I’ve called this post a ‘Middle-Class Whinge’ for reasons that will become obvious as you read it. It isn’t about a matter of great importance, just a couple of disappointing instances of customer service at the end of a long week. I’m not asking for pity, I am just venting.

It was the end of the TERENA Networking Conference, which together with accompanying events meant I had been in meetings from Sunday lunchtime until Friday lunchtime. After a very pleasant stroll down from the CESNET offices in Prague, close to Dejvicka, through the Royal Gardens, the Castle, and the Old Town to my hotel near Florenc, I picked up my case and caught the metro and the bus back through the Friday afternoon traffic to the airport (paying little over £1 for the public transport, bargain!).

I checked my bag in, went through passport control and wandered around the airport for a little while before stopping by the “Pilsner Urquell Original Restaurant” at the ‘A’ gates for a beer and a bite to eat. Compared to the city, the beer was expensive — CZK145 per 500ml, which made the CZK100 for a grilled sausage with mustard and ketchup feel a bit of a bargain, especially when it also turned up with a pretzel as part of the trimmings. I ate and drank whilst trying to see if I could get any WiFi, then had a second glass of beer whilst waiting for my flight’s status to change to ‘Go To Gate.’ Table service was fairly efficient, but at no point did a bill turn up, so I went to the till to pay.

At the till the drinks came to the expected CZK290, but the food was CZK150. It appears the pretzel was an optional extra, included without asking for it. I whinged a bit to the barman, to no avail, but I was even further wound up when the sign at the till proudly displayed words to the effect of “if we don’t give you a bill, your meal is free.” Free, my arse. Almost £16 for a couple of pints of beer, a sausage and a pretzel. I’ll stick to a bottle of mineral water from the newsagent next time I’m in Prague Airport, or maybe just head to the KFC instead, I’m sure there is less chance of them charging me for things I didn’t order.

Never mind, at least after a last-minute schedule change to fit in an extra meeting or two I was flying home with British Airways. They pride themselves on customer service, right? That’s why they are still a “full-fare” airline.

On the way into Prague I had flown via Munich with Lufthansa. The Munich to Prague sector is only about 150 miles and takes half an hour with a small jet. Even so, Lufthansa managed to perform a full bar service to the entire plane. I was impressed.

BA was a different story. It was 45 minutes before the trolley even reached me, all the way back in the twelfth row of a 26-row Airbus A320. When they reached me they reported that they had not loaded any beer onto the plane in Prague. How is it possible not to load beer onto a plane leaving Prague?!?! I’d have thought the quantities of beer that reach the airport are only matched by the quantities of Jet A-1 (fuel).

Fine, some red wine and a packet of crisps, then. The red wine was possible, the crisps not so much. They’d also run out of those and only had biscuits left. By the time they reached the row behind me, I heard them telling another unfortunate passenger they had run out of something else too. Take note, BA, it isn’t poor industrial relations that are losing you passengers, it is your attitude to customer service that always tends to favour penny-pinching rather than treating your passengers with a modicum of dignity. I have two more trips to make over the next few weeks, one to Zurich and another to Munich. Swiss and Lufthansa it is, then.

I had shied away from British Airways towards Star Alliance lines recently for a few reasons. One is their poor ‘frequent flier’ rewards for anyone other than passengers on fully-flexible (i.e. expensive) tickets, another was the customer service, which has always tended towards “slow and haughty,” and the third was that it means using Terminal 5 at Heathrow.

I know that British Airports Authority will tell you all the problems that beset the birth of terminal 5 have been solved, and that may be true, but for me it almost always means that when I leave or arrive I will not be using a jet-bridge to cross from the airplane to the terminal, but a bus. When we arrived 20 minutes late at Heathrow, this was the inevitable news that greeted us.

I estimate 60-70% of the flights I take to and from T5 use a bus from/to the airplane. This means that instead of being able to walk at my rapid pace along the terminal, I have to head down some rickety stairs, into a bus with all the other passengers crowding around the doors, then a drive to the terminal building from some remote stand. This is time I could be going home, and time off being AT home. It is probably the extra five minutes that mean I just miss a Heathrow Express. It doesn’t end there either. The lottery of immigration queues is the next opportunity to be a winner or a loser.

The first choice is Iris or manual? The Iris queues are always shorter, but they can also be slow moving as people shuffle backwards and forwards in the booth to get the pictures of their eyes just right. If you decide to go for the manual check, then instead of a single, snaking queue which is strictly first-come, first-served, you have to choose which of the queues to join, just as if you were in a supermarket, except that instead of waiting for the checkout, you’re waiting to find out if you’ll have the dubious privilege of being let back into your own country. Of course, as with supermarkets, you’ll always have somebody ahead of you in your queue that should have been in one of the other queues, or for some other reason takes an inordinate amount of time.

