ARRIVING
A two hour ride to Charlotte yesterday with Todd and Susie, with a stop in Hickory at the Taj Indian restaurant for a very good lunch of puries and Rogan Josh with so much food that I ate it again in the airport at 4 p.m. so that I could skip supper on the plane and sleep all of the 8 hours to Munich. Then, miraculously, that Lufthansa to Munich flight was 1/4 full so I got 3 empty seats in a row which meant that I could lie down and stretch out. I took two kinds of sleeping pills immediately on getting on the plane, asked for and got an eye mask, put in my wireless airPods turned on Andy Griffiths singing Sweet Hour of Prayer and The Old Rugged Cross to put me in a mellow mood and didn’t sleep a wink all night as the plane bobbled and jittered its way with an enveloping whirr to Munich.
In the huge stark Munich airport I wandered listlessly, looking for the Brötchen I had promised myself, and found it. But by this time I was too bleary eyed (and it was 3 in the morning Swannanoa time after all, no time to be eating breakfast) to do more than swallow and run to catch the plane to Athens, which turned out to be 40 minutes late.
On this flight I was lucky to get a window seat, but at first all I could see were the ruffled tops of shiny white clouds. But then for a moment the
black peaks of the Alps poked through the clouds before vanishing again. And now, far below are the crazy quilted fields of Italy, I believe, too far below except to see the salt and pepper dots of white village houses. And then came Athens.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 