Luxembourg

The morning's weather was quite poor for flying, with our planned first stop calling for three hundred foot ceilings and low visibilities, and temperatures hovering just above zero.  Climbing up into the clag and going IFR was not an option.  We elected to try to stay to the West of a large system, and rerouted to Dijon.  Even so, crawling through what little mountains we did have to contend with was anything but pleasant, with forty knots of headwind, brutal turbulence, and low level scud running through the high passes fraught with power lines and wind turbines.  We eventually got down into the valleys and worked our way North to Dijon, the home of Burgundy wine and fine mustards.  For itinerant traffic looking for a routing, I'd recommend avoiding Dijon as the handling fees are atrocious.   The place was like a ghost town, as the military had pulled out about three years ago, but we met with a locally based medevac helo pilot, and he provided a thorough brief on local conditions and weather.  After settling all our fees, we continued North to Luxembourg.

Getting well West and North of the weather system, dodging all kinds of restricted airspace for numerous nuclear power plants, we cleared into Luxembourg.  On the largest, emptiest ramp I had ever seen, the Luxembourg controllers somehow had it in their heads to park us about one kilometre apart.  We protested, we argued, they argued back, they fluttered about us having not called ahead and prearranging our little stopover, and eventually we just ignored them and parked our helicopters side by side.  Having checked into the swank Sofitel downtown, enjoying a very overpriced dinner and a good sleep, we head West for Poland today.