Author: Danica.H.

Contemplations of a German working in the travel industry, lover of travel and (air) yoga addict. Born and raised in Germany, currently living in South Africa and sharing my journey with whoever wants to read it but mainly for my future self when I am old and forgotten most of my adventures and thoughts of the younger me.

Love Locks in Prague

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I guess I’m becoming more and more helplessly romantic the older I get! My personal tip for everyone visiting Prague is a small bridge – I don’t even know if it carries a name – on Velkoprevorske Namesti. The railing is packed with love padlocks. Couples attach them to the bridge and then drop the keys in the stream below. In each padlock is either a date, or names, or both engraved. Locking their lives together, forever! Isn’t that just too adoring?

It’s a new habit all over Europe, so I have heard. A novel by Italian author Federico Moccia started this hype in Rome that then spread rapidly to neighbouring countries and beyond. Apparently, bridges like “my bridge” in Prague can be found all over Europe: Rome, Paris, Copenhagen, even Cologne (Germany definitely being the least romantic place). Padlocks in all shapes and colours, promising eternal love to Mr Right or Mrs Perfect in many languages, take over public fences, gates or bridges. Is this the secret key to an everlasting relationship or marriage?
What happens when the once honeymooners grow apart and continue living separate lives? Will they go back and dive in the river to search for their keys to unlock their chained hearts? Most probably not. This concerns me a little.. and here I allow myself to be very selfish! I would like to go back one day to “my bridge”, the one with the water wheel behind it, the one that our driver showed us in the middle of the night when no one else was there, the one that symbolises romanticism to me. I would like to lock my love into a padlock and throw away the key while looking into the eyes of the man of my dreams… one day.

Where to find a hubby?

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Imagine you are in your thirties, you don’t have a husband, no fiancé and not even a boyfriend. You’re life is pretty much focused on your career. You’re working long hours and you definitely don’t have the energy to go on a jol on weekdays. Friday nights are out too, because you are too exhausted from the week. That leaves you with Saturdays to be a socialista. And even then, you prefer your lunches, sundowners, braais rather than going out partying till the sun comes up . If you can imagine this then you’ve got a pretty accurate picture of me! Short: My energy level has dropped significantly since I have joined the corporate world.

Not that I’m looking for a boyfriend, fiancé or husband right now, but the thought has crossed my mind that someday I might want one. It also happened that recently, I became helplessly romantic and the thought of the love of my life proposing and wanting to spend the rest of his life with me is just the ultimate dream scenario I can image. So, I asked myself: Where will this future husband and father of my kids come from?   Have I met him already or is it someone I am going to meet someday? Let’s discuss the second possibility here.. If I haven’t met him as yet, then the question comes up: where will I meet him?
Online dating is out of question for me personally.  It’s just not appealing to me. Since I’m not going out a lot, that leaves me with two options and funny enough both options are related to my work.

Option 1: in the air! I fly a lot. Mostly on duty. The pleasure of travelling for duty purposes is that it is (space permitted) in business class. So you’d think that you’ll have this good-looking executive sitting next you. Every time I come to my seat I am excited to see who is sitting next me.
Hope: my age, good-looking, successful, no ring on his finger, sipping on his juice or cool drink and interested in me!
Reality check: 25 years older than me, huge belly, pseudo successful, ring on his finger, downing alcoholic drinks like water, interested in me!

NO THANK YOU!!!

Option 2: the workplace itself! Offices, conferences, meetings etc. People spend so much time at their workplace that it is most likely that they meet someone working for the same company if they are still single, in their thirties and busy focusing on their career. Does this work out? For one of my best friends it does. Believe it or not, they have worked in the same office for 7 (!!!) years and then they fell in love. Still very happy today and such a sexy couple.
Would that be something for me? Considering that maybe 80% (ok, I might be slightly exaggerating now but it is very close) of my male colleagues are gay, I have lost out already! The other 20% are a mixture of married men, men I don’t find attractive or … guess what.. yep, pilots!! Who I have labelled as players already – so, also no marriage material, plus my intuitive heartbreak-alert is on red!

