Hi there my Hivean friends and followers!
Welcome to my ATH (Ask the Hive) weekly series that I created to increase the engagement level on Hive (or at least among my followers).
In the last round, we had a very interesting and prolific debate about the current coronavirus situation in your countries that eventually generated as many as 50 comments - thanks for your contribution guys! I hope we will have a lot of engagement in this round too :)
The question for this round is: when and where to was your first flight?
Photo taken by me during my flight from the Azores Islands to Lisbon, Portugal last month.
It was actually @sofathana and this post of hers what inspired me to come up with this topic so thank you Sofia :)
It might be surprising to you but I actually had no desire to travel when I was a kid or a teenager and it was not until 2010 when I was, well, let´s say in my 20s, that I finally got bitten by the travel bug and took my first flight :) As far as I remember, it was from Prague to Boston with a stopover in Zurich and it felt like it would take forever :D
It was actually this very trip and everything I got to experience in the US back then in summer 2010 what literally changed my life and triggered this traveler´s / nomadic mindset in me. I don´t know how many times I have flown since then but it would probably be well over a hundred a times.
How about you guys? When did you take your first flight and where did you fly to? How did you feel during that maiden flight? Let me know in the comment section below, I am eager to check out your replies.
As usually, I will try to upvote all creative and interesting comments.
This post was created by me for the Hive blockchain exclusively. All rights reserved.
Hi @phortun :) My memories a bit vague, but I am pretty sure that my first real flight was when I went to Wisconsin USA for my first Work and Travel experience. I was 19 years old and honestly did not know what I was doing. A friend of mine told me that he went there and made good money, learnt the language, and got to visit places like Las Vegas, the Niagara Falls, and Hollywood and I thought that this was the bomb. I definitely wanted to do it instead of staying home and doing nothing for the summer. So I managed to get all my exams in Technical University Sofia earlier than everyone else, got my VISA and went there from June to October. It was hot as hell although we were close to the border with Canada. I worked 13 hours a day no day offs as a waiter and made quite good money on tips. I also had time to work out as we lived in a house with a gym inside. Crazy times. I rode a four wheeler on the road when it is only allowed to do it in designated places inside the Forrest. I almost got a girlfriend who was 15 and I could have gotten in jail. One time a guy gave me drugs to keep and transport them to his car. He just placed them in my pocket and told me what to do. On my way to his car got caught by my manager and was almost fired. Ate too much fast food that I went to the Emergency room for help and got a bill of 1500 dollars for 1 hour visit and prescription of 2 medicaments for stomach acid. Dont even get me started on my Las Vegas trip and the hookers and the limos. Man I don't want to saturate your feed 😄😄 with too much content. My final thoughts are, I was young I was inexperienced and I tried it all. No thoughts no regrets. Pure ignorance. Now when I go back I definitely think I was crazy as f... But the flight itself was good considering I changed 3 planes for 1 trip and 3 for the return. It was Sofia - Heathrow - Heathrow - New York - New York - Duluth (Minesota). The last one was local with a small plane. Horrible experience. Turbulence all of the time. I was praying all the time to land alive. Then with a car to Iron River in Wisconsin. I managed :)
Wow, what a read! :) You would be a great novelist man :D Thank you so much for sharing your unique experience with us. I can definitely see some (many :D) similarities here, the trip that I described was also a Work and Travel ;) Oh and btw I know how hot it can get even close to the Canadian border, I worked in Maine and there were many days when it was hot af over there :D
@velinov86
Great story man thanks for sharing it ;)
@phortun actually @velinov86 is one of the last but the craziest additions we have to our growing Bulgarian network;)
He’s always putting a lot of effort and time into his posts ;)
Namaste 🙏
I know, I think I actually "discovered" him by myself in his very early days here :) Great Hiver for sure.
True ;)
Namaste 🙏
@titofit например както може да видиш и тук.
Memories that couldn't be stolen. Nice and interesting reading.
