Firstly, I must admit I never quite appreciated enough what Axel went through twice already to be with me in New Zealand. The journey across the Pacific, and then across America, and then across the UK, is pure hell. I thought I was au fait with globe-trotting, but when I come to think of it, I've always travelled to Europe via stop-overs in Australia and Europe. Airports and aeroplanes are a special kind of hell where one becomes some kind of reanimated human raisin with bloodshot eyes.
I thank Cara for Ursula Le Guin's Changing Planes, which provided not only for some excellent entertainment but also an expression of my inner thought: "On the airplane, everyone is locked into a seat with a belt and can move only during very short periods when they are allowed to stand in line waiting to empty their bladders until, just before they reach the toilet cubicle, a nagging loudspeaker harries them back to belted immobility. In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell... So far, then, the airport and the airplane are equal, in the way that the bottom of one septic tank is equal, all in all, to the bottom of the next septic tank."
We spent 47 hours in travel total, and it was 59 hours between when we woke up in Wellington and when we finally got into bed in Stockholm. We had about six hours of sleep total in between. The Samuel L. Jackson film would have been much scarier if it had been Babies on a Plane. Hideous hideous experiences, with even more hideous plane breakfasts and overpriced airport sandwiches, but at least I had an excuse to watch endless chick-flicks and light comedies- Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2 (I actually cried), How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.
I now know the true meaning of jet-lag, proof positive that if God had meant people to fly he'd have given us wings.
No comments:
Post a Comment