories, they may live on a little longer.