Odyssey (4/4)

This night and the ensuing day really made me fulfilled in my status as a world traveler. I crossed the territory of seven countries and an ocean in a period of fourteen hours, and, looking back, the whole time I took it in stride. The most stressful moments of the whole affair were when I was still at Charles de Gaulle waiting to see if Scandinavian Airlines would accept my e-ticket.

I killed some time at CDG by writing the BOOM! post, then asked some girls from New York to watch my stuff and walked around to find the SAS desk. I went to sleep on the floor at around 1 and woke up again at four. As I trudged to the bathroom I noticed the rope lines for SAS were up, so I got my bags and stolidly sat down in front of the desk to wait.

No one else showed up until just before five. One guy came to stand beside me, then two girls, then a whole bunch of people started queuing up to my right. Five o’clock came and Lufthansa and TAP Portugal started operating their ticket desks, but no one came to SAS. At five twenty a bunch of those waiting next to me started leaving, and I almost did too to see what they knew that I didn’t, but then they started lining up again, this time behind me. I love the feeling that you were right and Everyone Else was wrong.

Scandinavians are never late, nor are they early; they arrive exactly when they mean to. Finally, at five forty, the SAS desk finally opened. The man at the counter simply asked for my passport and handed me my boarding pass. My luggage was marked heavy, but I wasn’t charged extra for it. Happily, I mounted the space-age moving ramp to the second floor to find my gate.

French security was annoying. I asked to have my film inspected visually so as to spare it a further risk of radiation, but they still put it through the machine. Apparently films under 1200 ISO can be used to smuggle explosives, but over 1200 are perfectly safe. They also confiscated my tiny Swiss Army knife on my keychain.

I was unconscious for most of the flight from Paris to Copenhagen.

Copenhagen Airport is like one gigantic mall, duty free shops everywhere I picked up some Danish alcohol and Swedish chocolate for my family, and got change for my euros in pretty silver kroner coins. I forewent getting food for myself, because I knew they’d serve lunch on the plane for free.

The transoceanic SAS plane was really nice. Each seat had a screen in the back that was continually playing fifteen different movies at once through the whole flight. I had time to watch Monsters vs. Aliens, Dragonball Evolution, Duplicity, Batman Begins, and part of Chicago. And I played two long games of Tetris. And I wrote the third blog post. The food was good, almost as well-prepared as the food on British Airways.

Finally we touched down at Dulles. The line moved pretty quickly through Customs. I got flagged because I was carrying a small bouquet of lavender and sent to a nearby inspection area. My assigned inspector was a very courteous Latina woman, not at all like the Parisian guards who treated me like a dangerous criminal. After x-raying my luggage, she told me I could keep the herbs. I couldn’t believe it, the system actually works! Must be a relic from the days before 9/11 and Bush.

I walked out of the gate and into the arms of my mother and my brother.

My father actually took a flight back early from his conference in San Diego, hoping to meet me in the airport, but since it was later than mine, he surprised us by showing up at home.

That evening we had hamburgers and corn on the cob.

Slept thirteen hours, and now I’m here.