My first flight was when i was 5 years old when my parents decided to visit there home country of Italy flying from Sydney , Australia with parents and another 5 brothers and one sister so 7 kids and parents was a handful of a trip for my parents , i do remember we were all excited to be flying in these big birds but the trip took for ever with a couple of stop overs in airports that were so hot in them days 40 years ago , i think air conditioners in airports were not a priority , we were in a Asia country as one of our stop overs and i thought, i was on a alien planet with the different sound of the language and the funny looking Asia faces it was freaking me out a bit well , i was only 5 years old but my beautiful mum calm me down and explain to me that we were on a safe planet and that it was just a big cartoon show so , i sat down calmly and enjoyed the cartoon show immensely 😂
Wooow what an experience at such a young age! I cannot even imagine how your parents could handle 7 little kids on a flight over the half of the planet! They have my utmost respect :) Thanks for this awesome contribution to the debate :)
Thank you @phortun my pleasure and you are right utmost respect to my parents they certainly took on a huge mission luckily we were all very well behaved 😊
@kohsamui99
Beautiful story lovely ;)
Everything is a reality show a cartoon ;)
It’s really hard for humans to understand the game we are playing here ;)
But this is definitely not to work ;)
We are here to enjoy life as you enjoy it when you were a kid ;)
If you like check on my first flight down below ;)
You have some good points there i never take things seriously i enjoy life and it's moments as tomorrow may never come 😊
Have a great weekend 👍
@kohsamui99
Same there my friend...
Keep on doing it ;)
Namaste 🙏
Thanks @iliyan90 will do 👍
My first flight was last year. It was a domestic one, from Abuja to Lagos and back. I got to the entrance of the airport and began trekking as no one would give me a lift. Luckily a lady stopped and gave me a ride, good thing cos I had no idea where I was walking to. I checked in and was weirded out when I had to take off my shoes and searched like a criminal. I had seen it done on TV but it still freaked me out. Let's not forget the Nigerian airport staff begging me money.
I had read how to wear a seatbelt because it seemed like what first timers did. The seat belt was too easy to put on. Why all the fuss? I still checked out the passengers around me to be sure I did mine well, I didn't want to fall off when the plane took flight.
The plane took off and it took all the strength in me to keep my cool. I closed my eyes and thought of beautiful things, soon enough we were in the sky. I was finally in the clouds. Good thing I chose the window seat. It was amazing how everything down appeared so little. I was served coffee like royalty and the air host was so nice, it's his job to keep a smiling face anyway. I was disappointed how short the trip was. A total of 45 mins for a journey that's 10 hours on road.
Going back to Abuja weeks later, I almost missed my flight. There was traffic all over Lagos and I had to do a lot of sprinting and hopping on bikes. I looked like a wreck getting to the airport. It turned out to be a horrible flight. I thought I was going to die in that plane. It kept waving left and right. Landing was the worst. I said my last prayer and wondered how I'd look with a burnt face. Everyone was just too eager to run out of the plane into the rain. It was a collective worst flight ever after all.
Collective worst flight 😆😆
The absolute worst
Thanks for sharing your story! Looks like you experienced both extremes of flying in just one round trip :) Glad you made it back to Abuja in one piece. Hopefully, all your future flights will be only better.
It was kinda my first and last time (first time was when i was 3, and i only got flashes of it when i got in the plane this time)
It was in August last year, and i flu to Switzerland to visit my cousin. It was fun.
i almost got 2 in the row last year, but there were no flights to Corfu in September, so we ended up going by car.
you could check part of the story if you click on the photo.
I think I don´t have even flashes of things I experienced when I was 3 :D You have a good memory. Just checked that post. The photos are amazing man. The legendary Swiss nature at its finest.
one of the flashes was the safety paper :D
Nature there is just wow.
Hi @phortun. I appreciate that you create this post so I can share now my first flight interesting memory. Thank you in advance.
Actually my first flight was domestic flight from Dhaka(Bangladesh) to cox's bazar. It was really very memorable for me because it was our first tour after my marriage. And that was fifth day of my marriage. So you can call it a honeymoon.
Though it was very short day trip. It might taken 25 minutes to land over. I was very scared before this flight. Specially scared to think,'if anything happens when we are at sea'? Trust me, when we were at sea I just forgotten all the fears because the view from plane was really awesome. But I felt scared when its being ups and down sometimes. Overall it was interesting for me that was the first and last flight trip still now.
