Family history across the seas

My 2025 A to Z theme is Airports, Airstrips, Aircraft, and Airlines I’ve known and flown with. I’ll be using IATA codes where they’re available. My inner travel agent emerges at this point as I’m the FTO (family travel organiser) and now, the online travel agent.

FCO     Leonardo da Vinci Rome Fiumicino Airport, Rome, Italy

We have arrived at Rome airport twice, once in 1977 and once in 2000. However, we have only used it as a departure airport once, in 2000.

In 1977 we were accompanied by Miss 6 and Miss 4, and it was very much a long-haul flight: Port Moresby to Manila, to Bangkok, then Karachi and Rome.   We flew Philippines Airlines (PR) from Manila, and Air Nuigini to Manila. I described the aircraft as follows: “Nicely decorated with Bird of Paradise upholstery in pinks and purples. The hostesses in plainly cut frocks with one large bird of paradise print on the side. The service and food were very nice…no efforts made on behalf of the kids though. Free headphones handed out to all”.

Unfortunately, on the Manila-Rome leg we had the parents from hell behind us who let their child be a nuisance throughout the trip while they boozed and slept. As a result, our kids would just be going to sleep when they’d be disturbed. Perhaps we’d have been better off if we hadn’t insisted on the middle four seats we’d booked. By the time we were coming into land at Rome, we were all exhausted and Miss 6 was not impressed when we tried to change her into warm clothes, thinking we were going to turn her into the “snow” naked.  My diary remarks that we were happy to land and walked along many tunnels inside – obviously new to us but common as dust these days. And to top it off, Immigration didn’t even stamp our passports!

By the time we were on the bus into the city both girls finally slept, and missed the Colosseum and the farm truck loaded with artichokes. Later Miss 6 announced “I don’t like Rome, we shouldn’t have come!”. Luckily she enjoyed everything after recovering from the flight. Ironically enough, many decades later she would spend several months in Rome, working and studying, and being a total foodie. The only thing that placated them that day was their first gelati, and since I have no photos of the airport I’ll include one of our “happy” jet-lagged faces that day.

Returning in 2000 must have been fairly normal as we have no distinct memory of it until we had to collect the hire car at the airport. Such fun having to drive a right-hand drive car down multiple floors of the high-rise carpark. Topping that off was heading straight into heavy rain and hail and going through tunnels, in which himself declared he really doesn’t like driving. By the time we returned to FCO weeks later, he had become quite a guru at Italian driving, so even coming in on Easter Sunday didn’t faze him, though there may have been some Australian driving attitude involved…gasp!

FRA     Frankfurt Airport, Germany

After pondering a long-ago travel conundrum for the past week, we have just cracked the mystery! Yay!! I had two clear memories associated with Frankfurt airport which I couldn’t reconcile with the absence of my other half. Why had I arrived at FRA and being jetlagged trying to remember passwords etc while waiting for an onward flight? Why had he left Frankfurt separately from me, and I left a day later heading to the airport by train? What I remembered very clearly being so relieved once on the flight that I no longer had to try to retrieve my inadequate German “skills”. (With no airport photos I’m including some relevant other photos.)

Problem solved – He had travelled via Dubai to Abu Dhabi to see his brother and family and met me in Dublin, where, as I mentioned previously, there were so many women arriving in burqas. It was also when I’d been sent on a road detour on the way to Dublin airport but no clear instructions after the first turn – he tells me I described it “with animation”. LOL.

His return flight was from Frankfurt and presumably with Emirates to Singapore where he apparently got an upgrade to Business for the Singapore Darwin, much to my disgust and envy.

I flew Qantas in both directions: Darwin-Singapore on a Boeing 767 then Singapore to Frankfurt on a 747, and vice versa on return. Total miles being 8463 in each direction. From Frankfurt I’d organized a short-hop, cheap flight between Frankfurt and Dublin, hence my earlier arrival and the pick-up detour.

We also visited Frankfurt airport in 2006 as part of another genealogy journey to my ancestral home of Dorfprozelten am Main in Bavaria. On that trip I’m told I drove us back to the airport on the motorway, questioning my sanity, no doubt with a few impolite exclamations. A very different driving experience from Darwin!

Further flights through Frankfurt came when we travelled to Prague from Paris with Lufthansa. Fortunately, by then I sent the family detailed itineraries for our trips which I’ve retrieved from the depths of my inbox.

They tell us the journey is more important than the destination. Given how much memory-loss and confusion surrounds some of our trips I think I can question that, if we limit it to the journey to get there. I admit that keeping photos of places doesn’t really help remember the actual journey without a diary or itinerary. After this challenge is over I’m going to try to retrieve old emails and itineraries from computers past.

Do you keep itineraries or a diary of trips in the recent or distant past? Do you re-read them?  Have you been to any of these airports? What was your experience or special memories? Do you have a favourite “F” airport?