It’s 4:55 am and I am in Vaclav Havel Airport. I am staring at the check-in board. My flight is at 7 am and so I took an Uber from my flat at 4:15. Public transport usually takes me an hour but it’s not running regularly at 4 am so I am forced into the Uber option. Along the way to the airport my Uber driver hits a wormhole and we somehow arrive at the airport fifteen minutes before I woke up. The check-in doesn’t open until 5.
Once I check in, it takes me ten seconds to get through passport and security. I have lots of time and it’s quiet so I stroll through my terminal. The boarding is slow and quiet. I get up to the door, kiss the plane and whisper my ten-word poem into her ear. I sit and put in my earphones. I doze off while the flight crew tell me how to open a seatbelt in a 1975 Chevy.
I am a wee bit depressed. To be sure, it’s normal for me – Mr. Set in My Ways – to feel sad about leaving home. But Vaclav Havel is like the Czech Republic – quiet, unassuming, on its own meandering time schedule. It’s a cozy little airport with two unassuming terminals. I can still buy a beer or a sausage if I want in its shops. It still reveals its little secrets now and then (Burke and I found a cafeteria tucked away before a flight earlier this month). This is a microcosm of the Czech Republic itself. Until we take off, I still feel at home.
The next time I open my eyes, we are in the air. We are flying through some sort of a pea soup, so I assume we are about to land in London. The woman next to me begins elbowing me in the ribs, I suppose in the attempts to stake her avenue to the aisle that I am blocking. The man on the window seat is scrolling through his phone.
When we land in London, everything changes. We are corralled into Heathrow where hell has recently broken loose. There are 9,784,000 people in London. And 7/8 of them are in the airport picking up an uncle. There are many languages and they are all being dispensed at a rate of speed akin to the planes we are waiting on. The scene is not unlike the one that took place at the bottom of a biblical punishment tower. The lines are long, long enough to quell my ideas I might have about a mid(early)-day(morning) cocktail. I settle for a ham sandwich and a bottle of orange juice. I hate everyone.
The airport is a living organism. In fact, I think the airport is the last living organism that we might encounter on the road anymore. A woman with hair reaching towards the airport’s walls and arrivals signs asks me a random question.
“Are you going to Philadelphia?”
But it’s a good one and I am taken aback by her intuition. She must have sensed the need for a cheesesteak on me. She has a wild look in her eyes. Her children are in tow, holding onto each other in a link.
“Yes.”
“I follow you.”
I note my ticket jutting out of my pocket and am disappointed that my new friend isn’t as adroit as Adrian Monk. Me and the Nigerian family walk towards the gate, I am their newest link, but they don’t hold my hand. A man waylays my newfound family and they go off with him.
“I guess he’s going to Philadelphia, too.”
The gate resembles film I have seen of people waiting for a helicopter out of Saigon. Though I have a piece of paper with a number and a letter that signify a seating assignment, I throw a little elbow here and there to make sure the twelve-year-olds nearby don’t get any ideas. When we finally start boarding, there is a low grumble. A 2,000-year-old man keeps me from my seat by choosing the wrong seat, as far as I can tell, thirty-two times. I am standing. A person behind me nudges me with one of the 23 baseball hats he has attached to his backpack. I am confused but I am elated.
After I heave my bag up into the overhead container, I drop into my seat. And with that my adventure – with one gigantic X factor – has ended. If I have another one, it’s going to be really memorable. I am essentially in my living room now. I will spend the next seven plus hours watching very good TV and being served food. When I land I will complain about something. This flight it’ll be that when you sit in the back you get the meals nobody else wanted.
It’s a rough life.
