Eurostan

[RooFlyer]

They seem to everything well, are a pretty central member of *A and it's true that they fly to more countries than any other airline. The problem is that IST is a long way from Australia so they're not really practical unless doing a decent journey. I guess it helps they've commenced flying into SYD and MEL, but all roads lead to IST.

I am also a fan of TK but have only used them on European regional routes (proper business seating - no eurobusiness) to and from Istanbul. I love visiting Istanbul and I’m happy to have a day or two. Stop over there on any journey.

I’ve been dying to try them ex Australia but reports here was that the service was a bit rough. Not sure if that was a new route thing or a long haul thing.

Obviously ex-CGK was okay?

 

[clifford]

I've flown TK J quite a few times long haul. From CMB and CGK to IST and back quite a few times, and I've found the service to often be quite lackluster, especially from the male flight attendants, who can be rather authoritarian and defenders of the faith (IMO). TK is indeed quite a conflicted airline (and with woeful J accommodation on their 777's).

TK are pretty good (relatively) within Europe, but not so much elsewhere, when compared with the competition.

 

[Scarlett]

Obviously ex-CGK was okay?

I’ve flown them long haul from CGK, SIN and BKK. No issues from me but I’m not a picky or demanding person.

I’ve only used dine on demand once and it was as advertised. Normally on the long hauls from Asia I’ll eat after take off per usual service schedule, then sleep.

On two occasions where I’ve been in J and going to misconnect in IST they’ve been easy to work with. First time in NCE (with the whole family) for planned trip NCE-IST-CGK and the TK ticket desk lady worked the problem and accepted my suggestion of going LH via FRA instead. So we ended up doing NCE-FRA LH short haul eurobusiness, then on the B747-800 for FRA-SIN, then SQ for the short hop to CGK.

The second time was last year in CAI with CAI-IST-BKK planned, but they invol rerouted me with EK via DXB.

 

[Scarlett]

TK1907 IST-ZRH
A330-300 J
TC-LOB
On time

A 2 hour 20 minute flight in Europe on a wide body with proper J seating; what’s not to like.

Boarded on time, PDB of their raspberry drink, cool towels rather than hot?, and breakfast orders taken before push back. With IST being such a large airport the taxi path can feel a bit circuitous but today seemed fairly quick and easy. We departed off one of the parallel runways racing an A321 throughout the takeoff roll. This photo doesn’t do it justice as I was too late thinking to take it, but quite the formation takeoff and the other aircraft looked quite close after rotation.


Transferred some photos off the phone onto my laptop, had breakfast and then enjoyed the different (summer) view of the Alps. This was somewhere south of Salzburg and just doesn’t look right with so little snow.

A little further along the flight I was referencing FR24 again and noticed something interesting ahead.



You can see where TK1907 is on the map above and I was seated on the left hand side so wondered what they’d look like. Underwhelmingly, they looked like ants…


This one is still on the pad.


This was the airborne one looking like it was following the highway.

I think we’d started descent by this point so were probably around 24,000ft.

Approach and landing at ZRH was smooth although we did have to wait on a taxiway for this jet whilst it was finishing its push back.


LCCs don’t always have to have the new jets!

Again no line for immigration, although I did get quizzed about what I was planning to do in Switzerland. Then the Swiss efficiency had bags on the belt in about ten minutes and oversize out one minute after that!

I have a hire car from Alamo, booked through a consolidator named CarFlexi. This is the third time I’ve used them and no issues. A new Renault Clio is fine for just me and it seems to have all the bells and whistles so maybe not a base model? Now time to head to Liechtenstein and see a castle or two.

 

[Scarlett]

Liechtenstein is another one of the European micro states and is apparently about the same size as Washington DC in the US. It’s actually a lot bigger than some of the other micro-state siblings which ranked in size order are: Vatican, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein and finally Luxembourg. I’ve now managed to visit them all.

I was staying in Schaan, about five minutes drive north of the main town (doesn’t seem right to call it a capital city) of Vaduz. Schaan is home to Hilti Corp. the largest employer in the nation and it was visible from my hotel window after checking in.


They’ve even managed to get their own sculpture into the middle of a roundabout in front of their factories.

Half the country is a mountain range with Austria over the other side. The other half is more flat land beside the Rhine River, which is the border with Switzerland.

