Achtung Spitfire!
On a number of occasions, I ended up doing some work in Nuremberg with a colleage. One time around, he phoned me (this pre-dates all but the rich 'yuppie' types having mobiles) and asked me to pick his passport up from his desk in the office and meet him at the station to travel down to Heathrow. I got to the office, and there was no passport there. With no way of contacting him, I couldn't tell him until we met to catch the train.

Quite amazingly, while there were a few difficulties, we actually managed to get him on the flight and through immigration at the other end (our local contact there had to vouch for him.) They taught him how to tell people "I have forgotten my passport" in German so that he could relay the details of the amusing incident to all and sundry. Later on, he discovered that he'd actually been saying "I have eaten my passport."

The return journey was more fun though. When asked (polite chit-chat) by one of the staff at Nuremberg airport who we were flying with, he promptly answered "Luftwaffe." I was stuck with the cringemaking task of having to correct him "I think you mean Lufthansa."

The only other remotely interesting incident I can think of was when a plane I was on suddenly aborted its approach to Liverpool airport and went for another lap before landing. We were practically on the ground when it happened, so it was a little unnerving. The pilot gave us the reason in the end - another plane on the runway. Erm... I think I'll take the bus next time.

And nothing to do with flying, but if anyone says the Germans don't have a sense of humour, they're lying. I told the owner of the company I was working for the "4.2 litre Jaguar" joke (long story short - hedgehog has lost his willie, keeps asking all the animals if they've seen it, describing it as 'about this big with four spikes on the end.' A jaguar finally owns up to having eaten it because 'I'm a four point tool eater jaguar.') This bloke thought it was a great joke and told it to everyone he met, except that in his version, it was a 3.6 litre Jaguar.

Okay, so they're crap stories. I don't fly that much.
( Horatio P Lemming, Fri 10 Mar 2006, 9:45, Reply)