My life in airports

After two months intensive planning, I'm finally in Sydney airport, waiting for Emirates flight EK419. My carry-on weighed in at 6.1 kg and my check in at 12.2kg. That mission accomplished! My iPad is plugged in and my mobile functioning, although the sim in the iPad is being cantankerous, as is airport free wi-fi. I ate one of Meg's shortbread encouragements, pondered on the wishes that came with them, and reread Sandy's poem of good wishes.

In the course of a long wait at Sydney airport I prowled around with my camera. I mightn't be very good at starting up conversations with strangers, but my camera did it for me. An hour passed yarning to a woman on the way to a photo-tour of Athens and beyond. Her preferred subject is people, but she was quite content on a photographer's tour of the Arctic to capture shots of a mother polar bear and her two cubs. Mother put her ear to the ice and then pounded it until it cracked and she could pluck out a seal for breakfast. Her cubs biffed each other while they're were waiting and ate with kidly untidiness, white faces smeared with blood instead of banana and broccoli. Already I have travelled, in vivid conversation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm becoming a denizen of airports. Bangkok at 1am was only a fuelling stop, but I got off for an idle amble, expecting to hop back on. In fact I had to gallop, confused, in a pack of other confused people, by a circuitous route, back to the gate I left by, through the baggage check and back to my seat where my water had disappeared.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then Dubai at daybreak, that tall thin misshapen building emerging out of flatness against the blurred sunrise of pink and apricot and orange and blue. Not a long stop here, just long enough to (finally) access an airport Internet and watch the passing crowds reflected in the glass squares arching high above. Two Chinese teenagers played battleship with cards and I didn't need to understand their words to understand what they were saying.

 

 

 

I dozed and watched French and Japanese movies on the flight to Zurich. A man about my age engaged me in conversation as I walked dutifully up and down, peering out the minute windows at the landscape of clouds and green countryside. He talked in broken English – I couldn't mange even broken German! – about a song to do with looking through a small space into vastness. The difficulty of understanding , and the rarity of being accosted in conversation by a man made me scurry away, instead of asking him to sing it for me.

Zurich was the friendliest of airports, although the only one where I set off the bell walking through the scanner and was subjected to a gentle frisk. I loitered in emptiness for a while, quite spaced out and nearly stepping into the path of a motorised ride-on cleaner. My inexperienced traveller's imagination failed me, or I'd never have embarked on this trip in this way. I still have sixteen hours to go before I meet the man in the white cap at Ljubljana airport and settle into my jet lag retreat.

Bewilderment has proved to be the key to getting help. As I passed through an empty scanning station, barely able to pull out what needed to go in the trays, three people combined to help me navigate the mysteries of the airport. When I could see no way out of a nearly deserted glassed in area, a cleaner indicated the train that took me curving through tunnels to sudden rush and noise. Finally I found the day room, which was my life saver. For $25 I had a quiet couch in a cubicle for a three-hour deep sleep, and then a shower. I felt so refreshed that when I went to pick up my boarding pass I could actually laugh, albeit with a slight tinge of hysteria, when I was told “Your flight to Ljubljana has been cancelled!” My destination is still a distant dream.

 

 

 

 

So I did what I should have planned in the first place: I ventured out into a cold Swiss afternoon, hopped on an airport shuttle and spent the night in a hotel – at someone else's expense.

 

 

 

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