Saturday May 25 -- Friedrichshafen and Zeppelin Hangar

Drizzly and grey in the morning, with nothing particular to do, so I walked along the lake in the other, westerly direction. Again, it wasn't possible to get close to it very often because the foreshore was divided up into private plots. These are all fenced off, sometimes with barbed wire, and they seem to belong to the landholders on the slope above, so it goes house and land -- walking and bike track -- lake foreshore. I suppose we should be grateful they allow a track at all; certainly that's often not the case in Sydney.

I walked for about an hour and a half, and then found a road up the slope to a little local railway station. Local trains are relatively infrequent, but I found there was one in about twenty minutes, so I settled down to wait. A few people turned up soon and at least confirmed that I was in the right place. The train, when it came, was one of the two-decker ones, with seats upstairs in a 'lounge' and open space in the bottom deck for bicycles and wheelchairs, along with a couple of rows of seats.

Back in Friedrichshafen (which the cool kids refer to as 'FN') I decided to have a better lunch than yesterday's, and stopped at a Konditorei, which is a kind of glorified baker's. They had various specials up on the menu, so I ordered a 'mountain climber' (Bergsteiger), which turned out to be two sorts of bread roll (you choose) with cheese, ham, salami, tomato and cucumber. Like a ploughman's lunch, but a lot more interesting. And it came with a small coffee.

Then I walked back out to the Zeppelin hangar, on a slightly more pleasant route, and checked in for my 3:15 two-hour flight. All OK until about five minutes later when they told me the flight was cancelled due to thunderstorms. But I could switch to an earlier one-hour flight at 2:20. I told them that was fine, and arranging the switch took them about five minutes; then there was another ten minutes' mucking around trying to get the refund back into my account. Eventually they put it on to the credit card instead, and I was ready for the flight.

There was a video safety briefing for the Germans, while I got a personal one from the stewards. They take the whole business very seriously and try to look as much like an airline as possible, even to having a departure gate and uniformed staff, and a minibus to take the ten of us all of 100m to the Zeppelin itself. I've seen it in the skies many times now, but it's still an impressive sight; about twice as big as a hot-air balloon and rigidly shaped, with engines mounted on the sides and at the rear. You can't stop and take photos on the way there because it shifts about in the wind; so passengers are advised to get aboard (via a flight of steps) as quickly as possible.

It's connected by cables to a mobile mast, which itself is on a truck, and when everyone's on board the cables are disconnected. They spend the rest of the flight dangling in front of the pilots, which I would have thought was distracting, but I suppose they get used to it. There is a captain and co-pilot (male) and a steward (female) for ten passengers, and my flight went east along the lake shore, followed the shore around to the north, hung steady over Konstanz for a few minutes and then basically retraced its steps. Everyone else was clambering around the cabin and chatttering excitedly in German. I was fairly calm, having taken two tablets beforehand, but an hour was certainly enough. The rear door was worryingly close, with an openable window that I could have squeezed through. Not only that; they also told me how to open the door as part of the safety procedure.

We came down rapidly in a freshening wind; you could hear the gas being vented. Once near enough to the ground, and connected to the mast, they use a very low-tech procedure to hold her down; three hefty young men pick up dirty great iron weights, one in each hand, and stuff them into the cargo hold. They did this until the craft was reasonably steady, and we disembarked. Why not have a hose connection from the truck and pump in some water, I wonder?

One free glass of wine, a commemorative certificate and a book later, and I was walking home, staggering slightly from the effects of the tablets. I was compos enough to stop of at a Lidl and buy another wurst for dinner, but I was very glad to get back, cook and eat, and crawl into bed. So ends the Zeppelin excursion; and the first half of my holiday.

Love to all,

Jon.