How can this be so hard? We’re British! We are world-renowned for queuing. Surely we could come up with something more efficient. It reminds me of the long, slow queues to get through immigration in Cuba, where the officer at the head of the queue I was in decided to go on a break when I was just two people away from the front. Oh, and if I’m not mistaken, doesn’t the non-EU section at T5 use a single, snaking queue instead of the multiple lines?

Yes, this is all just whinging about small items, there are much bigger problems in the world and I don’t want to sound spoilt, but at the end of a long, tiring week, it was disappointing when a bit of customer service would have been oh-so-welcome.

November 1st, 2009.

This entry has taken a long time to publish. This is not because it is some great feat of literature, it is because I am no great blogger, and can rarely be bothered to upload two things that I managed to (mostly) write in consecutive days. On with the tale…

After yesterday’s trip to the DMZ, someone mentioned that the War Museum in Seoul was quite good, so my plan for the day was to arrive in Seoul Station and walk south to spend an hour or so there before walking back up past the station to Insa-dong and Palace district. I hadn’t read up anything on the museum beforehand – the Rough Guide has its location on the overview map of Seoul, but it isn’t mentioned in the index, and I couldn’t find anything in the city’s chapter in the book.

I arrived at the museum complex from the rear, which turned out to be fortunate, but I’ll explain why later. The first building I came across was the Museum Wedding Hall. Odd, but perhaps there’s some play on unification there. Next, I climbed the steps and was confronted with tablet after tablet of the names of US fallen. 33,642 US soldiers were killed in action in the Korean War, and all of their names are listed, state by state, on bronze plates. Towards one end of the hall are the plates with other nationalities, including 1,042 British, 724 Turkish and 516 Canadians. These are all outnumbered by the stone plaques listing the Korean dead from the war and other conflicts. 170,585 names in small gold letters carved into polished black stone.

Entering the museum that forms part of the memorial, the first things I saw were a dusty small plane, helicopter and a couple of mannequins with parachutes suspended from the rafters in a large atrium. Directly below them, on the basement floor, is a children’s play area with bouncy castles, and entertainers dressed up in colourful cartoon costumes from what I assume must be the Korean equivalent of the Teletubbies. Starting to think this was going to be a disappointment, I headed for the first of the three rooms covering the Korean War. It starts off with some astounding documents and gets better.

The Japanese surrender document from 1945 is where the story of the Korean war begins, and the exhibition does a splendid job of explaining how the Soviets took control of Korea north of the 38th parallel (38° north), whilst the US took control south of that line. Quite a bit of the explanatory text is only in Korean, but some is in English, as are the videos, and the displays contain a number of original documents that were written in English. There are also English audio guides. The displays then go on to give an account of the progress of the war, with several scenes reconstructed, and plenty of exhibits. The third room describes the role of the various UN participants. Whilst the US was by far the largest contributor, many other countries also had forces involved in the war. Greece, Ethiopia, Colombia to name but three.

Moving on from the Korean War, the museum describes the wars that have made up the history of the Korean peninsula, from the days of the Three Kingdoms, starting in 67 B.C. and continuing to the 7th Century A.D. They all have plenty of accompanying exhibits that would fascinate anyone interested in military history, from swords with constellations carved into the blade, through “cannon arrows” to parts of the “Tripitaka Koreana.” About this point I’d noted down “Excellent museum!” in my notebook.

The exhibits go on to tell the story of Republic of Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War, before finishing off, as I thought, with displays to mark the UN roles that the ROK (Republic of Korea) forces have participated in. I thought that was a fitting end the museum, then I realised I hadn’t finished yet. As I walked around in an increasing state of bewilderment I came across a shooting rage with air rifles (I was a bit dazed, so I politely refused), models of Little Boy and Fat Man (the atomic bombs dropped on Japan), a reconstruction of some of the superstructure of a naval ship, and when I looked out of the window from the cafe on the third floor, I saw a huge array of military hardware outside – landing craft, helicopters, artillery, and a variety of aircraft from propeller-driven trainers through to a B-52 Stratofortress.

At this point I was feeling very disorientated. The museum had moved from being a fitting and sober memorial of the war to a show of military strength, then I remembered the Korean War is not over. There has been a ceasefire in operation since 1953, but the war is still ongoing and each side needs to demonstrate to the other how strong they are, but also perhaps to reassure their citizens that should the ceasefire fail, you will be safe, defended by the might of ROK armed forces.

