Frau Airlines

My eighteen hour travel from Portland, Oregon to Florence, Italy involved a layover and plane transfer in Frankfurt, Germany. On the ten hour flight to get to Frankfurt beer was plentiful and the German flight attendants, or whatever the PC term for them is, pushed a cart up and down the isles selling cigars and cigarettes with massive “SMOKING KILLS” labels plastered to their fronts. You could buy them, but not smoke them while on the plane. However, you could smoke them in the terminal and just about everywhere else in the airport.

Anyway, I wobbled down the stairs, into the morning sunlight and onto a bus that took us to the actual airport from where we landed far, far down the runway. Once inside we had to get our passports stamped by a man wearing a funny hat whose sole purpose, it seemed, was to squint at you over his fabulous mustachio with suspicion. I’m sure he practiced darting his eyes in a mirror to get the effect just right. Down another set of escalators we found ourselves in line at the first security check point. It involved the usual plastic bins that you dump your bag, laptop, and jackets into so that they can be scanned and rescanned. The difference between the German way and the American way of sorting things is this: the x-ray scanners were manned by impatient, German women who looked like they would make great bus drivers, or gym teachers… all of whom have that hard, tight-lipped look to them. And above all, these women did not tolerate anything but German. At the slightest sign of confusion or hesitation they would start to scream in German and wield their pokey sticks (they weren’t quite batons or sticks… their purpose could only be to poke people in the ribs and a few of these Battle-Axes looked like they would love nothing better than to make them electrified) and any attempt to ask a question was silenced by

“You LADY, move on! You LADY, in here, everything in here!”

So I dump everything rather unceremoniously into these plastic bins, I do get to keep my shoes on, but only after I took them off and got a sharp “YOU LADY. NO, SHOES ON!” So I shuffle on through the metal detector and retrieve my bag and jacket. My laptop, however, was lucky enough to have a short balding man hovering over it making clucking noises. He spots me hovering in his peripheral, trying to decide whether I should just leave the laptop and run, or fess up and see what the big deal is. I chose the latter.

“You… you come with me.” He states with a brisk nod.

He has me scoop up the laptop and follow him into a back office (the whole time the rest of my AIFS group are huddled around at the end of the check point like deer in the headlights because it doesn’t look like I’ll ever come back. For all they or I know, I’m headed to an interrogation that involves shouting “YOU LADY!” at me and shining a light in my eyes to get me to confess to whatever it is I’ve done). There are large German Shepherds on harnesses and a man with a Hitler-stachio behind a folding table. I’m officially freaked out.

“Open it.” ‘stachio man barks.

I do, and he wips out a paper towel and gravely starts to rub it all over my computer. Very seriously he takes the towel to what looks like a photocopier and buzzs around it for a couple of minutes. Finally he consults a binder and “hmmmming” for an appropriately scary length of time, comes back and says

“Okay, you’re free to go… but just know, we are always being behind you,” clicks his heels on the linoleum and whisks away.

By this time I’ve already thrown up on the plane, I haven’t eaten for almost 12 hours (soon to be 34 hours) or slept at all. This whole incident was simply icing on my cake from traveler-hell. But on the upside, I did get a sweet German stamp for my passport (totally not as exciting as it sounds, but I’d like it to sound pretty exciting for the moment because it was the first mildly awesome part of the whole ordeal). Now I’m in my apartment in Florence, enjoying this whole “consumption of food” idea and the sounds of our apartment ghost, whom I’ve named Earnest, scuffling around in the walls.

More updates to come….