However, my situation is a bit different. I live near Los Angeles. I come from a German city near Düsseldorf. That alone is not so special, however I refuse to fly with intermediate stops – I want a non-Stop flight. Since the train network is pretty good in the area, I can fly to a city in the area and just take the train. This should be easy, right? Show me all flights from LAX to the area near DUS, which can include cities as far away as Frankfurt/Main, Paris or Amsterdam.

No such luck though. I can pick flexible times, but not flexible destinations. Oh, no problem, a big and well connected airport like LAX surely has a website? Sure they do, and they also have an outbound schedule. So I just look up all the destinations served by the airlines and (because I do know geography) I just pick a city in the area. Sadly, their flight schedule is a form that expects me to pick a target city in order to view the schedules. That’s stupid!

Why can’t there be a big-a$@ list of ALL outbound flights from LAX? Why can’t I get a simple lists of all Airports that LAX serves? Even Wolfram Alpha couldn’t answer this seemingly simple question.

I ended up getting a lists of all big Airports and looked at train connections. To spoil the ending, Amsterdam and Frankfurt am Main seem to be good choices, with Frankfurt being more attractive because it has a better train connection.

But really, this stuff should be easier.

4 Years ago, on April 15 2005, I decided to move from Germany to France. No idea what to expect, no plan if this would work out, but also with no doubts that this is the right thing to do. And what can I say? The past 4 years were a blast, one hell of a ride, and well worth taking the risk. Last week, I had to make another decision like this, except on a larger scale.

2005, the choice was to move from unemployment into a job in my dream industry, 484 kilometers away from home. It was a no-brainer for the most part. 2009, the choice was to move from a good job into another good job. And this time, the choice was to move 9100 kilometers - from France to California. But at the end, the decision was also mostly a no-brainer.

So yeah, unless something really strange happens (Like the US Government not approving my Visa), I'm going to move to the US, the country where kilometers are 60% longer and called miles, the country where 120 V achieve the same as 230 V over here (I think they are just making those 120 Volts work harder and longer to be fair...), the country 9 time zones away (My parents will have to buy a second clock now ).

Good time to start a traveling-series in this blog. No no, not something like Matt already did (I'm not a tourist after all)... Maybe something with the FilthyPumpkin humour... Maybe something very artsy... Or maybe something downright boring just to piss everyone off who expects a really exciting Travel Diary

PS: Good thing the song is largely forgotten, I found only a really crappy version of an interpretation of it.