Grand Pianos in the Airport

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We’re up at the crack of dawn. Today we’ve got a long day of travelling, first from Gozo via the ferry back to Malta, and from there to Rome and then Athens where we’ll be spending the night at the airport.

It’s been ridiculously hot here the last few days and this morning feels as oppressive as ever. We put our bathers and towels out on the balcony to dry when we got back from the beach yesterday. I’m not sure why we bothered; it’s so humid that they‘re still soaked this morning. It was almost impossible to cool down at the beach yesterday. It was only just cool enough to be refreshing in the water, and the sand was so hot that we had to sprint back to the shade of our umbrellas to stop our feet frying, and by then we were just as hot as we were before we went in the water. It was forty degrees in a few places in Malta yesterday which is apparently a bit unusual. A lot of of the locals we’ve spoken to have been complaining about the unrelenting heat, and telling us that they’re craving winter. We came to Europe to escape that, but it’s been just a bit too oppressive here over the last few days even for us.

In yesterday’s post I talked about Malta’s dearth of bird life and its status as “the most savagely bird-hostile place in Europe“. We’ve parked our car under a tree, and I think the country’s entire bird population must live in that very tree. I think I might have upset them with yesterday’s commentary and they’ve now decided to unload on us. And boy have they unloaded, several centimetres thick of unload. It’s only after several solid minutes of windscreen wiping that we think we can see just enough to be able to drive off safely.

Issy’s cousin Nancy meets us at the Malta airport terminal for a tearful farewell. I’ve got no personal links to Malta whatsoever other than via Issy, but the connection with her relatives is very strong and their hospitality has been wonderful, so much so that it does now somehow feel a bit like we’re leaving the safety and comfort of home.

There’s a grand piano in the Malta airport departure “lounge” (do they call them that anymore - plastic seats and not nearly enough of them for the number of “guests” - that doesn’t really gel all that well with my visions of a “lounge”), and someone in the queue for our flight has decided to take a few minutes out from his queue-ly duties to tickle the ivories. He’s very good, and even manages to generate some polite applause from the assembled multitude. There’s a grand piano in the Rome airport terminal as well, so maybe there’s a trend developing here. I wonder why pianos? Maybe flutes might be a bit too easy to steal, and someone playing a violin badly is like listening to someone strangling a cat, so I’m glad they haven’t gone with that option….that said the main players in Rome seem to be toddlers banging away on random keys, which now that I think of it probably makes a strangled cat sound quite melodic by comparison.

And while we’re on random subjects associated with air travel, I’ve often wondered why so many passengers jump up out of their seats as if their lives depend on it as soon as the seatbelt sign goes off after their flight lands. Given the option, I’m sure the vast majority of people in the world would chose sitting over standing. Yet here they are clambering to stand, when this will almost certainly not give them any advantage over their fellow passengers who’ve chosen to remain in their seats until it’s their turn to leave. Everyone still gets off in row order, so the most they’re going to gain is two or three places in the race, which will only amount to a few seconds. And what then? On most flights we’ve been on the baggage carousel doesn’t start to do its thing until well after everybody’s got off, so getting off first won’t get you your baggage any quicker, so you won’t get out of the airport any sooner than anyone else. Is it just that as humans we‘re wired to want to get places quicker than the other humans, or, as usual, am I missing something here?

Our room in the airport hotel has a wonderful view from the second floor over the car park, and is thus a significant step up from vistas we “enjoyed” from our basement cell in the hotel at Rome Airport - the airconditioning plant, an industrial grade staircase, someone’s motor bike, some entry ramps and a chain wire fence … and as added bonus from here we can also see the sky, a vista that was sadly lacking in Rome. Greece is feeling good already.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Decreased heat
Hopefully, it will be tolerable soon.

[DaveandIssy]

The heat
Thanks for reading. We love the heat. We’ve been to Dubai and Morocco in the middle of summer, but those few days in Malta were very oppressive. Thankfully it was much less oppressive in Greece.

[RENanDREW]

Greece
When you said, 'spend the night in the airport', I thought you meant it literally! I was relieved to read of the airport hotel room :)

[RENanDREW]

Sitting vs Standing
The rushing to the front of the plane as soon as we touch down irks me beyond belief! Weirdly it doesn't bother me as much on larger planes as it does on the small domestic planes in Australia... I was on a Virgin flight once (in their early days when they were trying to market themselves as the young hip airline) and a sassy cabin crew made an announcement on landing that anyone who stood up before the seatbelt sign went off would be booed over the PA system... it was hilarious and not one person stood up! I loved it! :)

[DaveandIssy]

Sitting v standing
That’s a great story. Should make it standard practice.