Lesson 5: Appropriate Travel Mannerisms

This blog is titled, "Undomesticated Me" and it mainly refers to my adventures of owning a house and becoming more domestic BUT since my life also includes much travel for work, I feel I need to blog about those adventures too because not only will they act as entertainment for all you readers, it's a channel for me to vent (which is much needed)!

It is late at night in Minneapolis, but here, in my reality, it's 7:25am in Germany! I'm in the Frankfurt airport and just got here from Toronto and am en route to good ol' Bangalore, India. Yes, that's right, India, not to be confused with Indiana (someone asked me that yesterday, "Oh, you mean Indiana?" and I responded, "no, I don't"). Work calls and they have asked me to facilitate some training seminars at one of our corporate campus locations in India for two days. Yes, I'm traveling for four days basically for two full days of work.

I have been doing the International travel thing quite a bit this year and I've picked up some of the "best practices" or "tips and tricks" that I think all people should follow:


Things I feel are "Best Practices" for International travel:
1. Don't be that person who is shocked and roll your eyes when the security people ask to see your passport. They are just trying to verify your identity for yours and more importantly, MY, safety! You brought it with you for a reason.
2. Never rely on airplane food because it is usually super duper bad. This is obvious and everyone is probably like, "Thanks Katie, that's not really new or exciting." You're right... but in all honesty, it's important to remember!
3. Socks. Wear them and bring a clean pair in your carry on. I hate it when the guy three rows back from me takes off his shoes and has the sweatiest, smelliest feet ever. Sometimes I wish the flight attendants would come by and put barf bags over them like little paper slippers.
4. Carry on luggage needs to be neatly packed and not exploding with ALL of your personal belongings, purchases and more. The guy next to me today had a suitcase that was literally exploding at the seams and then he had another huge bag which he tried to shove under the seat. Every 30 mins he was at that under the seat bag and would keep bumping me because he had to dig through so much crap!
5. Deodorant. Wear it. Enough said.
6. If I don't say "Hi" to you when you sit next to me OR if I'm wearing head phones don't talk to me, please.

On today's plane ride from Toronto to Frankfurt, Germany I had a young guy sitting in front of me who kept putting his hands over the back of the seat and they would keep touching my movie screen. Every time he touched it with his fingers my movie would pause or the menu would pop up. That was very annoying. I kindly tapped him and asked him if he could refrain from touching my screen. He smiled at me and nodded and then I realized five minutes later when he did it again that he didn't speak English. I won't be that ignorant person and say, please speak English everyone, but I was annoyed to say the least.

To wrap up this long winded post (I've been awake for a long time and my wittiness is running dry) I attached a pic from the Toronto airport. I love the giant Beaver he's cute and very Canadian.... hmmmm.