L'aéroport et la haine

I always used to love hanging round airports. I would always leave plenty of time to have a stress-free journey in and time to watch the world of airport life. Everything you have in the real world is in airports, just on a smaller scale and more expensive. There are people from all walks of life, except the very poor, all about to go somewhere for some reason worth the time, effort and money of travelling there. There is also a subtle air of panic because many of those people are running late and most of them have some vague sense of impending doom.

But I might be done with airports. Or maybe I'm done with Schiphol. Or maybe I'm done with killing time in the B gates area of Schiphol. It's hard to tell at this moment.

As I sit here, mustering thoughts, there is a constant barrage of announcements from a very proper Dutch lady and a girl who seems to be from Essex and occasionally a German man and a lively woman from Spain. They all seem to be having a competition to try and annoy me by announcing the same thing in as many different languages as possible.

In this day of personal communications there is no need for announcements. Everyone has a phone and the airlines probably have most people's numbers so don't annoy everyone, simply call Mr Bladeblah and tell him he is delaying the flight and to proceed to gate suchandsuch or you will offload his luggage. You can even email him a gif of the luggage guys rummaging around the hold searching for his bags.

I'm particularly annoyed because I was on the way to a festival for a show and the rescheduled flight arrives a good couple of hours after we're due on stage for our first show. And instead of the time we'd be getting to meet the other people at the festival and getting to know the place, we'll be stuck in the airport, listening to how much of a dick Mr Blahdeblah is. And when we should be on stage, we'll be sitting in a different airport in a different city waiting for a flight connection.

They have been trying to placate us with vouchers for the unlikely price of 14.95 (vouchers should be whole-numbers, surely). Now 14.95 can get you a very reasonable lunch outside in the real world. But in Airportopia, it gets you a sandwich, drink and a muffin that disintegrates the moment you try to store it anywhere.

And it's not like there is any good reason for al this. The original plane we were hoping to catch was diverted to Brussels due to mist. Not thunderstorms, not hurricanes, not even fog, but mist. I thought most modern planes could cope with mist. But then I don't know how modern Estonian Air planes are. I am now expecting some cut-price copy of a cold-war-era Boeing with a wet sock where the radar should be. Still, I expect we'll get some exercise giving it a push-start down the runway.