Lufthansa pilots have scheduled a four day strike beginning on Monday, February 22, 2010. Negotiations are currently underway, but if those talks fail to avert the strike, the carrier will be forced to cancel most of its flights. And that will leave passengers stuck at the airport.
The upside? If you do end up spending more time than you planned at a German airport, you’ll be able to find plenty of things to do.
Munich Airport, for example, has an outdoor observation deck and a great indoor/outdoor beer garden with an on-site brewery.
The Hamburg Airport also has observation decks as well as the Airport Model Exhibition – a miniature version of the airport complete with buildings, taxiways, runways, landing strips, and 8,000 light-emitting diodes that light up the tiny airport’s night sky – all on a scale of 1:500.
And at the Dusseldorf, Munich, Hamburg, and Berlin airports you’ll also find Lufthansa WorldShop stores, which offer a promising spot to do some Souvenir Sunday shopping.
The airline recently opened its second WorldShop store at the Frankfurt Airport (Terminal 1, Area B) and, like the others; the store is filled with travel items, backpacks, travel accessories, electronics, model aircraft, toys, and some other fun stuff. Shoppers can earn Miles & More award miles for items purchased here and – here’s a nice twist – also buy items using accumulated miles.
I’m especially taken with this A380 Cookie Jar
The cool container sells for about $107 – or 22,000 miles, so we can’t make it our pick for Souvenir Sunday, which usually has an upper limit of $10. But poking around the WorldShop catalog I did find this cute guy, which sells for 9 Euros (about $12) or 7500 miles.
But since this is Souvenir Sunday and do we have that under $10 rule (which may need to be re-adjusted soon for inflation..), we offer these items sent along by the folks at Virginia’s Richmond International Airport(RIC), where a variety of local museums are represented in the Hudson News store in the airport’s Atrium area, next to the security screening checkpoint for Concourse B.
These items are from the Edgar Allan Poe Museum
(Beer mugs! )
(Poe action figure – with removable raven! )
Have you found a great souvenir while stuck at the airport? If it’s under $10, “of” the city or region and, ideally, a bit offbeat, please snap a photo and send it along. It may show up as our pick for a future Souvenir Sunday.