The perils of airtravel
"It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear." (Douglas Adams)
Coming to Bergen Airport Flesland is like a visit to post-communist Eastern Europe just after the fall of the wall. Contemporary Norwegians generally are just as friendly and service-minded as people elsewhere in the western world. Shop staff wants to sell, so they make you feel welcome. Not so at the airport. They behave like staffers in government shops in 1988ish Russia. They have no concern for selling, and as a customer you just get in the way.
This occurred to me immediately as I went to check in at Scandinavian Airlines. It's been a running joke in the travel industry that SAS (yes, the acronym is inexcusable, but there you go) has always employed stewardesses and other female staff exclusively by looks. You're a young, pretty model, and you're in, even if you have the mentality and intelligence of Mike Tyson. Add to that it being virtually impossible to fire anyone in Scandinavia, and you have an airline staffed by women who lost their looks in 1950 but still retained all other aspects of their personality. This is at least my theory about the rude lady in the checkin counter. I had never previously travelled ticketless when the flight was ordered and paid on somebody else's card, but the email instructed me that in such a case I would have to check in manually. Thus I went directly to the counter, to find myself being ridiculed by this staffer for not understanding that manual check-in was done at the same automatic machine everybody else used. Oh well.
I went to the automatic machine to do manual check-in, followed the prompts, and came back for another salvo, since I had entered zero pieces of check-in luggage and not one. In fact, the machine had not asked about luggage at all. Obviously, being a computer professional I knew exactly how dialogue boxes work and I have impeccable memory about such things, but got no hearing on this point. To cut a too long story short, I finally manged to get my luggage checked in and received my boarding card. Yay!
Ironically, the security officers were the only people being friendly and service minded. The three uniformed women knew that the metal detector was so sensitive that it reacted to iron in the blood, and were very patient with my attempts to find out why in the world the machine beeped at me as I emptied my pockets from keys, coins and pocket fluff. They also knew, unlike me, that military boots have steel in the soles. You learn something new every day.
Thus, having regained my faith in humanity I went through security and sat down to wait the few minutes until my flight was called. It wasn't. It was cancelled due to "technical problems." Now, that's a good one. Whenever two concecutive flights are half full, something mysteriously causes the first to experience "technical problems" so those of us who had booked the earlier flight will have to wait for the next. This typically happens in the evening, as they don't want to inconvenience business travellers too much, but us who bought budget tickets obviously don't deserve to receive what we paid for.
Looking around at my fellow non-travllers, it was easy to spot the smokers. With Norway's anti-smoking laws, everywhere indoor, except private homes, is non-smoking. If anybody wanted to smoke, they would have to leave the secure area, walk through the entire airport, have a smoke, and go through security again. As far as I could see, nobody was that desperate, but at this time it would be impossible to see the difference between a suicidal terrorist and a homicidal smoker going through withdrawals. On the other hand, any terrorist would probably have blown themselves up at the check-in counter.
This delay meant I was so hungry I was desperate enough to try airport food. I took some comfort in the fact that this had been outsourced to a good local pizza parlour (Peppe's pizza), but this was a mistake. The three young women behind the counter all had the Soviet mentality, moving slowly around and avoiding eye contact with any potential customer. At one point I loudly remarked to another customer that obviously nobody was working here. This customer, perhaps wisely, decided she was not very hungry after all. Then the line was reduced to a manageble size (me!), and one of the staffers decided to serve me. I ordered, handed in some cash and was rather surprised to find the woman behind the counter had no intention to hand me back my change. I was so astonished I didn't say anything. Fearing food poisoning, or worse, I meekly accepted having given her some very undeserved tip and waited for my slices of pizza. When I finally (and I mean finally) received my food I found that the pizza slices had been nuked. As I tried to eat them, I realised I would need a straw, as they were entirely liquid. I got my revenge by stealing an absurd amount of napkins to clean up. No KGB men came to take me away. It's the small victories that make life worth living. If nothing else, I was composing this blog entry in my head as I waited for my new flight to come up.
And, indeed, there were only minor further delays. I already knew that travelling just after recovering from a harsh cold meant the flight descent would be sheer hell. It was. And I couldn't hear anything for the first 24 hours or so after landing. As Rumsfeld would say, you go on a plane with the ears you have, not the ears you would wish you had.
Karma works. After landing in Oslo Airport Gardermoen, I was pleasantly surprised that my piece of luggage had not only failed to get to Vladivostok, it came out in the first batch.
Still, I am not particularly looking forward to my flight home.
2:56:18 PM 
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