Randomness
Lufthansa: no inflight entertainment (well, ok, 1 17"ish display, about 6-7 rows away). Very surprised by this, expected much more from Germans. Big win to AirNZ there. The first two hours of the flight out of AKL were toast while they tried to sort out the misbehaving entertainment system, but after a reboot of the system it worked brilliantly. I'm *sure* that the fact it's running 'doze underneath is entirely coincidental(yeah, I'm being snarky, but in all fairness it could be bad code, benefit of the doubt and all that).

In 1912, at the ripe age of 12, Edmund Hintz left Bremen Germany for the US via Ellis Island/NY. Ed begat Bob, who begat this Ed(named for that Ed). For many years I've felt a tie to DE. Back at Uni, German was the language I most grokked. Italian, I can manage, French is a mess, but German, I get. Indeed, back in the days when I still planned to be an opera guy, I had the intention of going to DE to sing in the opera houses. So finally being in DE (even just for a plane xfer) was cool. Looking forward to a lot more of it in a week or so at Wacken.

Frankfurt: trees. Lots of trees. Very green. Me like.

France: Everything's closed on Sun. Inconvenient. I expect that in NZ, but thought FR would be more 24/7. Mind you, I'm in the 'burbs, city center is apparently still going. Still, the burbs of BFE in the states are at least open at 1600 Sunday so a guy can get a razor. Another interesting observation: farms. The approach into CDG goes over lots of farms. In a striking contrast to the US and NZ, the houses clump. You'll have 6-10 houses with fields all around, like circling the wagons
against the injuns. I didn't see a single lone farmhouse.

This sort of mundane observation is what happens when I'm at the end of 33 hrs of travel.