A’s pointless chatter

I have always been magnetically drawn to airports; something about the atmosphere makes me still get goose bumps however many times I pass through. They are almost like a miniature globe, uniting people from all continents on relatively small space.
Some faces reflect excitement, nervosity even, I am guessing, also judging by the amount of the baggage, that this person in front of me hasn’t travelled extensively yet. People who travel for the first time, or haven’t traveled much seem to believe comfort can only be found at home, and thus make the impression of wanting to transport the sum of their belongings to their vacation destination. Those who have given in to the restless urge long ago know better though, if you want to avoid being treated like a tourist, the first step is to not stick out as one. Excess baggage will not only slow you down and turn the trip more into a working holiday than recreation, but it will also guarantee for looks from all directions. Keeping a watchful eye on your smorgasbord could be a good idea.

According to theories in urban and spatial planning, airports are the cities of the future. Spaces were people work, and even live, as demonstrated by Victor aka Tom Hanks in The Terminal, a movie based on a true story, featuring a visitor from Eastern Europe who is stranded at the JFK airport after war breaks out in his homeland and he is denied entry to the USA.
Aside from the tourism industry airports serve as a major factor in economy as a whole, and Hans Ibeling points out in Supermodernism how the urban core is shifting towards such alternative architectural spaces. The airport begins to funtion as a city of its own, incorporating vital functions of work, play and social interactions and networks.
Just like planners and architects have endowed these places with meaning beyond their function as a  transportation hub, I have always been intrigued by the element of transit and movement.
Millions of passangers, countless stories and recollections of their lives meet at some random point, maybe for the first and last time in their lives. I often wonder about the stories they could tell and find encounters at airports or on airplanes very interesting.

….such as this guy I met on a flight from Miami to Frankfurt and he told me his entire life’s story of how his ex-wife was in Germany, while he was living and working in Florida. He only saw his daughter, who was 10 at the time, maybe once a year.
On another occasion I met this young Swiss guy who was heading to New Zealand, for the very first time in his life, he had no real concept of where he was going, other than to live there for a year as part of a work exchange program. Somehow I rarely happen to sit next to the average tourist who leaves for 3-4 weeks, heading towards packade deal destinations they had booked months ahead.
I had a nice experience on my last flight to Las Vegas as well, the air con was relentlessly killing every speck of warmth before it even came about, and I was cold. We had just taken off and I didn’t see any of the flight attendants around to ask them for a blanket.
Suddenly this guy accross the aile reaches over holding a blanket in his hand that he wanted to hand to me. I felt almost as if he had read my thoughts because I had not yet made any seeming attempt to find a blanket or ask for one.
It was a small, tiny gesture, but significant enough for me to remember months later.
However fleeting such encounters may seem, and in their nature they truly are, sometimes they continue to become part of our memory and will suddenly be remembered, just like that, without a warning, without an aim or purpose.

Recently I had this conversation with a friend about the meaning of skin color and your whereabouts. He, a well educated, smart kid, scored a UN gig right upon graduation and just recently moved to Vienna for work. I asked him a couple of days ago how Vienna was treating him, and this triggered an emotional recollection of his latest adventures in the city that had given him a very mixed welcome. He is African American and even though people with darker skin color have become more and more an every day phenomenon, somehow the European mind has not quite yet warmed to the extra dosage of melanin.
He complained particularly about three incidents that had happened to him ever since he set foot on the old continent, subsequently moving to the city with the sound of never ceasing music eternalized by white composers centuries ago.
The most recent reminder of the country’s past that has long been wiped out in theory and history, while sadly sometimes still lingering in people’s minds had confronted him only a few days ago. He was out with friends in one of the districts with the largest percentage of immigrants alongside working-class natives. They went to some Irish pub whose name he had not revealed to me and were refused to be served. Supposedly they would only serve regulars there. What a bunch of bullshit! My friend did not feel the matter worth arguing and they moved on…on two more occasions he had encountered similar reactions when trying to enter a dance club.
He also told me about a friend of his, who was also in Vienna for work, working for the US State Department and also of African American descent. The guy had told him about his kid who was shunned by the other kids in school. Sadly, your lessons in life are often learned early on.

I met Jeff several months ago on the train heading to visit my parents for the weekend. I was reading The New Yorker and he addressed me in English where I had bought it because he had a hard time finding English magazines in town. I pointed him to a couple of places and we began to chat a little. He told me that he had just recently moved here from Liberia and was trying to make things work.
Before I got off I gave him my copy of the magazine that I had finished reading and apologised for one of the pages that were torn. He was really happy and we exchanged email addresses.
I haven’t seen Jeff ever since but we have emailed back and forth a few times. He has told me about his family. How his father had died back in 1996 during the war in Liberia, his mother and siblings were also forced to leave the country and he himself had escaped to Europe in hope of a better life.
It has been hard for him, people were not always welcoming, but in the meantime he has managed to find work in an African art shop and found a small apartment in Vienna.

Another friend had told me about this flight attendant he had met once on a flight. Apparently a very nice and charming lady and she told him this heartbreaking story, of how she had been engaged to a guy that she had dated for 11 years and just recently ended the engagement. They too were a mixed couple, she was African American, and somehow the gap to his side of the family could never be fully bridged. Eventually she gave up hope and decided to move on.

Stories like the ones above make sad, sad because you realize people are not being blamed for wrongdoing but for the essence of who they are. Does the extra dosage of melanin make such a difference in people’s minds? Apparently it still does. State legislation does guarantee for equal opportunities and does not make a difference in people’s complexion, in theory, in practise there is still a long way to go.

… I would nonetheless like to conclude with a positive counter example, simply to point out the other side and a shimmer of hope.
I had once started attending a legal anthropology class and my teacher was one of the most remarkable people I have ever met in my life. Equipped with two PhDs in law and anthropology he was also an amateur DJ, promoting Reggea, Ragga, and all related tunes. He was conveying the meaning of legal anthropology by playing Reggea songs and movie footage in class and often took a small group of students on one of his field trips to the African continent. He is the blackest white person I have ever met and a true inspiration. He could probably motivate even the last dozing idiot in class.
I too felt inspired and walked out of my first class with a string of new ideas. I emailed him the same day, talked about some of my thoughts and concerns regarding research and ethics etc. He responded soon after and thanked me for my input and asked for my permission to read out passages of my email in class without mentioning the author’s name. I agreed and later even forgot that I had done so. Next time I was sitting in class, unaware and unprepared he mentioned a student who had emailed him and that he would like to conclude the class by reading her email out loud. Even though he never mentioned my name I felt as if everyone around me knew that those were my words. I felt a little uneasy but was truly impressed that he dedicated a good portion of his class to discuss my ideas. This is how our brief exchange started. After class I responded to his input by email and we emailed back and forth a few more times before it fizzled out.
Nonetheless, I would like to acknowledge him at this point, for he has unbeknownst to him inspired me.