Liechtenstein and Switzerland share much in common, including use of the CHF as the national currency. This annoys me in a minor but specific way as I like to collect a coin from each country visited. The Swiss Franc is already up on the pantry door at home with all the other coins. Apparently they mint some non-legal tender commemorative coins, so maybe I’ll have to look at something like that. Not sure I want a $500 gold coin sitting on the pantry door though…

The drive down from ZRH was easy to follow on the downloaded Google maps that I linked via CarPlay. (I subsequently discovered the car had its own active satnav - it just wouldn’t easily find places in Liechtenstein - I think in true French fashion it would only work properly with the random combination of the glove box open, right indicator on and the driver singing La Marseillaise ) It took about 90 minutes and passed through so many tunnels and spectacular lake and alpine scenery.

After dumping everything in the hotel room I headed into Vaduz to go to the Liechtensteinisches LandesMuseum (the national museum) which took about an hour to look through some of the history and culture of the country. The national anthem is called (this was their English translation) ‘High on the young Rhine’ and I guess ‘young’ in this context means whilst the river is still smaller than it will become further downstream.

I parked near the Rhine and did have a look over it into Switzerland on the far bank!


Have a listen to that anthem and tell me what stands out! Very interesting.

National Anthem: Liechtenstein - Oben am jungen Rhein

"Oben am jungen Rhein" ("High on the young Rhine") has been the national anthem of Liechtenstein since 1920. It shares the same melody as the United Kingdom'...

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When the museum closed I walked the short distance through the centre of town.


Love the little uphill clearing and alpine houses.


Schloss Vaduz above the town.




I didn’t get into the art museum due to the time, but it’s a very striking polished concrete structure.


It’s a compact town centre and was lovely in the afternoon sunlight. Not surprised to see names such as Rothschild and Onassis on some of the buildings.


The relatively young (for Europe) Kathedrale St. Florin.


The building on the right that looks a bit like a barn is the Landtag or parliament building. When I first saw it I thought it was built of wood but is actually a minimalist design using bricks.

Lovely place. Being one of the richest countries in the world everything is expensive. I paid CHF33 for a basic ‘escalope vom schwein’ which seemed an appropriate choice for dinner in a place like this.

 

[Scarlett]

You know how I said it was a compact town. Here’s farmland five minutes walk from the centre of town heading back toward the river.


All along the road were pear and apple trees covered in fruit.

That evening there was yet another quintessential alpine event as cows with bells could be heard outside the window somewhere nearby!

The next morning there was the small herd up at the far end of this field.



Sunrise took quite a while after dawn, due to the sun needing to get up over the kmountains.

Today was, you guessed it, glorious golfing weather! Liechtenstein doesn’t have a golf course in the country (they’ve been deducted a point for such a transgression!), so I crossed the not-yet-mighty Rhine over into Switzerland to the very close by Gams-Werdenberg GC. The Liechtenstein national golf team plays here so that’s a good start.


So green. The course is intermingled with farms on the river flat, but the surrounding view is of the mountains.


There were two helicopters working away at something up along the hills. They’re so tiny against the hillsides there was no point taking a photo.


This local was enjoying the sunshine. Safety conscious too! I was acknowledged by a barely opened single eye, so clearly very relaxed.


A train line to Chur ran beside the course and even though only a single track there were probably trains passing here every 20 minutes or so heading either direction. This one is heading left of shot, likely toward Zurich Hbf.


Golf pron!


Another relaxed local just sitting there in the fairway. After I finished the hole it got up and waddled over to the grass verge beside the pathway looking for more of whatever swans eat.

 

[Scarlett]

This was really only a stopover to get to Uzbekistan and because I had an early start the next day flying back out of ZRH I had an airport hotel booked. I chose the Movenpick as it had a morning shuttle although it’s close to the tram line and a single stop to the airport in any case.

I decided to drive back to ZRH via the scenic route, up and over the mountains, rather than the highway.



Unfortunately it rained most of the way as afternoon thunderstorms were hitting the Zurich area. Views were still spectacular but not as conducive to stopping at the view points.

When I got near ZRH there was plenty of lightning around too, so I drove direct to the hotel and parked under their front awning. They were happy to let me stay briefly parked there (in the no parking areas) whilst I checked in and took luggage up to my allocated room. When the rain lightened up I drove the five minutes to the rental car return and caught the tram back. The hotel should tick all the boxes for an airport hotel: actually close to the airport, easy public transport links into the city and a free shuttle. Unfortunately it’s dingy, the rooms still appear to have 80s fixtures and there was mould around the ‘shub’. Fine enough for me for one night but probably not to the taste of many others on this site.

 

[Scarlett]

TK1912 ZRH-IST
A321ceo J
TC-JSY
On time

Although I flew the reverse of this route on an A330 a couple of days ago, TK mix it up between wide bodies and narrow. This morning was an older A321 but still with proper J recliner seats. This was the first flight in a one way J TK points redemption ZRH-IST-TAS.

