WeWork is an interesting concept, a company which provides office space for entrepreneurs to allow them to develop their businesses. Not only do they provide office services, they also encourage collaborative working options so individuals can build up contacts. Although I only really know them as they own Meetup, a site that I use a lot.
Anyway, that wasn’t the purpose for this post, I just liked the marketing message of “Do What You Love” emblazoned across the building.
British Airways have got a bit of a partnership going with Brewdog at the moment, including a new bar at their New York Lounge run by the Scottish brewing company and they also have a new beer which has been brewed for the airline.
The beer which has been produced is Speedbird 100 which is available for purchase in Euro Traveller and is being given free to those in Club Europe. It’s also available free of charge in the British Airways operated lounges in the UK.
I’m not an enormous fan of Brewdog as a company, but their beer is, generally, excellent. There’s a depth of flavour to the beer that they brew and some innovative and interesting flavours. Best of all, it’s progress for British Airways to be looking at craft beers in the way they are, something which should be encouraged in my view.
The Speedbird 100 is also rather drinkable, with a strong citrus flavour of grapefruits and oranges. As a summer drink it’s refreshing, although a little strong with an ABV of 4.8%. I do like this development from BA, I hope it’s something that evolves in the future.
Also being stocked now in the lounges is Brewdog’s Punk IPA. I go on about this a lot, but I’d like a darker beer and Brewdog do this to a very high standard. However and nonetheless, Punk IPA is entirely acceptable and it’s positive that there is a choice of two beers from the company. The lounge also has cans of Tribute Pale Ale, the largest choice of beers they’ve had in years.
The next step is to increase the options from three to four beers and I shall help BA by sampling numerous beers every time I visit their lounges.
This is aircraft G-EUPO after it had landed in Hamburg Airport, arriving on time from London Heathrow T5. The aircraft is an A319 which BA have owned and operated since 2000.
I was able to board in the first group which was fortunate as the flight was nearly full. The aircraft could have been a little cleaner, but it looked well maintained and in good order. I was in an exit row seat which was sufficiently spacious and comfortable.
There was a crew member who seemed to be new and he was being ultra efficient in term of his security protocol. I’d far rather that he was like that than not caring, but he had a passenger remove a book from the seat pocket as they were in an exit row, which seemed slightly excessive. At the end of the flight the same crew member tried to get the customer in front of me to return his seat to the original position, which confused the seat occupant as he was in a seat which didn’t even recline. The crew member was polite though, and I liked his enthusiasm, with the entire crew seeming to work well together.
From the in-flight menu, this is the page which brought British Airways to the attention of that media titan, the Daily Mail. The afternoon tea doesn’t include a cup of tea, which is only sort of mentioned in the description.
The flight was fifteen minutes late in leaving Heathrow T5 due to congestion at the airport. The pilot explained he’d be remaining at the stand, as opposed to waiting in a queue on the runway, in a bid to save fuel. The pilot gave regular updates and fortunately he was able to make up time during the flight so we landed on time.
This was yet another comfortable flight with British Airways, nothing spectacular, but efficient, well managed and organised.
Just some photos from around Hamburg Harbour….
I’ve seen projects such as this in other cities in Germany, but Hamburg is the only location where this receives finance and support from the city council. The aim of the project is to mark the location of where people lived or worked until they were deported or killed by the Nazis during the Second World War.
There’s a marvellous web-site behind this project at http://www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de/ which gives details of each of the plaques. I was surprised when I saw just how many of these plaques there are around Hamburg, it’s now in excess of 5,000 and what a wonderful project this is to remember and commemorate those who died.
The plaques above are located on Bartelsstraße, although I saw tens of the plaques walking around the city today. The names on the plaques above are:
Mathel Rosenbaum who lived at Bartelsstraße 76, deported in 1941 to Riga and murdered.
Max Rosenbaum who lived at Bartelsstraße 76, born in 1882, deported in 1941 to Lodz and murdered on 28 March 1942.
Edith Rosenbaum who lived at Bartelsstraße 76, born in 1899, deported in 1941 to Riga and murdered.
Hermann Hauptmann who lived at Bartelsstraße 76, born in 1919, deported in 1941 to Minsk and then Majdanek concentration camp. He survived the war and in 1949 he emigrated to the United States of America. This information seems to have come to light after the plaque was laid (http://www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de/index.php?MAIN_ID=7&BIO_ID=4994).
Mathel Hauptmann who lived at Bartelsstraße 76, born in 1922, deported on 11 July 1942 to Auschwitz and murdered.