Past most of the display of military hardware, and back toward the main entrance to the memorial that would have shown me what I was in for had I not decided to enter from the side door, are a number of statues and memorials including the Statue of Brothers, symbolising the division of Korea.

I didn’t get to the palace district until after sunset.

October 31st, 2009.

My base in Korea was Daejeon, but as the “must-see” tourist trap, I mean trip, leaves from Seoul at 07:00, I’d stayed a night in the capital so I could be at Camp Kim, a US military base and home of USO Korea who arranged the tour that I joined, for the start. When I arrived at 6:45am there were already a dozen people assembled and two coaches waiting, so any thoughts I might have had that this was to be a bit of an adventure in the back of a troop truck were quickly disabused. I checked in at the USO office and boarded one of the buses, both of which filled up. The other clients appeared to be a mix of young travellers, veterans coming back for a visit with their family, and one US soldier on his final three weeks in country before heading home. The group was overwhelmingly American, but that could be explained by my choice of tour organiser.

Beating the morning traffic we were soon out of the city and travelling north along the banks of the River Han. The heavily fortified banks of the river Han. Tall barbed wire fences with manned guardposts every couple of hundred metres to prevent “infiltrators” heading downriver into the land of the free. On the way, the Korean tour guide told us some facts about the country. Of a population of 70 million, 48 million live in the South, and 22 million in the North. The average income in South Korea is US$20,000. In North Korea it is US$1,400. However, when it comes to the military, North Korea spends 30% of its GDP on it, and there are 1,200,000 active service members compared to 800,000 in the South. To travel beyond your own neighbourhood in North Korea you need permission, and houses only get electricity for 4-5 hours during the day. When the sun sets, the country goes dark.

As the Han River gives way to the Imjin River then the country on the other side of the border changes from the Republic of Korea, to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. At the same time, the single high fence topped with barbed wire changes into several layers of fence, all topped with barbed wire and with brightly coloured stones wedged between the links so guards can easily tell if the fence has been disturbed as the stones will fall out. The guard posts change from small towers, to wider, more substantial concrete buildings capable of holding more than just a couple of sentries.

Soon enough we reached the first checkpoint as we entered the demilitarised zone. This is off limits to most Koreans, with the exception of those that live and work there. After the checkpoint is the Unification Bridge. These days it is sorely misnamed as the bus has to weave its way through fences that are put there to slow down the little traffic that is allowed to use it. For a brief period earlier this decade there was also a Unification Train that ran from South Korea to an industrial city in the North. It used to head up in the morning with raw materials, and ship products south again in the evening. The service hasn’t been running since about this time last year.

Just after the bridge we have a rest stop for some coffee from a vending machine (which wasn’t all that bad), and a chance to buy some essentials. Dried sweet potatoes, Hershey bars, dried fish, scarves with a map of North Korea. The sort of thing you can find at your local corner store. Back on the bus and it is a short hop to Camp Bonifas. Camp Bonifas is named after a US soldier that was killed in what is referred to as the “Axe Murder Incident” of 1976.

In those days, the Joint Security Area, had guardposts for both sides located on either side of the actual border, the MDL (Military Demarcation Line). A large Poplar tree was blocking the view from one of the UN’s posts, so three soldiers were sent to trim it. They were attacked with axes by a number of North Korean soldiers and two of them were killed. One of those was a Captain Bonifas.

As we entered the camp, our bus was boarded by a US soldier, one of the UN force here, who checked our passports, although I’m not sure what he was looking for, except whether or not we were Korean. He introduced himself as Specialist Pollard who was to be our armed escort for the tour. “Armed” in this case means a handgun, as that is all that is allowed within the JSA (Joint Security Area).

The next stop was Ballinger Hall for our briefing on the history of the conflict and the formation of the JSA by Staff Sergeant Merill. This is where we were told about the Axe Murder Incident and about the competition between the sides for the tallest flagpost with the largest flag. The current holder is the North, which has a flagpole 150m high holding a flag that is 31m long.

The trip through the demilitarised zone from Camp Bonifas to the JSA takes us past the South Korean village of Daeseongdong. The farmers here have more land than most farmers in the rest of the country, but have to put up with being back in the village by sunset, and in their own homes by midnight. Why would they want to do this? Not only is the sale of their crop guaranteed by the government, but they earn US$80,000 to US$100,000 each. Needless to say that with a farming salary that large, only descendants of people living in the village are allowed to stay there and farm. Most of the farmers also have flats in Seoul where they go for the weekend.