ZRH has at least three check in zones so it was a couple of hundred metres walk from the shuttle drop point to Check In 2 and then around to the row 4 counters to find the TK desks. No one in the J line so had boarding passes pretty quickly. Interestingly, no questions at all about heading to Uzbekistan. Although Aus passports don’t need a visa, I was expecting to have to show that I had onward travel out of the country (having booked a one way flight in) but nothing was asked of me.

TK offer a choice of two lounges for this flight and neither of them are their *A partner Swiss’ home lounges (Swiss Business or Swiss Senator lounges). The flight was leaving from the E gates (non-Schengen satellite terminal requiring a short underground shuttle journey), so I accepted a pass for the Aspire lounge to see what it was like figuring I could decamp to the LX lounge if I didn’t like it. It was quite small and relatively basic, but had some breakfasty items and a push button coffee machine and large windows looking out of the airfield. As I only had 40 minutes until boarding I just stayed put there.


This was the scene out the window at the boarding gate. Although I left the lounge when boarding flashed up on the monitor, boarding hadn’t actually started at the gate.

After five or so minutes we were allowed to board. TK maintains a separate lane for J / *G boarding so no real need to line up anywhere. The boarding line stopped pretty early on the jet bridge though so maybe the crew weren’t ready.


Obviously a Swiss home port.

Once seated there was the PDB choices of water, TK standard raspberry drink or a type of homemade lemonade: I usually take the raspberry drink. Hot towels were next. Four rows of 2-2 J recliners on this aircraft and only one seat vacant.

Interestingly, the last pax to board were a very elderly male monk, a slightly less elderly lady with the group and two middle aged monks. One of the middle aged monks was in the first row of Y and the other three behind me in J. The old man monk looked to be virtually immobile and maybe limited in sight as he was guided by both hands by the other younger monk seated in J with him. He shuffled very, very slowly to his row 4 seat. He was a big unit too. An evacuation would have been… not worth thinking about.


This B777 pulled up beside us whilst they were ‘finalising paperwork’.

On taxi out the Swiss love of a good ski jump was evident in the design of one of the runways.


It was a smooth, just over two hour flight. Breakfast was served with a choice of three mains available. TK serve a tray with fruit, yoghurt, some small cold meat cuts, olives, cheese etc first up. When done with that ‘appetiser’ they then bring out your choice of main. The first serving by itself is probably enough food for most people and likely about what a main meal is from Australia’s main two. The free internet access via wifi didn’t work for the first hour but I guess they reset the system as the ‘Wifly’ network disappeared for a bit and then both it and satellite internet access were active. A little slow but useable for the rest of flight.


Much like on departure from IST a few days ago, there was another aircraft paralleling us on descent (another A321 I believe). Also it’s interesting how Istanbul has expanded with its version of urban sprawl: no massed ‘quarter acre block’ subdivisions, but rather clusters of multi-storey apartment blocks.

This aircraft was sitting at an end gate as we taxied in. Who remembers TAA/Australian Airlines when they used to fly A300s? Now, this is the most modern A300-600R variant but is still apparently 38 years old.

Air tours of Iran? Not something I would have picked as a large market???
It turns out to be a regular Iranian RPT operator.

 

[Scarlett]

TK370 IST-TAS
A330-200 J
TC-JIS
On time

They’ve done it again! 1815 scheduled departure and we commenced boarding at 1730. I guess this is one of the great advantages of having a large fleet and not having to push utilisation to the minute. This aircraft arrived into IST a couple of hours before this flight, so it was definitely ready for boarding early. It’s a fairly old A330 and the 2-2-2 J seats are looking ‘worn in’ but thus far everything appears functional and it’s comfortable: highly likely the seats have been reupholstered. Perfectly fine for a four hour evening sector to Tashkent.



PDB was the lemonade, raspberry, oj or water. I didn’t see anyone ask for anything harder. Inflight wifi already active at the gate. (Edit: this aircraft doesn’t have wifi - it was just full TK signal from the terminal!)

Dinner menu:


We have two pilots (who were late arrivals) in the back row of the J cabin. 40-something captain four-bars and a 20-30 something first officer three bars. I wonder if they’re the crew flying this aircraft on the return leg at 0230 tomorrow morning? (They’re not, they came off the aircraft with the rest of the deplaning crew and all their luggage).

No photos, because that would be rude, but there’s a lady in the cabin with the largest lips I’ve ever seen. They can’t be natural, because they’re about twice the size of normal lips: I assume it’s done with injections? She seems pretty ‘spaced out’ too, but very quiet.

