Airports

As I mentioned, the plane flight from Seattle to London was very nice, although of course it was difficult to sleep on the plane, even with the comfortable seats.  The airports...were interesting.

I have been through SeaTac Airport many times, so there was no trouble navigating that.  There were the familiar faces of Asian people, and other people from the Pacific Rim.  There are a few nice shops here and there, with local goodies you could buy.

Heathrow, in England, was glitz-o-rama.  It seemed to this gal-from-the-relative-sticks to be a huge, ritzy, shopping mall of the rich and famous.  In my sleep-deprived state, all that truly registered was shiny-bright glass, gold, silver, and ultra-modern decor.  Godiva chocolates, designer purses way beyond my price range, and...I don’t know what else.  Amazing.

There is a difference in people there....how do I put it?  In SeaTac airport, in the Puget Sound area, it is possible to tell what people’s cultural heritage is if they’re Asian, if they’re African American, and perhaps if they’re from a Hispanic background.  Caucasian people...well, you can kinda-sorta.  You see a red-haired, freckled person and you might assume he or she has some Irish in them.  You might be able to discern some German or French or Swedish.  But it’s as if each national characteristic is blurred in American features, so that it’s difficult to tell.  Certainly, you can’t tell by accent.

Heathrow...it’s as if the Caucasian people’s features suddenly came into focus, and when they spoke, I thought, oh, of course he or she is French, or German, or English.

Navigating Heathrow was a bit of a nightmare, however.  John and I didn't know where the connecting flight would be coming in, whether it was the A or B terminals.  When we looked at the departure board, it looked like it said B, but when we went to B, the flight attendant there said maybe it was B, but they wouldn't really know until about an hour before the actual flight, although it would probably be A terminal.

So we asked how to get there, and you'd think it'd she'd tell us the way back to the shuttle, but no, she told us to go downstairs, which we did do, but were halted by an official-looking person who said it was the wrong way, and we had to go somewhere else.  We took those directions, but ended up back where we started in the B terminal.  So we went back to where the flight attendant said to go, and ended up facing a very long concrete underground tunnel.  There was a sign with an arrow that said "A Terminal," so John and I shrugged our shoulders and decided to hike it.  We had time--we had a 3-hour layover.

It was a long, cold concrete tunnel lit only by dim blue lights, and every once in a while a female voice would call out numbers into the echoing emptiness...empty but for ourselves.  There was a distinctly dystopian feel about it as we trudged down the tunnel with our carry-on luggage.  

"Soon," I said to John, "THX 1138 will come running down this hall, seeking escape to a free world."

"Or Daleks will soon fill the tunnel, bent on the destruction of England and our world's timeline," he replied.  "We are doomed."

We heard the sound of a small electric motor, and when it appeared toward us, it contained another official-looking person driving a golf-cart like vehicle within which a moaning Indian woman was holding a part of her sari over her nose and mouth.  They soon disappeared, the sound of the electric cart echoing faintly behind us.

"This does not bode well," I said to John.  However, we stubbornly walked on.

Nevertheless, we did emerge at the A terminal once again into the light of Ralph Lauren and Gucci.  After a few more misdirections, we found the British Air business lounge, where we collapsed for the next half hour.  John gulped down couple of glasses of apple juice, and I chugged an English ale (the name of which I don't remember), because I figured I deserved something cold and alcoholic after what must have been a half mile trek through a Dr. Who-inspired tunnel.  We did luck out in that the connecting flight did come into Terminal A, and we both tried to fit ourselves into very tight seats, obviously coach class, because John is not an overweight man.  However, he was introduced for the first time to clotted cream ("with golden crust") on scones, which he liked, so his weight status may change unless he gets on his bicycling regimen pretty soon.  And I must say, the British do tea right; good and strong, without a harsh edge.

We arrived in Dusseldorf in good order, sooner than anticipated, because of a very strong tail-wind.  However, once we got there, all that tea made me make the mistake of delaying us by going to the ladies' room, wherein I noticed not tampon or sanitary napkin dispensers, but thong panties and vibrating dildo dispensers.  Why those items seemed more urgent for women finding themselves in a German airport than tampons or sanitary napkins, I do not know.

It was a mistake because we were the last to get to the baggage claim, which meant that we had to spend some scrounging for baggage carts.  Finally found them, but it took three of them to get all our luggage on (John decided to bring his bicycle, of all things).  So I managed to cleverly maneuver two carts, while John had to maneuver one cart with an enormous black box on it.  It was tricky, because the only way you can move those carts is by depressing the handle.  Otherwise, it would stop.

It would not be beyond imagination to say that a few people pointed and laughed as we came down a rather alarming T-shaped ramp to the airport entrance, and I struggled with two heavy carts that seemed to want to careen in opposite directions. However, my yelling "whoa Mama" and angling the carts together side-by-side did the trick, and we descended the ramps in reasonable order.

We also managed to get the carts down to the rental car place.  After John figured out how to work the reverse in the car, we got in and drove through the night to Geilenkirchen.  

I don’t remember much about the check-in, except the cheerful apple-cheeked receptionist named...I think, Nicole, and that the room we entered smelled unfortunately of cigarette smoke.  And that when I tried to use my nebulizer, I found that it did not have a universal power supply as I had been told it did, so it grumbled, and when smoked came out of it, I had to hastily unplug it.

We ended up opening up the windows to air it out, changed our clothes, brushed our teeth (I think) and then dropped into bed like stunned zombies.