Airports for Dummies

Part I
The pile of newspapers outside the entrance to the plane should have been a warning. This flight from Denver to Frankfurt was going to be one of those flights we needed to entertain ourselves on.

On my right sat a German woman with a sarcastic sense of humor and an incredible life story as one of the first European women to live in Nigeria. The man to my left was from Eritrea, and eagerly taught me some of the local language.

I read, I ate, I slept, and I chatted, and soon I was in Frankfurt.

Part II
Landed in Frankfurt. Fortunately, my German studies allowed me to answer 'danke' and 'bitte' to questions asked to me in English. Unfortunately, it did not leave me with the means to say, "Can you find out what happened to my missing friend!"

As travelers left the Gate and hopped on buses to be driven to the waiting plane, the nice Kiwi lady I was whiling away the time with must have begun to worry if I was coming down with some new form of Tourettes as my head whipped back and forth like a high-speed lighthouse beam.

On the other hand, the emptying Gate area left me with lots of space to pace. I learned that Tarika's flight had just landed and I stared at the stairs (the only way into this area of the airport) wishing for her to appear. In fact, if staring at a spot and wishing for something to happen could make people appear, Tarika would have shown up twenty times over. But she never did walk down those stairs.

Nope. Never.

Instead she shows up standing right behind me having been bussed from her flight directly to the Gate. Now that's German ingenuity!

We met a couple named Reed and Staci that may have been following Tarika from Dulles. Staci had moved from Denver to Arlington not too long ago, but I seem to find doing things the other way around preferable! They ended up sitting in the seats directly behind us, earning themselves an impromptu Swedish lesson if they cared to eavesdrop. It was another murderously long flight, but at least there were tv's on the seats, even if the touch screens were temperamental.

Part III
The airport at Addis Ababa was an adventure in and of itself. People moved in herds and assistance, though present, was difficult to come by. Since I needed to pick up luggage and Tarika needed a boarding pass, this made life slightly difficult. Often all we'd get is a point and a wave, which we interpreted to mean, "Proceed to the Gate. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200." The fourth person we came across, sitting at a desk just outside the security checkpoint, was particularly memorable in his brevity. We were imperiously waved ahead with a abruptly spoken "Yes okay," as we explained our needs.

Even the security line was entertaining as we moved at a snails pace while being serenaded to the Barney song by a mother to her fussy baby.

At the Gate we received the biggest surprise yet. The guy at the desk looked up Tarika's info and started writing things down on a piece of paper. Finally he handed her the slip - it was her boarding pass.

From me he took my luggage claim ticket, got out one of those round dot stickers you can by in packs of 100 at the dollar store which he used to stick the claim to his desk, and told me to check in with him again right before boarding. No surprise, but this did not engender much confidence, but as we had been sitting all day and this was the way things were done, there wasn't much to do about it.

But to get a real perspective on the Ethiopian psyche (Or at least those that frequent airports) we only had to look across the hall to where three men were casually smoking directly underneath a no smoking sign.

Reed and Staci joined us for the last leg of the journey, once again sitting one row behind us. We sat with a Kenyan now living in Dallas named Cyprian, but whom we dubbed Dallas.

Trying to catch up on my sleep, I told people not to wake me until food came... and I suppose I jinxed myself because of that. The stewardess came by early to show me that they had my food at it was sealed, and they would now go to heat it up. Oh well, it seems that I've started a habit of only sleeping one to two hours at a time.

The next part is hard to write because tragedy struck. Again and again I watched bags that weren't mine file past and get picked up. Finally I had to ask, "are any more bags coming?"

Let me tell you: filling out lost baggage forms at 1:30 am local time is depressing. We settled in for the night right there in the baggage claim area, with the clamor of shifting property as our lullaby. Another hour or two of sleep for each of us was about all we took.

A couple of Mzungu crashing at baggage claim was the highlight for some of the airport workers. We had guys stopping by to chat throughout the night. One worker even promised to personally check into my missing luggage and gave us his mobile number. Even a foreigner stopped by to ask if we knew what happened to his missing bag - I guess leaning against our packs, covered in travel blankets sitting on those plastic chairs (which we somehow made look comfortable) made us look like baggage claim experts.