These plaques are located further down the same street, at Bartelsstraße 76.
I’m at my luxury hotel in Hamburg, well, the Ibis Budget which isn’t really luxury, but I can dream. I’m on the fifth floor and I’m delighted to see that the window opens fully and isn’t restricted. I don’t like how hotel rooms in the UK, and it is normally the UK, are either hermetically sealed or allow their windows to open about 2 centimetres. It hardly allows the air to cascade in to keep the room cool.
I take the view that most adults tend not to fall out of windows, and that it’s ridiculous to try and stop them if they want to. I can see the need for families to want windows that don’t open to prevent children from trying to escape, but in that case, put them on the ground floor and restrict those rooms. So I’m guessing here that the EU hasn’t put some ridiculous law on hotels to force them to restrict windows, primarily since I’ve rarely seen a hotel which has them. But in the UK, the HSE seem to have demanded that hotels ensure no-one can possibly fall out of the window….
I think I’m with the mainland Europeans on this. Let there be air.
To mark the one hundredth anniversary of British Airways, the company has been repainting some of their aircraft. The one hundredth anniversary is a bit loosely defined since BA have been formed of some many component parts over the decades, but it’s an important event for them.
I didn’t think that I’d see any of the aircraft, but currently parked outside of Heathrow T5 B Gates is G-BYGC which has been painted in the BOAC livery which was in use from between 1964 and 1974. It’s a bold design and I really like the retro look of the aircraft, which seems to have received a great deal of publicity.
Incidentally, it looks like the aircraft is shortly flying to Philadelphia in the United States, now one of my favourite cities since my visit a few weeks ago.
My travels, and also credit card spend, means that I’ve collected a fair chunk of Avios points. There are numerous ways of using these, and I usually just use them for discounts on flights.
However, British Airways also have a Reward Flight Saver (RFS) scheme which means that for a fixed charge and some Avios, numerous short haul destinations are available. The prices aren’t unreasonable, so for my trip to Hamburg today there is a charge of 8,000 Avios and £35. Depending how you value Avios this isn’t necessarily the cheapest solution, but it suits my needs.
As an example of what customers can get, a return to Amsterdam is £35 and 8,000 points, as is Paris. Destinations such as Rome, Barcelona and Venice are all also £35, but there’s a charge of 13,000 Avios for the return flight. Most off-peak flights have availability for these fares, which are all in economy.
One of the downsides is that there are no Avios points granted for the flight and also no tier points. However, since I have enough Avios and I’m nowhere near reaching enough tier points for Gold, this isn’t much of a concern.
This was an interesting sight, the old St. Helen’s Church of which now only the tower remains. There has been a church here since the early eighth century, although the original wooden building was destroyed during a Danish raid in 998.
The new stone church was built in the early twelfth century and the tower was added in the thirteenth century. The church was used by the Benedictines, but it started to fall out of use in the early fifteenth century and well before the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
The church came into the ownership of Eton College in 1440 and they owned it until 1799, but they didn’t bother to maintain it. This meant that chunks of it fell down and the locals pinched the stone. Other pieces of the stone, namely the sandstone, were taken by sailors who used the holy stones to scour and whiten the decks.
After a while of the stones being pinched the decision was made to demolish what was left, other than the tower. The tower was instead painted white, which it remains today, by the British Navy in 1719 and used as a navigational aid. A new church was built inland in the eighteenth century and was also given the dedication of St. Helen’s.
Today the church remains bricked up and the entrances are sealed with iron grilles to prevent any access. It’s easily noticeable along the coastline and at least the tower has remained for future generations.
I like this concept, which is replacing the traditional security set-up with an escalator which performs the same service.
The Aerochk press release says:
“When travelers arrive at the airport, rather than waiting in a separate security line, they would just walk towards the nearest Aerochk on their way to their boarding gate. Passengers would place their passport on the left side of the machine and their luggage on the right. Allowing passport , the traveller and his luggage to be checked simultaneously.”
Now, this concept seems marvellous, but having gone through airport security hundreds of times the best systems get delays because of confused passengers.
Passengers who don’t remove trays so that the system gets clogged up, passengers taking two litre bottles of water through security and those who forget you can’t take knives.
I can just imagine how the system would get backed up and passengers who would try to walk down the escalator. But I still like it, I think my need for constant movement would be satisfied with a system like this.
It’s just a concept though and I can’t imagine it’ll be introduced, but it’s a reminder of how clunky the current separate systems of baggage, security and border protection actually are.
