Gadling

Russians + Vodka + 35,000 feet = Trouble.

That's the formula that played out on a recent flight from Houston to Frankfurt. Two Russian sailors reportedly polished off the 2 liter bottle of vodka they'd bought at Duty Free and promptly began running wild on board the plane (police are not confirming which airline was involved).

The two men smoked cigarettes in the bathroom and went up and down aisles "frightening passengers," according to the Associated Press. They also reportedly attempted at several intervals to use their mobiles ("Hey man, I'm so wasted!").

The flight crew eventually ordered the men to their seats and the two were arrested on the tarmac by German police when the plane landed. One admitted to causing a disturbance and was released after paying a fine. The other, more contrarian, wouldn't cop to anything and is awaiting a court hearing.

The European Union as a whole may not be too keen on so-called "all body scanners" at their airports -- the bloc voted them down earlier this month -- but Germany is still going ahead and testing out the technology.

Germany's interior ministry announced yesterday that in the coming weeks it was going to begin "laboratory tests" of these scanners -- known in Europe as 'naked scanners' -- in an effort to see if it's possible to produce images with these devises that do not show passengers naked.

The technology is controversial, of course, because in the devises that have been tested at airports in the US, the images do show passengers naked, for all intents and purposes. This enables security to more easily detect concealed weapons and other contraband.

The devises have been tested at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, but have not appeared elsewhere in Europe.

A friend of mine recently sent me this article from the Wall Street Journal about the true cost an airline incurs flying your luggage. In the relatively new era of baggage fees, it's probably fair to question just how expensive it's been for airlines to handle baggage.

The answer: $15 a bag. The WSJ arrived at this number through some good deductive reporting, since most major airlines claim they do not actually know the per-bag breakdown of their baggage costs (which, of course, is complete bull).

What's in that $15? Well, about $13 per bag in labor costs and another $1-$2 in fuel costs (I'm really summarizing here -- the article does a much better breakdown of costs).

So it's not a coincidence that most major carriers are charging $15 for your first piece of checked luggage. Yet for some reason, airlines themselves are loath to admit this, most saying they set their baggage fees not strictly based on costs.

One airline official seem to suggest that the costs for flying your luggage might actually be lower, since in a very defensive response to a question from the WSJ he told the newspaper, "I hope you would agree that we are allowed to make a profit."

Thanks, Ed.

In October, Jamie blogged about the last voyage of the storied cruise liner Queen Elizabeth 2, which was making a final voyage from New York to Dubai, where she will be retired.

Well, she reached Dubai yesterday, and after 40 years of high seas luxury, the end of an era has arrived.

The QE2 will remain in Dubai, where it will become a floating luxury hotel moored on a manmade island (it seems there's nothing in Dubai that is not manmade).

The cruise ship is going out in style, however. Its arrival in the region was met with marching bands and fireworks.

The Associated Press says the QE2 has traveled 6 million miles, crossed the Atlantic more than 800 times and carried 2.5 million passengers.

Were you one of them? Got a QE2 story? Share it with us.

I wonder whether many Americans are acquainted with the accomplishments of French traveler Alexandre Poussin.

He's an adventurer very much of the old school, best known for an epic walk across Africa with his wife, Sonia. The two trekked from the Cape of Good Hope at the souther tip of Africa all the way to Mount Kilimanjaro. Along the way, the pair documented the adventure in every way imaginable and ultimately produced both a film about the journey, a television series and a well-regarded book, Africa Trek: In the Footsteps of Mankind.

I'm probably wrong, but it feels like these kinds of adventures are a dying breed in the travel world, with modern day "travelers" seemingly more content to move to some place, say a Spanish village, for a year and write a book about it. I've always preferred to read or hear about the long journey of many months and miles, from point A to point B. Poussin's tale certainly falls into that category.

Luckily, now you can hear more about Poussin's African adventure and what inspires him to travel over at Wend magazine. Gadling's own Anna Brones recently interviewed him for Wend's Digital Story Project.

You can listen to the podcast on the page.

Here at Gadling we'll be highlight some of our favorite sounds from the road and giving you a sample of each -- maybe you'll find the same inspiration that we did, but at the very least, hopefully you'll think that they're good songs.

Got a favorite of your own? Leave it in the Comments and we'll post it at the end of the series.

"Read About It" by Midnight Oil


Midnight Oil's "Read About It" is not a road song, really, not in the sense that the Eagles' "Take It Easy" is a road song or Tom Cochrane's "Life is a Highway" is a road song or the Chili Pepper's "Higher Ground" is a road song.

