A Flight Attendant’s Tips for Travelers Reveal a Lot About the Industry

by Jason Clampet on

Are flight crews sometimes the last to know about cancellations?

Veteran flight attendant Kristie Koerbel’s tips for travelers on navigating the current travel chaos and cancellations, as published in The New York Times, also had some interesting tidbits about the airline industry as a business.

Koerbel wrote that it is wise to download the app of the airline you are flying — or trying to fly, that is — because “in some cases you will know a flight is canceled before the flight crew even knows.” She also said travelers can use the app to track bags, the whereabouts of the incoming flight, and to rebook.

Another interesting factoid? Here’s why you will be chilled flying in short-sleeves.

“Here is a flight attendant secret: We sometimes keep the airplane cold intentionally. For people who struggle with airsickness, heat makes it worse. We don’t want anyone to use those sick sacks,” Koerbel wrote.

Koerbel tied some of the spate of flight cancellations to a fact that many people in the travel industry already know — there are time limits to how long flight crews can work.

“Something that is not common knowledge is that flight crews have time limits on how long they can work, generally 12 to 16 hours at a stretch,” Koerbel wrote. “Besides being unsafe, it’s illegal for us to fly longer than that. If your flight crew gets delayed and hits that time, it doesn’t matter if you have somewhere to be, we are done when we are done. The way things are right now, there aren’t many back up crews, so your flight may be canceled.”

The labor shortage at airlines and airports isn’t all about flight attendants and pilots.

“Now we are short-staffed and overworked,” she wrote. “Not just pilots and flight attendants, but also ground crews. You may not think about ground crews, but without them there is no one to park the planes, drive the jet bridges so you can board and get off, load your bags and retrieve them, or scan boarding passes.”

All of those airline buyouts or staff cuts during the pandemic have come home to roost, so to speak, as workers bolted to leave the airline industry. When Amazon and Uber offer comparable compensation to low-paid ground crews, the airline industry has a problem.

Weak Euro Means Dollar Will Go Further for Americans Vacationing in Europe

by Jason Clampet on

The value of the euro is plummeting and that means Americans vacationing in Europe will see their dollars going further, CNN reported. 

The euro’s falling means the dollar and euro are almost at parity, and “the UK pound is also weak: It’s exchanging at $1.20,” the report said.

That means more expensive vacations for Europeans and British.

Even if the dollar is strong, though, compared with the euro and pound, hotel prices across Europe in May were soaring in some countries compared to May 2019 before the pandemic.

Average daily rates in May 2022 were up in Italy (23 percent), Ireland (21 percent), and Spain (17 percent) compared with the same period in 2019, according to STR Global. 

Austria in 6 Cakes: Poppy Seeds are Popular

by Pam Mandel on

Pakistan is the world’s largest producer of poppy seeds, but the Austrians are no slouches, they produce about 1,000 metric tons, annually. The technical term for that is a whole lotta poppy seeds. Poppy seeds show up all over Austria baking – dusting the top of your bread rolls, sprinkled over butter smothered dumplings, and inside your cake.

Recently, the EU passed new menu labeling guidelines, allowing diners to understand if their choices contain dairy, nuts, wheat – most of the foods that set off the allergic and intolerant. The labeling guideline includes the current villain of choice, gluten.

This hasn’t been as bad as you’d think for the Austria cake landscape. Lots of cakes are made with a nut flour base. (If that’s your allergy, there’s always cheesecake.) And a good mohntorte – poppy seed cake – is made with ground poppy seeds. The basic mohntorte has no flour in it (except what the baker uses to dust the pan, and that’s optional) so it’s a friendly choice for those who have genuine gluten allergies. The cake has a surprisingly chocolaty flavor for something with no chocolate in it – maybe it’s all the eggs. Some classic recipes have as many as nine eggs in them, and some use just the yolk. Gluten may be out, but cholesterol is way in.

Waldviertel Poppy Fields by Welleschik via Wikimedia (Creative Commons)

Mohntorte originates in the Waldviertel, which is also where much of Austria’s poppy seed crops are grown. It’s up at the top of Austria and borders the Czech Republic, a place where they’re also fond of using generous amounts of poppy seeds in their desserts.

Poppy seed get used as a filling in a number of other cakes and pastries, too. The seeds are ground with honey and boiled in milk, they make a sticky sweet paste used in rolled up coffee cakes and in Hamentaschen, a treat made for the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Poppy seed paste is also used in fachertorte, an over the top three layer folly of a cake. The lower layer is yellow cake boiled in honey and milk, the middle layer is poppy seed paste, the top layer is apples sautéed in butter and apple schnapps. The whole thing is wrapped in a brioche like crust. It’s the kind of cake you want to eat alone, in quiet place so you can lie down and have a smoke afterwards, but it’s also so nice to eat it in the over the top rotunda of Vienna’s Art History Museum. The setting is only outdone by what’s on your plate.

It’s probably best to visit the art galleries before you indulge, because after you have licked the very last crumbs of the back of your fork, the baroque paintings of ladies with dimpled thighs or fat cherubs or giant, heroic shield waving men will seem a bit pale compared to excess of your recently consumed cake.

