I LOVE LUFTHANSA!

Eileen and I flew from Newark to Istanbul for a few days of being together before being apart for four months. My reservations were made for me by ABA on United Airlines, so we reserved the same flight for Eileen. US airlines, of course, provide the most miserable service they can possibly design, and nickle-and-dime passengers like the innkeeper in Les Mis, so we were thrilled to find that the flight was actually operated by Lufthansa. Against all common sense, I brought my (well, actually, my daughter Patricia's) banjo along, adding yet one more to what was already the limit of free baggage for the airlines; but Lufthansa took it without charging me a single cent! (Most airlines would have charged $85!) - although when we got to Istanbul, I noticed that they had put a small break in the banjo case; not enough to complain about, though. Aboard the flight, whereas US airlines generally charge $4 or more for a tiny bottle of wine, Lufthansa flight attendants kept walking up and down the aisles with a bottle of red in one hand and a bottle of white in the other and kept filling our cups! To understate, it was a very happy flight!

However: and it's not Lufthansa's fault, but Frankfurt airport was the pits. We had to "deplane" (I hate that word) on the runway and job aboard a very overcrowed bus to take us to the terminal, where (for no reason I can figure out, since we never left a "secure" area) we had to go through security inspection again in order to go to the gate for our flight to Istanbul. Then, again, we had to jump aboard a crowded (and this time smelly) bus to take us to our plane. We felt most unwelcome there. Then again, we felt unwelcome in Newark, too...