Of running, flying, single socks and flight attendants

What I'll miss: Christmas in Madagascar

So, tomorrow I head off to South Africa for the Christmas break. Travel to and from Madagascar is always a challenge – I don’t remember an instance when everything has gone right. I blogged about it in this tome of a post back in April, but the thought of travel got me onto other flight stories I’ve heard or been part of.

Several of them involved running – running through the cold, wet streets of London towards Heathrow while on a 12-hour layover from Canada because I couldn’t extricate myself from the warm innards of a Starbucks; running through the airport in Beijing in 2000, before it was upgraded for the Olympics, (on my way to Mongolia) and then having to sit in a bland room for half a day, unable to buy refreshments, because the sandstorm blowing across the steppes from Kazakhstan had closed the airport in Ulaanbaatar; and slowed down by rude, unhelpful officials at Charles de Gaulle in Paris and having to run, weighed down by 6-months-worth of luggage from the airport, through the labyrinthine metro to catch the TGV (train de grand vitesse) at the Gare de Lyon. Admittedly, it’s much easier doing that with a backpack than with children and all their necessities, like this family and many others out there.

If I ever went to the States I think I would try to avoid airports like the plague, what with the security chaos meted out to all and sundry. Riding cross-country on a motorbike sounds much more fun. Some people are just not good flyers. While living in France an American friend had me in stitches with one of her funnier stories – she was heading home, and had a special pair of flying socks which she wore on the ‘plane. Somehow during the flight she lost one of the socks. When asked to remove her shoes at the security check-in all she could think of was the icky floor she would have to walk on with her sockless foot. And so she hopped through the scanner. Well, number one, this was not in the security protocol, and number two, it set off all sorts of alarm bells. And so off she traipsed followed by an officer to the little booth to be searched. A bit peeved at all the trouble, she put her sockless foot down, saying she thought it more appropriate for a female officer to carry out the search. The moustached reply was, “I am a woman.” I leave the rest of the story to your imagination.

Flying into Europe isn’t any better, mind you. On the Swiss flight into Zurich a few years ago, I went back to the galley to ask for some water. Now, please understand, I realise what a difficult job it is to be a flight attendant. I have a friend who used to fly International routes who had way too many stories about rude, obnoxious, loud passengers; about being tripped while walking down the aisle; and about a colleague who couldn’t take it anymore, snapped, and hit a man over the head with a metal coffee pot. He probably had it coming; she took early retirement... 

But back to my story – so, as politely as possible I said I was sorry to bother her, but could I please have a bottle of water. The very guttural reply had me back-peddling (place Arnold Schwarzenegger accent here), “Get out ov my kitchen now! Ziz is not your home vhere you can do vot you like, it ees mine!”  But I would still rather fly into Switzerland than France.  The friendliest airport I’ve flown to? Definitely Edmonton, Canada, ey.

And that’s about it. Pray the plane leaves on time, is not diverted to some remote airstrip to pick up passengers with chickens and ducks, and remains on the runway when landing...