Shanghai start old jumbo

The captain is Albert Fuchs and the cockpit also manned by heiko brockmann, henrik blabusch oder so.
The 747-400 is old, almost as old as they get.

Parting comment to The City of Shanghai:
Molto grazie, again, as predictable near-certainty, the jet is 22 years old (google D-ABTE 747 8UILT ludthansa ), i am sitting next to a chubby chinese girl in the last row - she speaks no english' and no seat entertainment, as usual in these lufthansa cattle class dinos.
There are maybe 2 seats left in economy, people cough and sneeze all around me, but no babies crying.

Hah! Just now we are a few minutes late, no pushback yet, so much for german punctuality. The captain said something like we have to wait for an overflight? Ah, right now one engine is starting, oh no, now they are revving it down again. Maybe they are bored an fiddle nervously with knobs ... Ah!!! now push-back, keep well, all the best, over and out for now, ciao Shanghai.

We taxi on T4 past the vast Pudong Airport lot of Terminals (PVG), it is a sunny day, warm and blue sky. Well it is gray blue, a little worse than in Germany, and incomparable to New Zealand's deep blue heavens.
Now we turned right into T3, going north, alongside the runway, leaving the control tower behind, right hand side. T3 turned into B, 5508 miles to destination, around 100 tons of fuel on board, holding for runway, a long long wait; now we have performed the comete 180 degree u-turn, and we are ready for take-off. No rabbits or birds to be seen a very noisy baby cries in the front somewhere. 13h46 take-off!, half an hour late.

We take off direction south towards the east china sea (ostchinesisches meer).
At 1950 meters altitude we experience quite heavy turbulence. Inversion layer.

Turning northwest towards Nanjing 11000 feet altitude, amazingly still inside the airpollution haze.

16000 feet, the inversion layer is now below us, the smog-strata now has a sharper demarkation. Seat-belt signs off.
Now the blue sky is kiwi colour,

It turns out my seat neighbour is cherry-red hair italian-chinese, so our prego, pollo, pasta, germania conversation is not too bad. She has some chinese dried beef jerky and offers it to me, it beats the dusty lufthansa pretzels hands down. Next she offers thin, red matchstick-like nibbles, and says: "pikante". Very nice, too, very chinese, polenta or something.

Then the lufthansa midday menu arrives, chicken or beef. The beef is not good, the carrots and rice are edible. But Air New Zealand it is not. Not even close.
The "dark chocolate mousse" is a joke, but the coffee is german. That is to means "proper". Just like grandmother used to make it, not weak and with the built-in taste of condensed mik.
The tiny TV 7 meters away shows bundesliga, one can't see the ball.
My italo-chinese girl's name is eva, she must be 15 or so, and very cool. She sleeps like a doll. She only ate the rice, nothing else. She probably had a full bag of beef jerky in her, as i got the last bit.
She watches werewolve films o her super sized laptop, I try to sleep but can't, lufthansa show walt disney Rapunzel, a usa-acrion drama with violence and chases, a few musical bits and really really good for poisoning childrens minds. Rapunzel however has a speaking part and does show sexy garments and leg, just like the USA-today article ... Google nazi hellmich annenberg school stacy smith usc mrac choueiti sexualization of girls sexual objecta male directors. Then watch "happiness" solondz 1988 ... We all live in america, sometimes war, wonderbra. (rammstein)
We are just crossing the Ural, 3:30 to go, it is cold inside the cabin, now there is "Golden Girls" on the "entertainment systen". Grannie jokes.
The Financial Times writes the usual neoliberal doctrinal garbage, more privatisation, no regulation. The international herald tribune (aka New York Times) pyts the best spin on today's wikileak guantana,o GTMO torture and murder revelations. Yes, people died under suspicious circumstances and no investigation was done, only the usual whitewash. The coverage is somewhat adequate, what can we expecr from a judith miller pro war PROPAGANDA corporate mouthpiece.
They don't even mention rhe word WIKILEAKS once (buried on page 4), how dishonest.

6pm euro time, one hour to go. The whole trip we were in front of the day/night terminator, flying past nowosibirsk, moscow, minsk, warsaw and straight over Cotbus.

We landed, Tired, very tired.

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