Calgary

Well, that was a very interesting flight! I learned something about Air Canada, which I had always considered one of the world's worst airlines in terms of passenger dissatisfaction. I now know that this is not necessarily true, just usually true. The AC crews that I have suffered under in the past were ex-East Germans, angry and unhappy all the time: here's your meal (bang of tray on table), no there is no choice, no we don't have this, no we don't do that, no you can't have more coffee. The instant that the meals (drinks, whatever) were distributed, they would disappear into the galley and pull the curtains closed, and stay there until the next contractually stipulated customer interaction. In a word: lazy, rude, arrogant crap. It wasn't just us passengers that they hated, they argued and bitched at each other too.

This crew was different: happy, friendly, at ease with us and each other, always walking about with trays of goodies (even if just water: you get pretty thirsty on a ten-hour flight).

When I booked the tickets some months ago, I half-jokingly said that I'd be either straphanging or in row 73, and that turned out to be true. I was in row 45, the very last seat on the plane, with the toilet door at my right ear. Suboptimal, you might say, and you'd be right, except for the saving grace of the position: the galley was right behind the toilets so I could hear the crew at work and play. They played a lot: chatting and joking, telling tales, laughing all the time. They were better entertainment than the films!

As we were on the ground in Calgary, waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the doors to open, I went back (in itself a difference, the other crews defended their galleyspace as though we were pillaging barbarians) and told them about my usual AC experience and how different they were. It turns out that the AC crew centres have acquired personalities through hiring patterns and the attrition effects of working with unpleasant people. The ex-East Germans were from Montreal, the merry men and maids were from Calgary.

Memo to Air Canada: close the Montreal crew centre and fire those responsible for its hiring and staffing policies. Send the crews off for reeducation, and fire those crew members who cannot be converted back into normal people.

Calgary is cold (14°C and sinking) and rainy. My favourite cousin and family and I went for a walk last night after a wonderful dinner of pork roast. I slept through until 3am = 11am Stuttgart time, then read for an hour and slept again. The family is now at work except for FC who went back to bed after getting the kids dressed for school. I'm sitting here surfing and writing and listening to the rain, watching a grey squirrel search the lawn for buried treasure.

Life is good.