Bagel Belly Blog

Airports and travel in general

Some thoughts on airports.

I love the buzz and hum of activity that airports have - especially somewhere as huge as Schipol, which has insane numbers of flights to all corners of the globe (there's an oxymoron). Not quite as busy as Chicago, but not a bad effort.

The thing that gets me the most is seeing all the faces and hearing all the accents from different places (Paul and David will know exactly what I'm talking about). It makes me feel alive and puts life and the world in general into a glorious sense of perspective.

I'm not a particularly nervous traveller, but I do like to know what I'm doing and where I'm going and to be there in good time. So this trip was something of a worry for me, since I effectively landed at Bucharest with no idea how to get to the hotel or even where the hotel was aside from a street name and number.

But there's something soothing about the strange other land that is airport arrivals, where you go through the little rituals - passport control, baggage reclaim, customs - and the routine of all that put me at ease, so I was able to cheerfully walk out of the airport and straight into a cab.

I think I paid over the odds for the cab - my haggling skills aren't all that great - but who cares? I'm here, the aircon is on (boy is it hot outside!), and now I can get down to some work before going out to look around later on when it's cooled down.

Currently listening to The Well-Tempered Clavier Book1 Nos.1~24 from the album Bach:The Well-Tempered Clavier Book1 Nos.1~24 by Glenn Gould

Posted by savs at August 21, 2004 2:12 PM