Journey Impressions: Departure from Hanover, Cascais

8 January 2018, Departure from Hanover:

After Thomas and I had made ourselves something to eat, we set off on time on 8 January 2018 at 5:45 a.m. The question was whether we would go via the motorway or Vahrenwalderstrasse to the airport. Thomas picked the motorway and I drove.

As I expected, we got snarled up in a traffic jam. We saw the brake lights in front of us until the motorway was cut from three to two lanes and finally only one. “Of course I would have picked Vahrenwalder Strasse,” I thought and then we suddenly saw the sign saying Grossburgwedel at 1,000 m. I didn’t believe my eyes when Thomas asked what motorway we were on. And I said it was probably the wrong one because my mind was concentrating on Hamburg. I think that was my subconscious. Thomas stayed calm and wasn’t at all surprised, but did say that you shouldn’t let your wife do the driving.

But we were lucky and took the Grossburgwedel exit. We rejected our initial idea of going back to Dortmund-bound motorway towards because I said that it would be much easier via Isernhagen. I was right too, because we were only about 10 minutes behind and still arrived on time at the General Aviation Terminal.

Aniko, daughter Tina, Eckhard and I had to go to the ID office beforehand to obtain a day pass that let us go onto the airfield. So I was delighted to see my lovely colleague Antje Weibels and Dennis Iwert at the airport again. Dennis had already accompanied all our companions onto the airfield during our round-the-world flight in 2007. Access to the airfield is prohibited without someone accompanying you.

Of course, the two pilots had no time and quickly headed for Marie to prepare for take-off.

We followed them a few minutes later to take a few photos in the icy cold, which felt like 10 degrees below zero. Marion came a bit late and wasn’t able to come with us on the airfield unfortunately. It’s sure to work out the next time.

Thomas places huge emphasis on safety and asked Mr Müller, a mechanic from Hildesheim, to be on hand during take-off so that he could act as a fire brigade officer if necessary. Our hands, feet and ears felt icy when we bid each other farewell with kisses, hugs and thousands of good wishes. Until the plane took off, we warmed up in the terminal building and didn’t emerge again until the Cessna was taxiing towards the runway in the north and flew past us after about 30 minutes – you can see a short video in the Media info section.

Happy landing in Cascais. Cascais: population approx. 0.2m (2011)
Portugal: population approx. 10.3m
Population growth (2010-2016): -0.4%
People per km²: 113
Gross national income per person 2014: $21,320



10 January 2018, Cascais:

The next morning, the weather in Cascais was dreadful: there was a storm blowing and it was raining. We were worried that our plane, Marie, wasn’t adequately secured and could have been blown away by the wind. Nevertheless, the view from the hotel was quite nice. You could see a lovely garden with palm trees and a swimming pool. The waiter said that the water temperature should be 20 degrees Celsius, but Kurt didn’t really feel like putting his swimming trunks on. Which is why we decided to go and have some fish early in the afternoon and wait until the sun came out again. And it did actually come out, but beforehand Kurt had already demonstrated his manual dexterity and conjured up professional looking business cards from a document that Marie had sent by mail. We knew we’d need these cards for the rest of the trip. Unfortunately, I’d left the printed ones in Hanover. After enjoying the lovely fish, we ventured outside and went for a lovely walk along Cascais beach and Kurt said that he had achy muscles afterwards. The reason for that was that we had watched a fitness class and done the exercises as well. As you know, pilots sit for six to seven hours in the cockpit and don’t get loads of exercise, so we made up for that. The day came to an end. The flight plan was shown to us on the iPad and it looked as if the weather was going to be a lot calmer the next morning, allowing us to take off in peace. Let’s see what tomorrow brings. Bye.