I must be a terrible customer service representative.
That’s what the quality of service at these “Self-service kiosks” suggests.
It’s 3:30 am, and I’m wandering around the Copenhagen airport looking for a kiosk that will accept my passport to give me a boarding pass and luggage tag, because what human can function at 3:30 am? Clearly not this human.
After three attempts, I’ve finally tagged my bag and dropped it at the counter (self-service, of course). Apparently I am traveling with a group of poor-service individuals, as they are all waiting in line for the agent-in-the-flesh to print their documents. So while I wait for them, I sit down to have a snack – and commend myself for the fantastic food service.
Security was the usual zigzag line among a sea of stanchions, but the Danes – seemingly weary of adjusting the lane lines – have moved to automatic gates to herd the masses. We were bumped and thumped into position by pivoting paddles that pushed us into longer lines; at one point, a traveler was suddenly separated from her luggage by the waist-high panels inspired by an episode of Wipeout.
After our relatively short flight from Copenhagen to Paris, we began a convoluted journey via two buses, a half dozen escalators, a handful of zigzagging queues, and passport control to reach our gate just as boarding was scheduled to start. Unfortunately, the line to board held about 200 persons, so our takeoff was still 1 hour of standing at the gate and 45 minutes of airplane sitting away.
Once seated on the plane, my thoughts are given an unwelcome audience. It’s probably just the jet lag, the nearing end of an adventure, and my altered snack schedule, but I’m petrified.
This trip has come at such a pivotal point in my life story. I am so happy to have seen this band of strangers become familiar; perhaps even family-ar. In the past two weeks, I’ve felt my voice coming back, my spirit pressing at the walls of the shell that’s hardened with time and with lack of disturbance. I fear that this moment in time will crumble to dust; that I will return home and fall into the same routine, the same doldrums that hardened this armored hull around my heart. That these new friendships, early and tenuous as they are, will fall into disrepair for lack of intentional investment.
Perhaps that is what I am learning most in this season of life: intentionality. That I must live life on purpose; only accidents just happen.
I slept relatively deeply for the first 90 minutes of the flight, and was uncharacteristically very sad to feel the thump of my tray table on my thighs as a hot lunch was placed there. I sorrowfully pulled off my neck pillow, distraught to be leaving my nap for some limp vegetables on couscous, but unwilling to let the food cool and lose the blessed heat that makes airplane food palatable.
It’s a very concerning sign when Jess would do something rather than snacking.
After nine cramping hours, we began our approach for landing in Atlanta. Tray tables up, seat backs in their original upright position, we craned our necks to see out the window as loblolly pines and red Georgia clay sped into focus. I pressed my feet into the floor, bracing for impact, then felt the firm pressure of my seat back pressing into my back/seat as we accelerated quickly, watching the ground fall away as we ascended. The ETA on the seat back monitor jumped from 0:01 to 0:10, and I looked at Julie, confused.
The Air France attendant made an announcement over the intercom in French – of which I understood nearly 50% – and then again in a heavily-accented, rapid English that dropped my comprehension level to 30%. Something something about the runway not available for touchdown, we’ll circle again.
It felt like the adult version of “down low, too slow” high fives. We didn’t even have to pay extra!
Perhaps we’ll never know why we didn’t touch down. I suspect (I cannot confirm, for I did not inspect his collar closely) that the captain had a cape and really just enjoys buzzing and swooping.
We spilled off of the plane in a haggard procession of flopping neck pillows and bleary gazes, stumbling to baggage claim to retrieve our luggage. I felt the hair on my neck standing on end and turned my head to see my sister pointing at me, a TSA officer headed my way with a purposeful step.
We had been selected for a random agricultural screening at customs. We grabbed our suitcases and were pulled aside into a fluorescent-lit, drywall cubicle with a monstrous x-ray machine. The officer began asking questions as my mind went blank.
Why don’t I remember anything I packed? Seeds, fruit – I don’t know!!! Where am I traveling? Who am I staying with? I have no clue, I’m just a blubbering, jetlagged, confused woman who is just barely successful in resisting the urge to clutch her hunk of Danish bread to her chest and make a run for it.
The officer continued with the interrogation as she opened our luggage and sorted through it. She asked if we had any natural items, and I continued to remember nothing of the items I had stuffed carefully around delicate souvenirs. She lifted up a small, forgotten, Swedish-lakeside rock from my suitcase and looked at me, met only by a dumb stare as my reason for not declaring any “natural items”.
“Natural items – like sticks, leaves, ROCKS, soil…” she listed slowly and deliberately.
She was really very nice – I just wilt in the face of any inkling of wrong-doing.
We finally emerged to cheers and face-reddening applause as we pulled our recombobulated suitcases to the arrivals hall. We stepped out onto the Hotlanta asphalt and boarded our final coach bus, our group whittled down from 33 to 19 riders (a pretty good retention rate if you ask me – but that’s probably why I wasn’t in charge of counting heads).
I enjoyed more delightful and meaningful conversations on the bus ride to the host university campus, then a flurry of hugs in a muggy Tennessee parking lot before heading back to “real life”; for Julie and I, a weekend with a six-year-old, pool-swimming, Super Mario-phile.
What a rich experience this has been! And, according to the message on our Scandinavian tour bus, an experience that changed only my life as the token sub-35 year-old.
On to the next adventure! Tak så mycket for joining me. ❤️
Conversations on El Camino 