Just look at those happy, helpful, smiling faces! It’s gonna be a great trip!!

We’re all very excited here at Belly Ache, because now we can book our weekend getaways on our favorite airline from the convenience of our desktop! Air Koryo, the self-described “unique national flag carrier” of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (that would be NORTH Korea in case you’re confused about the ‘Democratic’ part of the name) has launched a new online booking system in English and Korean. Woohoo! The website offers flights from Pyongyang to Beijing and Shenyang in China, and Vladivostok in Russia.

And don’t you worry about service quality, Air Koryo is the world’s only ‘one star’ airline as ranked by industry monitor Skytrax, which means it offers ‘very poor quality performance’. Hey it could be worse – at least there’s ONE star! The airline uses mainly Russianbuilt Tupolev aircraft for international routes, though Soviet-era planes are still in use within North Korea.

An economy return flight from Beijing to Pyongyang costs US$478 before taxes. Air Koryo had previously announced plans to offer flights between Shanghai and Pyongyang in July 2011, but these are presently not available for booking online. So what are you waiting for! Get on the net and start booking that family vacation. Insurance optional.

Prost! And now something particularly close to our hearts – Oktoberfest! Too bad it’s over for this year, although the Belly Achers’ hangover oddly seems to live on. Ahh, the beer, sweet glorious beer! Oh and the pretzels and pork knuckle, the elbow-to-elbow camaraderie and everyone’s favourite – the goofy chicken song. And hey, we can’t forget those uber cool traditional Bavarian costumes… the dirndl for women and lederhosen and janker jacket for men. All very cool… well except maybe for that knee slapping thingy the men like to do – actually its called Schuhplatteln… we know this because we’re really clever 😉 …it’s just a tad bit ABnormal.

The reason we’re having these Bavarian day-dreams is not actually because we’re still hungover from all our October-festing, or because we’re still possibly drunk even though its now nearly November, but rather because we wanted to share some joy Lufthansa brought passengers travelling through Munich during the Octoberfest period. During that time its Munich crew decked themselves out in traditional Bavarian costumes specially designed by a top Munich designer in Lufthansa colours.

As Lufthansa explained: “During the Oktoberfest, Lufthansa stewardesses dressed in dirndls will be attending to the needs of passengers on flights from New York to Hamburg between 17 September and 2 October, and on flights from London to Munich between 21 September and 2 October. On those routes, blonde flight attendants wore pale blue dirndls, while their dark-haired colleagues were dressed in pink.”

Excellent idea! Well, except that theory and implementation sometimes don’t always go hand-in-hand as the flight attendants on one particular flight between London and Munich last month demonstrated!