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.