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Published: November 26th 2006
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Some 11 900 m above the Czech Republic.
No matter how much I love all the budget airlines who let you fly all over Europe for less than what I pay for the train ride to the airport I don't understand the point in the "free seat" policy. Would it really cost them more money or take more time to assign each passenger a seat? I can understand that it might make people show up earlier at the airport and to check in, but seriously, boarding ends when boarding ends and the plane takes off when the plane takes off, people would be there on time anyway! And they could calmly and peacefully stay seated at the gate and wait for people with seats in the back of the plane to board first, instead of everyone squeezing up as close to the door as possible half an hour before boarding time, moaning and sighing and stepping on each others' feet, then as soon as a flight attendant eve glances at the microphone trying even harder to squeeze up close, pushing fellow travellers away, not paying any attention to "first we ask passengers with boarding numbers 1-30...", running over small children and
cursing at passenges in need of special assistance, rushing into the plane, deciding on the seats in the very front, standing in the middle of the isle blocking the way for everyone else while putting their luggage away, deciding if they want to sit on the right or rather on the left side, asking their aunt Esmeralda if she's sure she doesn't need her sweater for the flight and whether cousin Charlie's magazine is in the small brown bag or the big red one, only to finally at the repeated request from the flight attendant, sit down and notice that there was a seat for everybody, nobody was left out and even the people boarding last somehow got to sit next to each other.
God, I just have to say this flight attendant has the most disgusting voice I ever heard and could she please stop breathing so hard into the microphone!.
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Welcome to Bonn - Köln Bonn. It's always strange to be back somewhere, even after only having been gone for five days. Kind of slapped back into reality by the first non-tourist German I heard, the airport busdriver's reply to some colleague's question: "ja,
dat mach' ich", and the first sight I lay my eyes on inside the airport terminal; six trash cans next to each other, all for a different kind of waste, no wonder I had a hard time recognizing them in Prague. And of course as soon as stepping outside the terminal on the way to the train I'm hit by a grey rain dusk, probably several degrees warmer than in the city I was in two hours ago but brutally forcing itself into my blood and marrow turning them into frozen pain.
I loved the weather in Prague. Knowing it only as burning hot summer steam interrupted by violent clashes of lightning and rain I embraced these fresh winter days and thoroughly enjoyed the lack of sweat running down my legs. People think for me a winter in the most western part of Germany is not worth mentioning, even less something to worry about. But there I sit each October until March with damp gloves, biting red ears, icicles hanging from my nose ring, shivering to my bones, even my teeth chattering with cold. There is no winter in Aachen. It's wet windy slushy hell. The winters I grew
up with were crisp, white, bright, sometimes with temperatures dropping to less than 30° below 0°C, only a few hours of daylight around noon, but those hours mostly flooded by sunshine. None of those winters, none of those times with numb feet, wearing a mask covering your whole face and still not being able to breathe without pain, none of those times have I been as miserably freezing cold as in 12°C foggy Aachen.
So while all the other tourists in Prague spent their money on colorful hats and gloves from tacky souvenir shops I put my hat and gloves in the hostel locker and wished I had taken a light jacket instead of my heavy winter coat. Not even my sensitive hands that cause me so much grieve in Aachen were complaining about dry 10° with no rain or wind. It made me feel a little bit like home.
I bought a cup of coffee at the train station in Köln, wanting to hold on to this comforting illusion of being close to adventure and experiencing new things just a little longer, unwilling to return to an empty flat and my normal life just yet. Had been
hoping to spend the day in Köln with someone far more dear to me than he should be, expectedly and probably fortunately he chose to work ("had" to work as he would put it, but there is actually nothing in our lives besides breathing that we
have to do, everything is in one way or another a choice). Sipping my coffee and watching all the people hurrying around with their bags and their dogs and their kids I just felt very tired all of a sudden. I grabbed my vanilla latte and got on the train to Aachen.
Staring out through the dirty train window at the brown and grey landscape rolling by in a rainy dusk, feeling empty and melancholic, wondering if this is what it feels like to feel "home".
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I have started to understand lately what it means to live in Europe. Not that I'm not pure European in origin, and not that I haven't spent my whole life - with a 10 month exception - in Europe, but growing up in a fairly remote village in Sweden you're not really "European" like the Germans or the Dutch or the French, surrounded by other European neighbors. Where I come from you can't jump in the car and cross three national borders in an afternoon, you can possibly cross one but all that does is leave you in an even more remote area with people speaking a funny accent. And no one really gets the idea to book a cheap flight over the weekend when you spend more time and money getting to the next major airport than on the whole rest of the trip in total.
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