Days 1-2 (June 29-30, 2023):

This is the first time we are heading away on summer vacation before July.  The North American Indigenous Games, for which David has to attend the opening, are starting mid-July, so it meant heading overseas before Canada Day.  Pam was given the morning of June 30 (the last day of school) off for having worked one of her non-work mornings, so it all came together to enable us to leave on June 29.  Our friends, Mel and Juliet, picked us up late afternoon, and we were at Halifax Airport before 6PM.  

The cancellation of all overseas Westjet flights has made things very limited this year, in terms of overseas options.  But the German leisure carrier, Condor, does fly three-times weekly, so that was our choice for getting “across the pond”.  From 

The Condor Boeing 767 was sold out. In fact, the aircraft originally planned for the route was switched out at the last minute for the Frankfurt-Halifax inbound flight, and the replacement 767 had 20 fewer seats than the planned aircraft. This created total chaos for the boarding process, as they tried to move people around and make it all work!  It caused a 50-minute departure delay, but we mostly made it up enroute, arriving just 25 minutes late. 

It has been a truly stressful couple of months leading up to our vacation departure. Both our jobs have had us in overdrive all spring. So when we finally plunked into our Condor seats, we just looked at each other with a total sigh of relief. 

The winglet of the Boeing 767 against the dusk sky somewhere over Cape Breton. It never did get totally dark outside the plane during the night, given the z North Atlantic routing and the proximity to the summer solstice. 

90 minutes into the flight, we were served  a pasta dish. It was typical trans-Atlantic economy class fare. Not bad!

The routing of the six-hour flight. 

It was an overcast and 18C day in Frankfurt for our wait for the bus to Hahn Airport. Here, the Hilton Hotel near Frankfurt Main Airport reminded us of a giant cruise ship. 

On the Autobahn. 

The Haubfbanhof of Mainz, Germany, halfway on the two-hour bus ride between Frankfurt Airport and Hahn Airport. 

Hahn Airport is like a big warehouse - very utilitarian in its design and function. It was built in the 1990s to accommodate low-fare carriers serving the Frankfurt area. One thing is does have is a McD! And we were impressed to see that McD takes care of the trash sorting, to ensure the integrity of the sorting. (We all see that, in Canada, people do not sort compost, paper, waste, recyclables at fast food outlets with much care.) 

Pam, about to board our FlyOne Airbus A320 in Hahn.

 

The tiny, warehouse-like airport of Hahn. 

Hahn, Germany. There’s not much there besides the airport!

The Moldovan, countryside: a very agricultural place!


Or a FlyOne plane was parked at a remote stand at Chișinău’s Airport. The whole airport seemed quite quiet and desolate, it wasn’t until we were inside that we found out what had happened earlier today: Two dead as man opens fire inside Chisinau Airport


We finally left Chisinau at midnight, four hours later than scheduled, due to the chaos and security threat of the day.  We were pretty happy to say goodbye to the place. But also grateful that we got away from there at all today. When we landed, it appeared as though everything would be cancelled for at least the rest of the day and that we would have to overnight in Chisinau.