Our trip to Camp Bondsteel got off to a rocky start when the first leg of

our journey from LAX to JFK took seven and a half hours. Thunderstorms

along the Eastern seaboard put us in a stack above New York. We touched

down just minutes before the pilot was to bail upstate to Albany for fuel.

The most amusing part of this flight was peering up into first class to see

Spike Lee (clad in cliché Nike sweat suit) furiously working the phones to

inform interested parties of his late arrival. We barely made our

connecting flight to Vienna, even with an escort. The class act that is

Austrian Airlines provided the first real pleasure in our trip. Unlike the

transcontinental flight, the members of the band were seated together in the

big Boeing. I watched the French film "La Vie en Rose" (a killer biopic

about Edith Piaf that is being released in the US this week) and enjoyed the

best meal I’ve ever had on a plane. The two German beers and an Ambien

kicked in just west of Halifax according to the GPS in the personal monitor.

I woke up refreshed to the new day as the plane descended over the Benelux

countries. Favorable tailwinds put us into Vienna early but the 3 and a

half hour layover wasn’t enough to allow any cavorting in the city. Our only

option was to convert some dollars to euros and drink beer in the airport

bar. Over our third or fourth Gosser we met our tour manager Rug ("what

d’ya need. I gottya covered"). Rug is a bear of a man from South Carolina

transplanted to Ohio who just flew into Vienna from a tour of Afghanistan

with a country band. He was Johnny-on-the-spot in his role as gear

lugger/mixing board knob jockey/late-night nutrition logistics expert. My

perception of Europe as modern and progressive was quickly coming into focus

despite the omnipresent cloud of second-hand smoke. Europe is a glorious

place that I can’t wait to revisit. This view took a tweaking however, when

we boarded the plane for Pristina, capital of Kosovo. The general optimism

displayed by most in the Vienna airport was replaced by a dispirited

emptiness on the faces of the locals returning to Kosovo where the average

monthly income is about 180 euros. Everybody in the band noticed the change

of vibe in the cramped Fokker. In retrospect, my simple armchair

explanation for the juxtaposition we witnessed is that the jet-tube into

that plane was our portal from Western to Eastern Europe.

Mark Herring

909-223-7005 ph

909-476-0585 fax

mark.upscale@yahoo.com