On Airports, Joys of Flying and Pilots,Our Modern-Day Heroes

Ask me anytime for my favourite place in the whole world and I’ll tell you anytime it’s a
draw between cinemas and airports. I’ve always considered cinemas a place that gave a
final touch to making me an intellectual that I hopefully am and airports, a place from
which I took off to the world and from which the process of making me broadly
cosmopolitan and intensely local commenced.

I’ve recently seen Love Actually for, probably, the tenth time and given that it’s a feel-
good-about -yourself film whose opening and closing scene is set on Heathrow, it got me
thinking about the whole love behind sky harbours.

I remember my first flight ever that took me to London Heathrow and the joy of looking
out of the window to see the curves of The Thames and to hum the theme of Eastenders.
Walking the halls of Heathrow felt like entering a whole different world, a beginning of
an adventure, the thrill then was simply immense. The dance has indeed continued since
then as Heathrow has welcomed me on numerous occasions and even once offered the
cosiest sofa to crash on whilst waiting for my flight. The routine is always the same,
watch The Thames, land in joy, breathe the cool air, run off to the tube or to Paddington
Express. To this day, whenever flying to London, I insist that I land on Heathrow, and the
same quirky routine ensues.

I often travel and many a times it’s to escape the everyday humdrum. It is often that I
insist on travelling alone as I enjoy meeting new people and hearing their stories and
where better to start than on a plane. I’ll never forget this elderly gentleman sitting next
to me on board a plane to Rome Fiumicino telling me to beware Italians and their
“overly pushy flattering”. When I asked him why he was going to Rome, he replied that
he was only in transit en route to Melbourne and that he visited his homeland, Serbia, to
feast on its beautiful countryside and eat its delicious food maybe for the last time in his
life. Long time ago, he made Melbourne his home, and now he was heading back to it,
but the love of the homeland was just impossible to ignore.

Airports definitely bring us together, and what I love most about the process of it is
bringing people of the ex, once war-stricken, Yugoslavia, together. I always think about
those meetings with a lot of nostalgia and love.

Scene 1- Arlanda airport, Stockholm. Waiting in a hellishly long line to check in for a
flight to Copenhagen. A bloke approaches me and asks something in fluent Swedish.
Despite elementary knowledge, I don’t understand him. I ask him: ,,What are you trying
to tell me? “. He doesn’t understand English, but manages to utter: “ Where you from?”,
to which I answer – Serbia. ‘’A, reci tako, bona! “ ( Bosnian for – Why didn’t you tell me
that , dear ?). Emir is a Bosnian from Sarajevo who settled in Stockholm with his family
during the 90s war in the Balkans. I learn he is my age and that he works as a mechanic.
I tell him of my Scandinavian tour, my pursuit of photos of gangsta hoods and how I
traveled 19 metro stops to the farthest point of Stockholm to see what I expexted to be a
ghetto. He laughs and replies: “Rinkebi, bona!” ( ‘’Rinkenby, my dear! “ ) as it is
supposed to be the kind of place I was looking for. To be remembered for the future
reference. We talk some more about our childhoods, his in a war-time Sarajevo, mine in
embargo-stricken Serbia,I ask him how he felt leaving his homeland, growing up in a
land that just wasn’t his own, to which he unwillingly admits it was very difficult. I think
it a serendipity that we meet away from our neighbouring countries, but also tragic to an
extent. Whoever suffered the perils of war will know why. We part as the Sarajavo-bound
flight is announced. I wish Emir all the luck in this world.

Scene 2- Up in the air, flying from Charleroi to Budapest, sitting next to a woman and
her son, her daughter and husband in front of us. The husband is grumpy, his ipod having
broken down and he keeps complaining- Sladjo, jebo ga Bog, pa on se ponovo pokvario!
( Serbian for Fuck it, Sladja, it’s broken down again! ) I hear the Croatian accent to it
and laugh to myself, to this childish man. Sladja, the wife, now wants to get her bag from
the overhead compartment and asks me in bad English do to so, I answer in Serbian
thinking she would be pleased. Handing the bag over to her, she says thank you and I just
think- Bloody Serbs, bloody Croast, whatever she is as the Balkan people are generally
exhilarated to meet fellow Balkaners. She apparently snubbed me and it was a slap to my
pride. Upon that her kids start laughing realizing she didn’t figure out I was Serbian.
They give me a wink. I think it hilarious, too. We land in Budapest only to realize that we
have the same driver to take us to Belgrade. The husband recognizes me and shouts- Pa,
sto ne rece, sestro Srpkinjo ! ( Serbian for – Why didn’t you say it was you, our Serbian
sista ! ) We have a blast during our trip to Serbia . They tell me how they fled Croatia
during the war and initially settled in Norway, after which they moved to Charleroi,
Belgium. The story of their struggle moves me deeply. We still keep in touch. In fact, me
met up in Belgrade a few months ago and had a good laugh at the whole situation on
board.