In other words, you wouldn't necessarily go to this cut first having just pulled on the highway and wound down the windows.

But for me the song, and more importantly the band, is very much rooted in a travel experience, which I guess makes it another kind of road song.

I spent half of 1998 living in Australia. That seems like a long time ago as I write this, but I can easily close my eyes and recall the details of that time, how the country's light looked, how the country smelled, the vibes of its city streets, and how in not a few parts the sheer distances and openness you confront could make you feel very, very small indeed.

I went everywhere, from the central outback to the Kimberly to the shores of the Thursday Islands to the dense inland trails of Tasmania. I talked to people.

If that time had a soundtrack, I suppose it would have been composed of Midnight Oil songs.

Among the myriad stories of the global financial crisis that appear almost daily, this one from the New York Times today caught my eye.

The economic downturn is impacting that most sacrosanct of French traditions, the bar-cafe.

The article notes Balzac's famous dictum -- "The bar of a cafe is the parliament of the people" -- in detailing how the French cafe is in real trouble these days. Simply put, people are going out less and when they do, they're spending less.

The days of the long, leisurely French lunch -- a couple of courses accompanied by a bottle of wine -- have been replaced with the take-out sandwich, eaten on the run.

If they do come to the cafe, a owner named Maria Malichier tells the Times, "it's a carafe of tap water, main course and off you go."

"Now people don't eat," says another cafe owner, Gérard Renaud. "They come in for a coffee or a little aperitif and that is it. We are used to being busy, but now we feel lazy, and it is depressing."

What's behind this? Obviously a bit has to do with the financial crisis. But at the beginning of this year a smoking ban extended to include bar-cafes, which is hurting business. So is a renewed crackdown on drunk driving, with cops apparently staking out cafes to catch tipsy drivers.

Anyone that spends any time in France, Paris or elsewhere, quickly comes to see that the cafe culture, dying or not, is something one can only admire about the country -- how people seem to carve out time in their day for it, which of course is time carved out for food and drink and conviviality. There's a reason why Hemingway's A Movable Feast is so evocative of a certain time and place.

Now we have this arresting fact from the Times piece: Two bar-cafes close every day in France. In 1960, there were 200,000 of them countrywide; today it's fewer than 41,500.

A 1,200-foot-long Royal Caribbean cruise liner being built in Finland got a test run of sorts yesterday, launching into water not far from the country's capital, Helsinki.

The ship boasts 16 passenger decks, 2,700 cabins and can hold 6,300 passengers and nearly half as many crew. And get this: It's got an open-air arena that, according to the Associated Press, is the size of a football field!

It's also got a Greek amphitheater, a skating rink and much more. It cost about $2.5 billion to build.

The official name for the cruise liner is the Oasis of the Seas. Royal Caribbean has ordered another one from Finland, to be launched in 2010.

Shipbuilders say the inaugural liner will be completed in about a year and will then sail to Miami before taking on its first passengers. If you're a cruise fan, this is one ship you should keep an eye out for.

If you see Hawaii's Jessica Agbunag at a casino some time soon, you might want to rub up against her for good luck.

Agbunag, 24, made her first trip to Las Vegas this week and on Wednesday, at the California Hotel and Casino, she won a cool $2.4 million at a Wheel of Fortune slot machine. She pumped in about $16 into the machine before hitting the jackpot.

Agbunag is a babysitter who was in Sin City with her boyfriend and family on a commemorative trip in honor of her grandmother, who used to love the Vegas slots. She says she is going to use the winnings to pay off her car, and she will spread a little bit of the wealth around among her relatives, she told the Associated Press.

The real question is if this happened to you, would you ever go back to Vegas again? Not sure I would.

Travel & Leisure magazine has put together its annual list of the best and worst airlines for 2008 in terms of on time arrivals.

The rankings deal with airlines' records for punctuality, with those oft-delayed carriers necessarily showing up on the worst list, and those that arrive on time figuring on the best list. No great science there. But before I list the magazine's picks for best and worst, it's worth noting the remarkable improvement -- in T&L's eyes, anyway -- of US Airways.

Last year it ranked third on the worst carriers of the year list, with the magazine saying fewer than 68 percent of its flights having arrived on time. This year, it's at the third spot on the best list, with nearly 80 percent of its flights arriving on time.

Anyway, here are the best:

1. Hawaiian Airlines (92% on time)
2. Southwest (80%)
3. US Airways (79%)
4. Frontier (78%)
5. Skywest (78%)

And the worst:

1. American (68%)
2. United (69%)
3. Comair (70%)
4. American Eagle (71%)
5. Atlantic Southwest (72%)