We are so weaned from traveling that the question arises: is it worth breathing into a bag for nine hours?
And the American visa disputes that drag on for days, which make you think you're applying for a green card for life, but it's just about a boarding pass: Are they worth getting up in the middle of the night and walking to a cold, drafty platform? wait?
But then at the airport the ATM with a loose connection, flickering crazy. The huge Dreamliner Boeing outside in the sleet, which was just standing there lifeless, in which the light suddenly goes on and the long row of hatch windows illuminates yellow, as if a child had turned on its Märklin transformer. But then there's the woman pushing a suitcase almost as tall as she is. The family in sweatpants and flip-flops going on a long-haul flight, Karl Lagerfeld's nightmare or the ways of travelling?
The man in uniform on the small folding bicycle, bringing documents from one gate to the other like a postman. The blinking truck of the "Sky Chefs" that whizzes across the dark runway, they still need rolls across the Atlantic, almost grotesquely busy, as if everything here was "accidentally Wes Anderson", as recently promised in a illustrated book inspired by his films, a fairytale setting come true.
The treadmills are now getting faster, too, and as you slide along them, with every step, those voices that have chanted "flight shame" for years recede into the distance, and voices swell to whisper another word, more clearly: "bonus miles." ' soon it's an obscene murmur, 'Bonus miles, start earning now!' and outside the rosy twilight is already that of Newfoundland and the gummy buns become fragrant bagels and the coffee mug is the size of a beer mug and the ones between the Terminal's commuting elevated train is suddenly the elevated train in the Chicago Loop, squeaking and rattling in the curves, and then the skyline in front of Lake Michigan emerging from the haze – and yet those are still the lights of Frankfurt-Niederrad that are shining there, it's five o'clock O'clock in the morning,Nothing has moved yet, and it's cold and quiet on the platform.