Scene 3, preparing to take off to Charles De Gaulle, Paris, I observe a bloke who looks
incredibly familiar. I don’t know where I know him from. He is holding a book, a
Penguin Classic. Still doesn’t ring a bell. The plane takes off and he lifts the book slightly
above his head and starts reading. I think of an old friend whom I met on a plane and
who used to do the same, the same move, the same publisher, I remember, it was
Conrad’s Lord Jim. Throughout the flight I am reluctant to ask him anything, we land
when I tell myself that it just might be him. But he seems to have gone out. We meet again
at the belt and I just need to say – Phillipe- to get him laughing and saying – Jebo te,
Mico , znao sam da si ti ! – Serbian for – Fuck it, Mico, I knew it was you. From the
replies so far you must have gathered that, we , Serbs, like to swear a lot. Trust me, we
only do that when we care too much. As, I was saying, Phillipe is in transit, flying to
Marseille and I am about to start a lovely Parisian holiday. Needless to say, we
continued to kick it back home and we tell everyone about our De Gaulle meeting.

Numerous are the occasions when hilarious things happened in the waiting lounges, or
on board thus proving why airports are so dear to me, like this one time at the lounge at
Copenhagen International where we waited for our flight to Schiphol, Amsterdam. I have
never seen a more diverse gang, starting from two conservative looking Arabic families,
dreamy teenage couples sitting on the ground, reading travel guides, two inquisite boys
running around a gigantic pot with a gigantic plant next to which was buried a bottle of
beer. They keep pointing to it and asking their father – Papa, Pap, darf man das
machen ? – German for, daddy, daddy, is one allowed to do that ? ). And to a gang of
three alcohol thirsty young men who keep cheering after every can of beer drunk and that
is at every five minutes – We’re going to Amsterdam, AAAAAAA and of course, yours
truly, Amsterdam lover, as well, but for different reasons obviously ! We enter the plane,
it takes off, and then the most hilarious thing in the history of flying happens, the steward
announces that someone forgot their knickers in the lounge and asks the owner to go to
the cabin crew to fetch them. You are assuming right to think that the owner didn’t do
that and we all have a jolly good laugh when the steward walks the aisle waving the bag
with the knickers in question in them. I reckon they never got back to their owner, but we
landed in joy!

And , it must be the most delightful of all replies as we ran into turbulence while landing
in London from Frankfurt, a plane packed with people heading to the UK to witness the
royal wedding. A little boy is scared and he asks his mom what is going on, she tells him
all is fine, they are landing in London. “Jawohl, endlich heiraten wir uns !,says he ( Yay !
We are finally getting married ! 

I am indeed a massive fan of airports and everything that is going on at and around
them, I love to be greeted by the sight of an old trabant in front of Tegel, Berlin, or the
modernity of San Francisco International, or the vibrant atmosphere at Phoenix Sky
Harbour , Arizona, I adore memorizing their names, I love explaining fellow travelers
where I come from, that Serbia is not Siberia or Syria, and in case of some Americans
that I am not a Soviet,I love hearing their stories. I love the moment I enter an airport as
I know it will take me to new stories, to knowledge and a greater peace of mind. I admire
pilots, my modern-day heroes who make it all happen, theirs is the voice I trust.

To them and all the fellow travellers I dedicate this tiny insight into the soul of an avid
traveller, to those who make me laugh, who hear me out and whom I listen to, to those
who hold my hand during a turbulent landing and to those who take me to the most
amazing places, to those who see me off and wait for me to arrive for they make it a
lovely world, where we leave only to come back, where we are lost but also found, where
we are happy to reunite with old friends and meet new ones, thus proving that luckily, no
man is an island.