The airport at Frankfurt is a mess. The day is gray under a solid but not threatening overcast, which reinforces the busy impersonality of the airport environment. It has the personality of tin: dull and plain but with the possibility of cheap menace. Germany is not campaigning for smoke free environments, at least not in its airports, and so now the stale waves of cigarette smoke add a sense of dirtiness as a kind of supplement to the temporary walls.
Yet, there is drama here. I have walked corridors where exotic destinations are posted at each gate: Singapore, Budapest, Istanbul, Athens.
Many people are stretched out, sleeping, on the black naugahyde banks of seats. Is this airport (this country) so crime free that they need not worry to sleep while their bags lay nearby? Or is my concern about this, my own vigilance when traveling, a function of living in the U.S., where crime is a part of everyday life?
I miss my daughter.
In Denver, I had a window seat in a row of three. Just before departure, a pleasant 30 something dark haired woman hopefully took the aisle seat. Her actual seat assignment was for the middle seat. As the doors were locked down and the cabin pressurized, she let go one small breath, a sigh of relief. Toward the end of the flight, I asked her if she was from Houston. "No," she said, "Oregon." A neighbor to my own Idaho. "Where in Oregon," I asked. It turned out to be Bend, which she offered almost apologetically. Bend is a modest sized town in Eastern Oregon. It does not have a major airport, nor commercial service.
As it turns out, she had arisen at 4:30 am that morning, as had I. She had driven to Redmond, and then connected from there through Portland to Denver. She was the youngest of four children, traveling to attend her parents who had been involved in a serious automobile accident on Monday night. She was the only one of the children whose daily obligations permitted her to get away immediately for this emergency. Her youngest child is 7 months old; she is confident her husband can handle the brood while she is gone. Her mother is in serious condition in a Houston hospital, but perhaps, she says, this is more precautionary than a sign of critical injury. But she is coming because her father needs her. He is not badly hurt, was released from a local hospital after being briefly seen at the emergency room -- just scratches. But his wife is badly hurt, and his world has been threatened. The various family members in Texas -- uncles, aunts, cousins to my traveling mate -- are doing what they can, but he needs her. Only the slightest hint of the anxiety shows behind her calm brown eyes.
The Lufthansa flight from Houston to Frankfurt was uneventful. Briefly, though, I must commend them on better than (American) average food in the "Economy Cabin." When we awoke this morning, we even got warm towellettes. It turns out, these look like, but are not, cloth. They must be one of those woven papers that approximates cloth. I know this because I had 1.5 days of beard, and after indulging this little "towel", I and my stubble had rubbed much of it it opaque (or worse).