Okay. This is a dream I had in 1997 (!). The day after I had it, I still remembered it so vividly that I wrote it down.
I was taking a mystery flight – a one-day mystery outing that could go anywhere the airline flew. My flight turned out to be to Australia – which was disconcerting, but interesting.
When we landed in Australia, I discovered that Australia was where England normally is, so I decided to travel around and see Europe; or at least as much of Europe as I could manage in one day. (My return flight could be caught from anywhere in Europe.) I chartered an airplane (one of the little two-man types) for $150, and set off.
I had the pilot fly up very high, so that we saw all the cities of Europe spread out below us, as on a huge plain. Then I chose a city at random, and we landed there. It turned out to be Leipzig, which for some reason was in Poland instead of Germany.
When we landed, we discovered that it was Christmas Day in Poland, so the pilot and I went to a little Polish church (conveniently located at the airport) for the Christmas Day service. The preacher and one or two of the congregation spoke English, so we were able to get by. The church itself was very small and dark inside, but quite lovely. After the service (or possibly before; I forget) I had a snooze in my pew.
Afterward, the pilot suggested that we call on the President of the United States, who was visiting Poland at the time in his Presidential Yacht – an enormous boat that rather resembled a motor cruiser. (Leipzig was not only in Poland; it was on the coast.) The President in question was one of the long-ago Presidents, possibly Lincoln, though we did not seem to think this was strange at the time.
The President invited us to spend the night on the yacht. By this time I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to catch my flight home in time; but the President explained that as long as I was actually on the plane by the time my 24 hours were up, I’d be all right. So I spent the night on the yacht, and then flew home.
When I told my family about what I’d done, I remember that they didn’t believe that I’d been able to charter an airplane for only $150. But it was true.
I’d enjoyed myself so much that I promptly went on another, identical flight. I chartered the same airplane and pilot as before. But once we were in the air, I found that the price was actually $150 per hour; I hadn’t realised before as I hadn’t seen my latest Visa statement yet. Still, as I was obviously about to go bankrupt, I decided to enjoy myself while I could.
This time I had trouble persuading the pilot to fly high enough to see all the cities of Europe, as before. He preferred to go swooping through scenic valleys. But eventually he headed up, very quickly; I remember the g-forces.
I didn’t want to visit Poland again, so we went further north this time, and landed in Germany. (I don’t remember which town.) Here, we did a little shopping.
I bought a box of Moments. This was an immense box of chocolate biscuits, really huge. Inside there were no partitions or layers; just hundreds and hundreds of chocolate biscuits. It was called a box of Moments because the manufacturers’ motto was “You should never have a moment when you don’t have a chocolate biscuit.”
Then we visited an old junk shop, or possibly a machinist’s or blacksmith’s, or a combination of all three. There the pilot discovered a broken piece of pottery. By holding this in a vice and sawing a tiny fragment off with a circular saw, he was able to determine that it was thousands of years old, and very valuable. And –
Then my alarm went off and I woke up.
