“Do you know where you are going?” the flight attendant asks. It doesn’t matter how snappily I dress, whether I slap on lipstick or pin my hair out of my face: people seem to think I am lost.
“Of course I do,” I reply, indignantly. “To Europe.” “I meant,” she says, “your seat number.” First things first, I guess – like the nine-hour flight to Amsterdam in Economy Class. I have been commissioned to write an article because, as my editor says, anyone who gets homesick leaving the house to go grocery shopping in Masset is bound to have a unique perspective on international travel.
I head down the aisle, searching for the small allocation of uncomfortable personal space that will be home to me for the flight’s duration. A man of generous proportions occupies the aisle seat in my designated row. I never book a window seat, but rather than accuse him of stealing my spot, I diplomatically suggest he might like to change places. “I get up and down quite frequently,” I say.
“So do I,” he replies, a touch competitively. He volunteers that he spends a good deal of his time in the air because of the exciting and interesting nature of his job. What is he, some kind of flu germ? Just my luck to get stuck next to him.
I barely get my seat belt buckled before the flight attendant begins the safety lecture.
She demonstrates how to put on a life jacket, which can be inflated by pulling the red tags. In Economy, life jackets are under our seats; in Business Class, under the armrests. I assume “under the arm rests” means easier to access as we plunge towards shark-infested waters.
All life jackets, the flight attendant continues, come equipped with a whistle for attracting attention. My seatmate leans over, smelling of turnips left to fester in a not-so- fine wine. “We fall screaming out of the sky, we’re all going to die in a twisted wreck of burning metal,” he says. “Attracting attention is going to be the least of our worries.”
The flight attendant recommends we familiarize ourselves with the safety instructions, a fold-over portraying hapless passengers pathetically trying to brace themselves for an imminent collision with Mt. Fujiyama. “The Stations of the Crash,” my seatmate says, referring to the series of drawings of doomed humans leaning forward, hands covering heads. When this remark gets a smile out of me, he takes it as a sign that I am game to hear the intimate details of his personal life, commencing in utero.
I learn he is “in pharmaceuticals” and that some of the biggest consumers of pharmaceutical drugs are airline pilots. I’m about to ask him what kind of drugs when our pilot – or someone with a deep reassuring pilot-like voice – comes on the intercom to say we will be experiencing a delay due to a small mechanical problem. Is any problem small, I wonder, when it comes to the mechanics of an aircraft?
I glance out my window and see a fire truck pull up under the wing. In the bowels of the plane, a frantic dog starts barking. I hope he doesn’t know something we don’t know.
My seatmate assures me no one is going to fly a plane that isn’t safe because the pilot wants to live just as much as the rest of us. How does he know that, I wonder. Hasn’t he ever heard the term kamikaze?
To pass the time, I peruse the guide my editor has given me: EUROPE FROM $700 A DAY. I trust the preposition “from” is an attempt at travel-humour – it is ten times my per diem – but my seatmate, who has been snooping over my shoulder – says they got the title right anyway, in Frankfurt last week he bought bottled water and it cost $7.00.
The flight attendant distributes newspapers and I see that it is Tuesday. Every Tuesday, around 2 p.m., I climb into my half ton and travel the ten kilometres to the Co-op to buy groceries. If this is Tuesday I’m not meant to be in Amsterdam.
The mechanical problem, the barking dog – I see these, too, now, as signs. I ask my seatmate to excuse me; I was confused when I boarded the plane and now I have to get off. He’s given me enough material for the good part of my article, and I can invent the rest. A “unique perspective”, after all.
I remember reading that the time to really enjoy a European trip is about three weeks after unpacking. “Today I returned from Amsterdam,” I begin scribbling, as my suitcase comes flying down the luggage carousel to meet me.
Bio Note: Susan Musgrave has recently returned from a trip to Vancouver. It is the only thing to do, she says, if you find yourself there.
