Joe’s May 2008 Trek Thru Israel, Eastern Europe & The Balkans En Route to Auschwitz Along the Same Rail Transport Lines my Ancestors Rode to the Death Camps

May 7 2008-Flight leaves at 7am on Tuesday.  It will be a real push to get everything done with only 8 hours left before I have to be at LAX.  I walked into the office this morning with a long list of things to finish in the office.  Of course, Time Warner flaked out on internet service, and I spent the first two hours of my day trying to reboot the modem.  The customer support woman in India with her terrible command of English was of course very cheery in her high pitched voice, but did nothing to help, and then told me the service tech will be at my office to repair the line on Wednesday.   Well what good does that do me if I am trying to run a business.  Time Warner certainly has gone down hill and over to India since the takeover from Adelphia.  Perhaps it would have been better if the Riga family continued to embezzle company funds from Adelphia as we always received same day service.  Finally, I got to a Supervisor in India who offered me a Tuesday evening repair.  The trick in dealing with these poorly trained monkeys is to demand to speak with someone in the United States.  So after 60 minutes with India, they transferred me to the good old United States.  Trouble was that they erased my file as a means of getting even with me.  The guy finally reviewed my situation and got me an afternoon repair.  But he would not hang up until I gave him a rating of 1-10 (best).  10 was fine as long as I got the repair today.  Since I am writing now from my office, the repair worked and he earned his 10. However Time Warner gets a minus 1 for their customer service clowns in India.

I am doing this trip on my own, as Helayne is finishing her last course at UCLA to get her CFP Certificate so she can sit through the test to become a Certified Financial Planner.  So if anyone is looking for the party scene with a group of hot middle aged women talking literary reviews, head out to Malibu while I am gone.  My flight because it is frequent flyer miles goes LAX to Boston (where I may see my Dead Head Show Partner at the airport layover), then onto London to Rome to Tel Aviv.  Talk about torture!  Thats what I get for grabbing a last minute frequent flyer ticket.  I will be in Tel Aviv for three days with my two sons who are there for six months on work stints.  After three days, I am flying to Athens, Greece and on to the Northern part of the Country for a visit with friends for a couple days before I start my train trip through Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland.   More on the train trip later.  The big problem that I am trying to cope with is that I am going through Heathrow in London which you may have heard the new Terminal 5 has its opening bugs that they can’t seem to work out.  In the month that the new Terminal 5 has been open, the majority of luggage has been lost.  The solution that British Air created was to ship half of the bags to Nashville Tennessee to have Federal Express sort out the baggage mess, and the other half to Milan where they have another warehouse to sort out the mess.  As a result, all of the care packages that I am bringing-all 65 pounds of that large duffel bag are being checked, and I am bringing my suitcase on the flight so I don’t get bagged.  So to speak.  Hopefully, the checked bag will get some frequent flyer miles if it goes to Nashville en route.

I was collecting all the supplies yesterday and I feel like a pack horse bringing provisions to the moon.  The boys need Skype microphone headsets for the computer VOIP, external hard drives and summer clothes.  Of course, they left with winter clothes and now its 95 degrees there.  Oh shit, I just remembered that I forgot to buy the sex wax or whatever it is for Josh’s surf board in Tel Aviv.  One more thing to add to the list of do!  I spent Sunday running around looking for gifts to bring to the friends in Israel and Greece.  You’d think they can get the same crap made in China that we get here!  

On top of that, I received a large care package from Universal Studio from Jacob’s friends comprised of the newest release DVD’s and CD’s that only adds another ten pounds to the load.  Then of course Josh needs every issue of Road and Track, Vanity Fair, Variety, Los Angeles Magazine, New Yorker  and a dozen paperbacks that have been delivered since they left LA.  Of course, Helayne is adding the Jewish Journal to the basket strapped to my back.

So the challenge is to get home, pack my stuff, remember my tickets and passport and make certain I get on this 7am flight to Boston.  I have lots of reading materials for the flight(s). 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 1:33 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.