 

[VPS]

Liechtenstein is another one of the European micro states and is apparently about the same size as Washington DC in the US. It’s actually a lot bigger than some of the other micro-state siblings which ranked in size order are: Vatican, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein and finally Luxembourg. I’ve now managed to visit them all.

I was staying in Schaan, about five minutes drive north of the main town (doesn’t seem right to call it a capital city) of Vaduz. Schaan is home to Hilti Corp. the largest employer in the nation and it was visible from my hotel window after checking in.

View attachment 467823
They’ve even managed to get their own sculpture into the middle of a roundabout in front of their factories.

Half the country is a mountain range with Austria over the other side. The other half is more flat land beside the Rhine River, which is the border with Switzerland.

Liechtenstein and Switzerland share much in common, including use of the CHF as the national currency. This annoys me in a minor but specific way as I like to collect a coin from each country visited. The Swiss Franc is already up on the pantry door at home with all the other coins. Apparently they mint some non-legal tender commemorative coins, so maybe I’ll have to look at something like that. Not sure I want a $500 gold coin sitting on the pantry door though…

The drive down from ZRH was easy to follow on the downloaded Google maps that I linked via CarPlay. (I subsequently discovered the car had its own active satnav - it just wouldn’t easily find places in Liechtenstein - I think in true French fashion it would only work properly with the random combination of the glove box open, right indicator on and the driver singing La Marseillaise ) It took about 90 minutes and passed through so many tunnels and spectacular lake and alpine scenery.

After dumping everything in the hotel room I headed into Vaduz to go to the Liechtensteinisches LandesMuseum (the national museum) which took about an hour to look through some of the history and culture of the country. The national anthem is called (this was their English translation) ‘High on the young Rhine’ and I guess ‘young’ in this context means whilst the river is still smaller than it will become further downstream.

I parked near the Rhine and did have a look over it into Switzerland on the far bank!
View attachment 467824

Have a listen to that anthem and tell me what stands out! Very interesting.

When the museum closed I walked the short distance through the centre of town.

View attachment 467825
Love the little uphill clearing and alpine houses.

View attachment 467826
Schloss Vaduz above the town.

View attachment 467827

View attachment 467828
I didn’t get into the art museum due to the time, but it’s a very striking polished concrete structure.

View attachment 467829
It’s a compact town centre and was lovely in the afternoon sunlight. Not surprised to see names such as Rothschild and Onassis on some of the buildings.

View attachment 467830
The relatively young (for Europe) Kathedrale St. Florin.

View attachment 467831
The building on the right that looks a bit like a barn is the Landtag or parliament building. When I first saw it I thought it was built of wood but is actually a minimalist design using bricks.

Lovely place. Being one of the richest countries in the world everything is expensive. I paid CHF33 for a basic ‘escalope vom schwein’ which seemed an appropriate choice for dinner in a place like this.

Have a listen to that anthem and tell me what stands out! Very interesting.

Ooh I know the answer because it was QI recently and I didn't even have to google it.

















it's the same tune as God save our Queen or King the British National anthem

 

[Scarlett]

Have a listen to that anthem and tell me what stands out! Very interesting.

Ooh I know the answer because it was QI recently and I didn't even have to google it.

















it's the same tune as God save our Queen or King the British National anthem

I put a youtube link to the anthem in the post above so it's easier to listen to. They have the words in German with the anthem so you can see and hear the difference.

 

[Scarlett]

When departing from IST there was probably a 35m long line of people waiting at the gate before boarding started. There was a smaller line in ZRH yesterday morning too.



Why do people do this? I know the unkind term is gate lice, and I can sort of understand it in the US (where every checked bag usually costs and they therefore carry-on full size suitcases and have to line up to actually get overhead locker space). Why here through, where there weren't many carry-on bags and space wasn't going to be at a premium? Has the flying public just been trained to get to the gate and stand in a queue?

I had walked down from the lounge (a good 15min walk to the end of the A pier) seen the line and that boarding hadn't started, so kept wandering about looking out the various windows, then took a seat. I just don't understand the queueing for queueing's sake.

After we'd taxied out at IST we held at a taxiway intersection point waiting to be given clearance to enter the runway. There are no trees around IST so it was hard to tell it was windy outside, but the windsock was constantly fully parallel straight down the runway. As I was taking the below image and aircraft was landing.



I had no idea about that livery so had to check FR24.



Not sure I'd ever seen that one before. After we lined up we again had to wait for an aircraft to land beside us on the adjacent parallel runway. This time it was Iraqi Airways in a 737 Max.