Hope you like it🙂🙂
I did like it! :) I am really happy to see more and more interesting stories from various countries here. It doesn´t really matter if your first flight takes 10 hours or just 25 minutes, it´s always a very special and memorable experience :) Thanks for sharing your story with us!
Namaste 🙏
To everyone and thanks to @phortun for the great initiatives he’s doing.
My first flight ✈️ was back in 2012 from Bulgaria, Sofia to London not sure which airport there, maybe JFK where EasyJet drops off.
Any how that was my first trip leaving the country I was going to UK 🇬🇧 for a raspberry picking season working in a farm.
Actually it was a great experience.
I was so happy the time being there.
I actually did 3 summers in a roll.
Daily picking, night Beer 🍻 and gambling mostly poker ♥️
So can’t complain at all those my teenager years in my 22 to 25 ;)
So fun was good ;)
Also when you think about it many people are forced to go work after graduation without any time to enjoy life and maybe do something that they may really like, discover a musician inside you, see the beauty of nature around your born place there are so many beautiful places all over around us if we had the time to go there and enjoy it...
I’ll challenge some of my friends to share their first flight here with us(please leave it as a comment to the main post not as a reply to this comment):
@lyubo19 @gigiii @koyvhev22 @sunshine777 @sis84 @tiger85 @velinov86
Thanks for this great contribution to the debate Iliayn, I really appreciate it :) I am sure you enjoyed those summers in the UK haha, daily picking and night drinking sounds like fun (I mean when you are young :D). Oh and true words about the system and social norms that often make us have work as the main priority in life. So wrong... ;)
Thanks for tagging your friends too, I am looking forward to seeing what they have to say to this. Cheers!
Namaste 🙏 brother
My first flight happened in 1999. I left CZ for the summer job in the US and I have flown with Brittish Airways from Prag to Tampa, FL with stopover in London. At my return I have one more flight from Biloxi, MS to Tampa with with stopover in Atlanta, GE. At the airport in Tampa I realized that I was missing my flying ticket. There was a danger that I would have to buy a new one for $1.200, because the clerck at the check-in-desk couldn't find an information about my overbooking for the flight. Finally she has showed mercy and printed me a new ticket for $70 fee.
All the flies were perfect but from my return I have never flown again.
Wow, that´s a decent bunch of pretty long flights for a first timer :) Thanks for sharing your story with us.
Hi @phortun! My first flight was in March 2018 from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, two provinces of Argentina! 1050 km away from each other. That day I was really excited, with a mixture of fear and adrenaline: my first trip by plane and alone! I went on a week-long study trip. The images that I saw from the sky were so beautiful that I still have them engraved in my mind, I still can't believe that my eyes have seen that !! When I came back it was night, so I saw the day and night sky. It was really wonderful!
Thanks for your contribution Laura, nice story :) I am happy for you that you got the window seat and could thus enjoy all those beautiful views, that´s really something to remember, especially on your first flight :)
My first ever flight was when I was 16. I flew to Mallorca with my brother and my Dad. At this time smoking in the back of the Airplane was still allowed. Today you´re not even allowed to sneeze! 😂
From that Day on I was still counting my flights. Today I´ve lost track, must have been nearly a hundred flights.
Smoking in the back of the plane? Seriously? :D Wow, I didn´t know it was ever possible...
Well, considering your greatly nomadic lifestyle, no surprise you lost track of your flights :D
My first flight was from New-Brunswick to Alberta (both in Canada) when I was 21 or 22 with a stop in Toronto to take a bigger plane from a turbo prop. I didn't like it, my feet belong on the ground! I have flown since but I do my best to avoid it, it still freaks me out.
My feet belong on the ground, that´s something I was also thinking during the first flights but in my case, it got better with every flight until I started to feel comfortable in a plane. Plane and train are the only means of transport where I usually don´t get sick (unless in turbulences of course :D)
Haha, maybe for you! I never took a shining to it even when I used to have to take the plane to the north back and forth every 2 weeks for work, I still never got used to it. Like I said, I can get on it and tolerate it, that's as far as that goes. Train is pretty cool tho, I used to travel by train a lot, it takes you thru some amazing wilderness and scenes that you wouldn't be able to access otherwise.
