Thursday, August 01, 2002

Of airports and flights

Till now my flights have been fairly uneventful. I really don't recall my trip to Reykjavik, only that I sat in the back row myself and had three seats. At some point I got up to go to the washroom and I returned to find an old lady sleeping in my row. So I waited till she was finished napping and went back to my seat.

During my flight to Cyprus I sat next to this German gay couple, "T" was quite talkative and entertaining; he acted in musicals or something. He spent a lot of time finding the clapping at the end of the flight amusing. His friend was asleep most of the flight.

My flight to Beirut was too short to notice. When we took off the flight attendants were racing to give us little boxes of juice. By the time they were able to collect them we had landed. That was quite fast.

Going To Berlin was a nightmare. First the flight was at 5:45 Sunday morning. So I did not really sleep. I went to the airport straight from the party. The airport was quite the nightmare. If anyone in Ben Gurion Airort ever tells you to go to gate 85, you might as well give up right then and there.

The trick to actually getting through was Israelis call "lines" are to just use brute force. Literally. To get to where I had to go after about 40 minutes of waiting on a line that was about 8 feet long, I simply pushed everyone out of the way. This sounds rude, but that was the strategy that was employed by everyone else, and that was the one recommended to me by the people who were behind me. I managed to push half a platoon of soldier who were headed to Warsaw and a very large Romanian family to the sides so I can pass. It was hell.

The Turkish airport was nice, and I landed in Berlin after that without any further problems.