The final thing to note about this IST-TAS flight was what flight route were we going to take? The general route is easterly. Initially we tracked along the northern coastline of Turkiye, flying over the Black Sea. Gave Crimea a pleasingly wide berth as who knows 'What Air Defence doing?' in occupied Ukraine.



Then we crossed into Georgia and Azerbaijan, avoiding any need to fly over Armenia, which I figured would be the case as Turkiye has long backed the Azeris in the regular fighting with their Armenian neighbours. Now, interesting, I've just looked at FR24 and there are a number of TK aircraft in or have just crossed Armenian airspace, so I guess everything remains cordial.

 

[Scarlett]

Arrival into Tashkent (TAS)

I'm adding this post for posterity, for anyone else who may travel independently into Uzbekistan via air into the capital city Tashkent and the TAS airport.

Thirr eSIM (Poland based connection) picked up local Uzbek provider Beeline straight away and has worked flawlessly.

I'd chosen a hotel, Central Palace Hotel, close to but not in the main city centre and during the booking process had requested a hotel transfer from the airport on arrival and to the airport on departure. I'd done this because my inbound flight, TK370, was due in at 0050 hours and it seemed simpler. 1 AUD is currently worth about 8500 UZS (Uzbek Som) which is pretty close to the 1AUD = 10,000IDR I'm very familiar with in Indonesia, so I figured for ease I'd just use that same way of looking at Uzbek prices. The transfer on arrival was going to be 200,000 so I figured for $20 that was fine. I think with a taxi it may have been a little cheaper but likely more arguing. Another option would have been to use Yandex (Russian-based app) ridesharing. If I didn't plan the hotel transfer I'd have downloaded Yandex and used that for a known price.

Arrival was at an aerobridge gate and then about a 500m walk to immigration. No questions or issues at all crossing the border with an Aus passport. Even though I had a one-way ticket inbound and another separate one-way ticket outbound, no one from airlines or immi staff asked about it. Bags took a while to come out, so I went over to an ATM in the baggage claim hall and withdrew some Som using the (soon to be cancelled) NAB debit Visa card. No issues there getting the cash.

After bags came out (oversize were all coming out on the same luggage belt) I went to the exit and looked for the driver with my name on a sign. This had been confirmed on booking and by an email from the hotel three days before arrival. No sign seen. Some drivers were inside the terminal (about ten or so) and then more with signs were waiting outside. My name was not on any of them. The worlds collection of shady looking characters were all offering 'taxi', 'you need taxi' etc but I had a pick-up booked so just kept to a single no. I checked email and messages in case anything had been sent to me but nothing. One taxi guy who was actually better dressed than the others and spoke better english was doing his buttering-up asking me questions stuff. As it had already been 15 minutes after my flights planned arrival and 40 minutes after actual arrival, and he seemed the best of the bunch, I told him that if my pick-up driver didn't appear in five more minutes, I'd use his taxi.

No pick-up ever appeared, so I told the guy that I'd pay him what I'd be paying the transfer, 200,000 Som to go to my hotel. He tried to argue very briefly for 250 but it was clearly a good enough deal for him compared to local prices so off we went. His car was not a taxi but was modern and clean and likely he was a rideshare driver. He was pleasant to talk to and I asked him about some things to see whilst in Tashkent and we were pretty quickly at the hotel. His driving was okay. The driving of others around on a Friday night / early Saturday morning was NOT, so wear a seatbelt!

The hotel has a restaurant at the front of it and there were still people drinking tea and smoking there. The hotel foyer was dark but the front doors opened and after I walked in the young night desk guy turned lights on. Guess he was napping. Check in was a little laboured (you need to remove the cost of the transfer before I pay!) but done okay.

The hotel has free breakfast and is just across the road from a metro station. It is a halal hotel which may not be to the liking of some. (no alcohol served on the premises and you have to sign the hotel rules on arrival saying you won't be drunk etc - along with other rules about not bringing back 'guests' to the hotel...) Clean, good-sized room and the area is surrounded by parks. After the late arrival I slept-in and went down to breakfast at 0930 (breakfast 0700-1000), then went for a walk around the local area. Some embassies, cafes and quite a few places to eat. The trees are good as the shade is needed. By the time I got back to the hotel at midday it was feeling pretty hot. (max 34 degrees today - 36 tomorrow).


View from the room

Since starting this post I've paused to listed to the ABC stream of the AFL finals (I'm happy! ) and will head back out shortly to go and see some of the city. Will need to work out the metro too.



Interesting translation, but then English is a pretty stupid language so I can see why others make mistakes converting to it.