Just before reaching the JSA we passed another handful of small buildings. This is the rapid response force, ready to jump into action should something happen. 24 hours a day, they are prepared and can be at the border within 90 seconds of being called. The record is 45 seconds. I can’t decide whether it would be a job as dull as dishwater, always being ready, but hopefully only rarely being called, or something that would drive you insane, always being tense, prepared, ready to drop whatever you were doing and run to the jeeps that would race up to who-knows-what.

When we reached the JSA, we were shepherded into Friendship Hall. Specialist Pollard told us that this was built by the South to allow families split across the border to meet, before being taken back to their own countries. However, the North never participated, so all it is used for is tour groups and a meeting room. The other side of the hall is the border. Steps lead down from Friendship Hall to a road that crosses in front of it. On the other side of the road are a number of single storey buildings called “Conference Row.” Two grey buildings on the western side are uninhabited, they used to be used by the Czech and Polish armies and monitored the JSA for North Korea. The next three are blue and under the control of the UN. The final building on the right is grey again, with tasteful net curtains in the window. This is the one we were told to keep an eye on, as now and again the North Koreans would pull the curtains to one side and point at us, or make throat-slitting actions. Running between the buildings, half-way along them, is a raised bit of concrete marking the MDL, the division between North and South. South of the line are pebbles, so the sound of footsteps can be heard, North it is sand.

It was across this line in 1984 that a Russian visitor to North Korea sprinted down to the sunken gardens south of the MDL, shouting that he wanted to defect, and causing a brief firefight that cost the life of one South Korean guard and three North Koreans. He was allowed to stay, as handing him back would have been a certain death penalty.

On the southern ends of the buildings, two South Korean soldiers stood, facing north, and half-obscured by the buildings to present less of a target. They were apparently there for our safety, and perhaps a bit of show too, but on a border with so much history of violence, I’d rather they were there than not. On the northern side a single soldier stood at the entrance to their equivalent of Friendship Hall, binoculars to his eyes. Several other pairs of eyes were assuredly watching us.

As Specialist Pollard told us some of the history and answered our questions, and whilst we were standing in two rows at the top of the steps leading down to the road, a handful of North Korean soldiers came down from the building on their side of the line and took it in turns to have their photograph taken with the South, and us, in the background. I assumed this was a fairly normal occurrence and the same soldiers do the same thing to each of the tour groups, perhaps mocking them. However, we were told it doesn’t happen all that often, and it could have been some soldiers towards the end of their 10 years of national service. Of course, perhaps they were allowed to do it on the condition they took the photographs when we were there too.

We then headed into the central building. Inside there are five polished tables, surrounded by chairs with leather upholstery, the sort of table and chairs you’d expect to find in a building that government ministers meet at. On the central table was a single, modestly sized UN flag. Above the southern door a frame with a collection of UN flags. This is all the national symbolism that is allowed in the room after previous episodes of meetings being held up whilst each side had to bring in a flag that was bigger than the other, and some instances of flags being defaced. At the far end of the room were two South Korean soliders, stock still, but looking like a taut spring, ready to strike. These soldiers are some of the cream of the South Korean army, experts in martial arts. They wear dark glasses to avoid eye contact with the enemy. After a barked order from Specialist Pollard, one of the soldiers moved to the head of the central table, and we had a few minutes to look around the room and cross the border into North Korea. It seems strange that walking from one side of a room to the other can feel so different, and perhaps the only reason it did was the build-up we’d been given, but there was a sense of being somewhere new, in an environment we weren’t fully in control of.

Next on the trip was supposed to be the Bridge of No Return. At the end of the war, both sides lined up prisoners of war, who were told they could go to either the north or the south, but once they chose, they could not go back. However, it was closed for renovation work.

The road to the next stop, Dora Observatory winds in a zig-zag up a hill. Either side of the road is fenced off with frequent signs warning of landmines. This is the place where we were supposed to have been able to glimpse into North Korea. At least, into the ‘propaganda’ village of Gijungdong, with its wide roads, 150m flagpole, and no inhabitants. Surely, if propaganda is your aim, then you’d build a town of narrow roads and flashing neon, like the centre of most Asian cities?

Some way back from the wall with a row binoculars (insert KRW500) is a yellow line that marks the limit at which you’re allowed to take photographs. Take any beyond that line and there are soldiers running backwards and forwards ensuring you delete them from your camera. Not that there was anything to take a photo of, the rain had started to pour down and fog had closed right in so all we could see was drab and grey. I didn’t know North Korea had such a command over the weather.

After lunch, the final stop on the tour was the “Third Tunnel,” so called because it was the third tunnel under the border to be discovered. So far four have been found, the first in 1974, another in 1975, the one we were visiting was found in 1978, and a fourth was discovered in 1990. They’re labelled “Infiltration Tunnels” by the South, as the suspicion is that they would have been used to bring an army into to the south. The suspicion is that there are more to be discovered.