Exactly, trains are awesome :) Especially those running through some scenic landscapes, mountains etc. I love the window seat :)
yeah, window seats or some of ours have the bubble at the top (generally the bar), quite a view up there.
My very first flight was also soon after my 18th Birthday - To Australia :D. I think the flight took around 36 hours (Germany - London - Bangkok - Sidney). Not a bad experience for my first flight haha 😀
Oh boy... I hate these super long flights, it feels like getting bored to death :D The older I am, the more annoying I find any flight longer than some five hours :D
Same here man - I really don't like to fly, it bores the hell out of me. Unfortunately I'm not a person who can sleep while sitting (long legs don't make it any easier either):D
Hahaha same here, I can only very rarely sleep on a plane and I never sleep at the airport if I have to stay there overnight. I always end up being super tired & bored at the same time :D
Haha so I'm not alone with those struggles 😁 But on the end it's always worth it! - First world problems :D
Let me take you to a half world tour 😆
My first flight was a domestic and connecting international flight
Bangalore to Pune ( in India ) to Abu Dhabi to Rome to Atlanta = 36 hrs of flight experience. Luckily no flight was delayed or cancelled. Else I would have written the response for worst flight experience
It was my company provided flight with no option and I had to travel 😆
Wooow, first flight and 36 hours?! Just like @worldcapture :D Crazyyy!
First flight was when I was 6 years old and I remember me and my little brother of 2 years old getting a very official-looking pin from the airline we used (our national KLM). It was blue with silvery letters and I know I never threw it away so I'll find it during a cleaning-up at some point in the future :-) I think I liked it, just was worries because my brother was crying - his ears hurt from the air cabin pressure. Ah, we went from The NLs to France for a holiday :-)
What a nice surprise, Rosa stopping by my new series :) Thanks for sharing your story with us, I love it :) When you find that KLM pin, let me know :D I would love to have one too. I can´t remember if I have ever flown with KLM to be honest but I think so...
Ha! Yes, I will share the pin if I find it :-) I haven't been flying with KLM in the last few years either, there's so many budget options nowadays, but yeah, I remember flying with Delta to NYC and could totally notice the amount of comfort you get for paying a little extra, even on the first short leg from Amsterdam to Reykjavik :D
Haha that´s something I have no experience with at all, been almost exclusively a budget traveler in the recent years :) Still curious when I will have to stand on the plane just holding a pole the subway style when flying with Ryanair :D I am sure they will do it one day! :D
Soon after my 18th birthday on Friday the 13th to London :)
What a day to pick a flight...Friday the 13!
Hahaha nice! I have actually also flown on Friday 13th a few times already, the tickets tend to be very cheap on this day :D
Říjen 2008, Tunis - Djerba, let z Prahy. Pěkný zážitek.
Tak to rád slyším :) Díky za příspěvek do debaty.
My first flight was to New Delhi from Bengaluru in India, a domestic flight 😊
Cool :) How old were you?
Mine was a bit boring but nonetheless my first flight. A 1 hour journey from Nantes in France to London UK. I was on my way to start a work placement and this trip is what defined how my life was gonna go from there.
I think that´s pretty much what a first flight should be like - short and easy :D Thanks for your contribution man.
Ha! I recall like it was yesterday. It was back in 2014, i was sent out to take a training near London. Had never been at the airport before, but in the end it was piece of cake (especially when you take the flight from Ostrava) 😆
...aka how one unnamed Finnish company turn people in travelers :D Good one.
https://hive.blog/cesky/@jjprac/muj-prvni-let
;-)
Četl jsem, paráda :) Díky moc.
Za málo :)
You're welcome @phortun! Thank you very much for the mention :)
I thank you ;) As you can see, the topic is very popular and we already have a lot of interesting contributions here :)
Yeah! I'm reading good stories here, that's great!