NO THANK YOU!!!

By the way:

  • I wrote this post onboard JNB-FRA – the seat next to me was…empty!
  • I’m posting this post on a Saturday night – I’m a couch potato this evening, simply because I’m too exhausted from spending last night on an aeroplane seat!

Seems to me like a vicious circle! Is my job actually preventing me from getting married?????

Pilots: Stereotype vs Reality

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For quite some time already I have this image of pilots wandering around my inner eye: good-looking, overly self-confident, charming, flirtatious, exciting, non-committed… short: PLAYERS. This image has mostly been shaped by stories I heard… “a friend of a friend whose flying husband cheated on her with this striking hot flight attendant while she was seven-months pregnant”… blah blah blah. All just unconfirmed stories since I actually never met a pilot myself. Then, FINALLY beginning of last year I did at a conference (nights in the bar included)! And since all good things come in threes, I met 3 at the same time!!!

All three of them extremely nice and all three of them heavily flirting with me. Two of them married – Preconception # 1 confirmed!
The third one calling my room at 3 am (after the bar closed and we all wanted to catch some sleep) asking if he could come over because we didn’t really have a chance to chat. And his voice.. not stuttering at all – so this was definitely not the first time he called at a female colleague’s room in the middle of the night – Preconception # 2 confirmed!
Oh yes…he is extremely good-looking, charming with a smile of note (I will only speak about the not married one here) – Preconception #3 confirmed!

But this is just my personal view, which might be influenced by my history with men and consequential trust-issues in general.So, what’s the other stereotypical image of a pilot:

Reader’s Digest’, manager magazine, Unispiegel and other more or less trustworthy sources all confirm through conducted surveys that one of the most trusted professions is the one of a pilot. I suppose there is some truth behind it.. Think about it: When you hear that someone is a pilot there is automatically some kind of respect involved. It might be because we know that their training programme is quite tough, starting already with the selection process of those who want to become one: Their eyesight must be perfect, they must have a certain height (although I don’t know why.. don’t they sit most of the time???) and they must be able to multi task (here, all male pilots definitely earn my portion of respect). Once the few chosen ones have been selected and successfully finished their training over the Arizonan desert, they will take over the responsibility of carrying up to 526 passengers (at least in an A380) safely from one airport to their other. Yip that also gives them a few more extra points! On top, the general opinion is that they earn their fair share of the huge responsibility they take over (well, this is definitely the case at the company I am working for). And often, respect for a profession comes with the income scale they are in.

Recently I came across a newspaper article that confirmed MY image. Titillating photographs showing two crew members, widely reported to be a pilot and a flight attendant, in decidedly compromising positions appeared in the Hong Kong news media. Both were fired and Cathay’s planned ad campaign which bears the slogan “meet the team that goes the extra mile,” had to be postponed. 

I had sent this article to my pilot friend (yes, the one who called my room in the middle of the night) and he laughed his head of… mmhhhhh is this in agreement or in disagreement??????  I wonder….

Hello world!

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Sometimes my life seems to be the perfect script for a soap opera: funny, dramatic, eventful, never boring, always on the road (or rather in the air), jetting between two continents on a monthly basis and the usual issues with the opposite sex.  So why not write about it and let others share a good laugh with me? That’s exactly what I decided to do after recent not-so-nice incidents that kind of knocked me down: leaning back and looking at my life from an outside perspective! And then all of a sudden, things don’t appear so dramatic, painful or heartbreaking any longer but rather comical!

 Oh and since I’m going to tell true-life stories, I might refer to the one or other family member, friend, neighbour and all sorts of people I came into contact with. I won’t mention names and since I am a typical Libra, I will stay fair and honest in my story telling and under no circumstances will it get below the belt line – so no fears my friends and relatives! No dirty secrets – I promise!!

 Enjoy!!