It’s all about the order, art first, cake after, and aren’t they really the same thing?

Top image: Kunsthistoriches Museum, Interior, Vienna via Wikimedia (Creative Commons)

Austria in 6 Cakes: What a Mess!

by Pam Mandel on

“So ein Schmarrn!” is a handy of Austrian German slang for “What a mess!” Schmarrn is also the name of dessert that’s not much more than a scrambled pancake. (Pancake is a kind of cake too, friends!) The Kaiserschmarrn got its “Kaiser” prefix because it was a favorite of Emperor Franz Josef – he of the fondness for Bundt cake.

A well made Kaiserschmarrn is dusted with powdered sugar and served warm with a side of current or apricot jam. Serving sizes are absurd and because of that, it’s often the dessert for dinner selection of choice. The trick to making a proper Kaiserschmarrn is lots of fluffy egg whites and plenty of butter in which to brown the pancake as you scramble it in the same pan in which you’ve baked it.

Kaiserschmarrn is made when you order; it’s not the kind of thing you select from a dessert case at the cafe. But it’s not hard to find, and in some of the more touristy neighborhoods in Vienna, you’ll see awnings and window signs touting Kaiserschmarrn as an offering. Don’t be fooled by that, any decent small town gasthaus will have Kaiserschmarrn on the menu. But plan ahead – either wrangle your companions in to sharing an order with you or go all in and have it for your meal. It’s going to be too much food, otherwise.

Salzburger Nockerln via Salzburg Tourism

There’s a sort of cousin to the Kaiserschmarrn, the Salzburger Nockerln, which is a soufflé, also dusted with powdered sugar and served war, with jam. This is a more classic oven baked dessert-as-dinner alternative and this one is said to have been created by Salome Alt, the mistress of Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich Raitenau. Being an Archbishop did not prevent you from eating dessert or having a mistress with whom you had 15 children.

Salzburg’s Mirabell Palace was built for Salome Alt and the formal gardens here are very pretty, especially in the springtime when the flowers are in full bloom. There are several nice cafes right near the palace, including a Konditorei Furst, where you can get an amazing Mozartkugel, but if you want a classic room, cross the river and go to the Café Tomaselli in the Alter Markt (Old Market). The Tomaselli has been a café and bakery since 1705 and while yes, it’s pricy and in the tourist heart of Salzburg, it’s still populated by locals who come to read the newspaper and eat breakfast. It’s lovely in the summer when you can sit outside under the ornate balcony, but it’s also nice in winter, when you can cozy up inside with a warm dessert, a big cup of coffee, and whatever you’re reading.

Pro tip? Don’t wear black, the powdered sugar gets everywhere. So ein schmarren!

Top image: Kaiserschmarren by Kobako via Wikimedia (Creative Commons)

Austria in 6 Cakes: The Sachertorte Saga

by Pam Mandel on

The Hotel Sacher is a grand old property in Vienna’s first district. The ground floor café has marble topped tables and red upholstery and the wait-staff are attired in black with white aprons. There’s a conservatory that faces the street and in the summer time, it’s transformed into open air seating. The neighborhood is amazing; the Hotel is right across the street from the Opera House. The Hotel opened in 1875 – Grace Kelly stayed here, as did John F. Kennedy and Rudolph Nureyev.

The Original Sachertorte

The Hotel Sacher is a gorgeous slice of Viennese opulence and sure, if it’s your first trip to Vienna, you should head to the café for a Sachertorte, the property’s namesake cake. Odds are good you’ll share the salon with a busload of Japanese or German tourists, but whatever, the Sacher is a Vienna institution.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a litigious back-story behind the Sacher’s cake. Franz Sacher is said to have invented the cake while working as an apprentice in Prince Metternich’s Vienna palace. Like some sort of pastry prodigy, he saved the day when the head chef fell ill. He passed the secret of the Sachertorte on to his son, Eduard, who served as an apprentice at the Demel, one of Vienna’s top notch bakeries.

Pastry Case at Cafe Demel, Vienna

Then, things got messy. The Demel claims that Eduard sold the rights to the Sachertorte. The bickering started in 1938 when the Hotel Sacher had the nerve to sell the cake under the name “The Original Sachertorte.” No dice, said the Demel, we own the original version. The argument went on for decades, and finally, in the 1960s, the Demel and the Sacher settled. The Hotel Sacher gets to call their cake “The Original Sachertorte” while the Demel gets to top its cake with a chocolate seal bearing Eduard’s name.

The truth is that both places make a stellar, if somewhat pricy, Sachertorte. Like the Sacher, the Demel has lovely rooms in which to eat cake; there are fancy chandeliers and French windows and formally dressed wait staff and a glorious pastry case made of polished wood with brass trim. And the cake itself is an Austrian classic, a dense chocolate layer cake spread with apricot jam and wrapped in dark chocolate icing.

Leave it to the litigious bakers of Austrian history to decide which cake is the “original.” You should order Sachertorte as many times and in as many cafes as you like and decide for yourself which one is the best.

All images via Wikimedia (Creative Commons)