Airports

The late Douglas Adams wrote that there no culture in the universe has ever invent a phrase like “beautiful as an airport”. Well, sorry Douglas, but I like airports. Of course they are ugly, but they are also full of possibilities. For example, if you have print your boarding pass at home in order to avoid the check in line, there is a possibility they won’t let you in, unless you go down to the terminal to check in and then come back to check for a third time (instead of two - the traditional method - or one - the on-line promise).

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, 'as pretty as an airport.', Douglas Adams 

The option of pre-printing your boarding passes (also called “on-line check in”) has been given to airplane travelers to help them avoid long terminal queues. The procedure is simple: after you buy your ticket (e.g. on-line) you can also “check in” on-line for free. If you do that, you will receive a file picturing a boarding pass, which you can print at your home printer. If you check in on-line, and you don’t have a luggage, you can walk directly to passenger control, saving valuable time for aimless wandering at the airport shops.

In my case, I had to wait a quite long line in passenger control to learn that in this specific airport they don’t accept manually print boarding passes. So, I had to go and check in the terminal and then come back to passenger control with a new boarding pass. The terminal check in line was only 2 passengers long, so face-to-face check-in took less than on-line. What’s more, I don’t have a printer at home, so I had to actually pay for my boarding pass to be printed! OK, that’s a lie, and here is the truth: I have access to a public B&W laser printer, but still I had to drive there with my car, wait some girl to finish her printing for 20 minutes and then print my boarding pass. Therefore, the on-line check-in was much slower than traditional.

Now I’m on a jet plane but I cannot have access to the real world (aka “the Internets”) because flight safety would be compromised if I could. The last 2 or 3 years I got used to travel between Aegean islands with those really small aircrafts that some people are so scared off. Of course it is a little scary to fly with a vehicle smaller than most buses, but your have to think positive: If, in a plane crash, there is only one survivor, the possibility to be you is greater if you are in a big plane. What’s more, the flight is so short that you don’t have much time to be afraid. Most of these flights include only two faces: take off and landing. The disadvantage of that is that you are not allowed to use your mp3 player at any point during the flight.

This plane is huge! The seats are narrow and not particularly comfortable, but the cabin is enormous! People are lost inside their seats and we are allowed to use our digital equipment for at least 3 hours, or even more! That’s a lot of digital equipmenting, especially if you don’t have the internets.

Diagoras Airport, Rhodes, Greece

So, what’s next? My flight arrives at Malpensa airport of Milan at midnight and I will have to find a way to spend the night at the airport, without exhausting my self too much. I plan to visit the center of the city early in the morning, drink some espresso (to revitalize) and return back to the airport early enough to catch my next flight to Lisbon. Trains leave from airport as early as 7:00 or something (I will check the timetable on spot) and they need about 1.5 hours to reach one of the central stations of Milan (apparently, there are more than one). This will give me 2 to 3 hours of Milan, so that I can catch the 12:00 train to the airport. If I can avoid tragic events and major accidents, I could be at the airport 2 hours before take off, at worst.

I know the last paragraph is boring, but might be useful to some people.