- or: we’re all going to die, every single one of us part 2.

So, it seems I did not die. At least not yet. Even though I took to the sky in the bloody smallest airplane you could ever imagine. It was at least 20 years old, looked like a cheap Japanse car from the inside and the window on my side was taped. TAPED. But even though the take-off was bumpy as hell, and I felt like distributing my breakfast all over the cockpit in the first 5 minutes of the flight I was able to keep my posture. And once airborne had enough to do with flying the bloody thing. Not that I really had the controls, but at least could try flying a couple of circles while ascending and descending. And had some kind of epiphany while doing this: while flying in a big passenger jet, I always felt detached and somehow not right being up in the air, as if it was just Vodoo keeping the plane in the sky. But while flying my lovely little Piper Warrior , the air actually felt like something. Like glyding through water with an added third dimension (not that this sentence makes any sense at all, but I hope you get the meaning). So after 20 minutes of airobatic attics even banking 90 degrees before landing did not shock me, and seemed almost normal.

Am I cured of my fear of flying now? I don’t know – this is something my first flight with a passenger plane next week will show. But I do feel much more comfortabler now as I understand the whole flying-thing a bit better than before. And the advantage is that when not flying the plane I can always order a Jim Beam and a Heineken. And I have some of the best incentives in the world: a) Karneval and b) hating Wales (more about Wales and my hate for it in part 3).

By the way: seemingly the Blue Max was filmed at the airport where I took off. Otherwise I can not explain all the black-and-white-pictures of German triplanes and WW1-uniforms all over the airport-buldings…