The tunnel is another “no photography” zone. At the top I’d noticed other visitors emerging out of breath and dripping with sweat. The reason was less that the tunnel was stuffy and chlaustrophobic, but more to do with it being accessed through a 250m long passageway that descends 71m. Steep enough on the way down, never mind the return. The tunnels are much taller and wider than the ones I’d previously visited in Cu-Chi, outside Saigon, but I was still grateful for the hard hat, which I dinged on the supporting scaffolding and jagged roof several times.

Construction of the tunnels was an impressive feat, a two metre by two meter swathe cut through solid granite. If there had been seismic detectors deployed in the DMZ, they would certainly have picked up the amount of blasting that must have been necessary. We were told that through each of the tunnels the North would have been able to get 30,000 infiltrators an hour. That’s an impressive figure considering it means more than 8 per second. Even two by two, that is four rows of people passing a point every second.

After walking down the tunnel for about 170m we reached a steel door, with considerable amount of barbed wire in front of it, and a small window. All I saw through the window were more steel doors and more barbed wire.

To round off the trip we were shown a film that described the tunnels, their discovery, and the benfits of the DMZ as a wildlife resort and tourist destination. It played heavily on unification, something which may have felt within grasp when it was made a few years ago, but is temporarily further away. The train it was proud of, which I mentioned earlier, no longer runs.

On the bus back we were shown another film, “Korean War in Color” (their spelling). It spent about 75 minutes on the first two years, and the other 15 on the final two years, which might sound an odd balance, but seems to reflect on the progress of the war.

I hate Heathrow Airport. There, I said it.

This sentiment may come as no surprise to those that use it frequently (I use it fairly regularly, but nowhere near as much as some), but I’ve held out a long time before admitting it. I like what airports represent, people coming and going, whether it is for business, a short trip, or maybe the start of a new life elsewhere, and during endless hours at Heathrow I’ve held onto that, but it has to be said, Heathrow is a bad airport.

Arriving back to Terminal 5 from a relatively short flight from Stockholm on Saturday, we landed 25 minutes early, which is a minor miracle in itself as it meant we weren’t stacked over Epping or Oxford. However, our gate wasn’t free yet, so we had to sit on the apron for 15 minutes with the engines running whilst we waited to pull up to the terminal. When we did reach the gate, it was a domestic gate rather than an international one, so we had to disembark from the rear of the plane into a fleet of buses via steps that took another ten minutes to arrive, and always sway disturbingly. The bus then has to take a circuitous route to the correct entry doors. Next is the nightmare of the immigration queue. I’m sure the most efficient way of doing this, or at least the one that feels fairest, is a single snaking queue which is strictly first-in-first-out to a bank of desks, but instead Terminal 5 opts to have queues for each desk. There were only two desks open for UK/EU passport holders, and it looks like a couple of jumbos arrived at about the same time we did, so the queues backed up, more desks eventually opened, at which point it is a disorganised rush to get to the front of the new queues. Surely queuing for desks is a solved problem? Are there studies somewhere that show individual queues are the best solution? I’d like to see them, especially when the person two in front of you has appeared at the UK/EU desk with a US passport. The last airport I went to that was as bad as the spanking new Terminal 5 was in Havana.

From touching down 25 minutes early, it was 30 minutes after the scheduled arrival time that I was sitting on the Heathrow Express (where I had to wait another 10 minutes for it to leave). Probably the only more expensive train ride than Heathrow Express is the Arlanda Express. In total I spent £72 on train tickets between Paddington and Heathrow, then between Arlanda and Stockholm. That’s somewhere in the region of £1 per minute of travelling. Add on the tube tickets and journeys totalling fewer than 100 miles as the crow flies, cost £80. 80 pence per mile compared with the flights that cost 9.4 pence per mile (that is on a full service airline, BA, but cheap economy class tickets).

The thing is that this wasn’t an exceptional journey. Often you’re waiting for a long time to land at Heathrow, which I didn’t this time, or you’re waiting a long time for your luggage, which again I wasn’t this time (probably because it had taken so long to finally reach baggage reclaim). They must know it is bad, there are enough people wandering around with clipboards asking for feedback. If as much effort went into improving the service as it does asking our opinion, I’m sure it could be a much better airport. Equally, I’m sure that the folk on the ground do as good a job as they can, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were a bit demoralised if they have to take a bit of stick from the passengers.

That’s just arriving back, I’m resisting the temptation to comment on security and the trip out. Of course, in the scheme of things, spending too much time at airports is not a bad problem to have, but it niggles when you feel it could be done so much better.