A day in the air

Abu Dhabi airport seems to have not kept up with Etihad's ambitious growth plans. There were bottlenecks in passenger handling, and the older gates in the circular terminal, which seemed to have been modelled after Paris CDG, butt of Jacques Tati lampooning, did not have enough seats.

I spotted what looked like a queue of people for a glass booth. Must be trying to get to a public phone, I thought at first glance. Wait a moment, who uses public phones these days when everyone has a mobile. On second look, yes it was indeed a smoking booth for tobacco addicts.

At Münich airport I had intended to get a bite at the Thai restaurant, but seeing the offer of weisswurst, mustard, pretzel and weissbier (wheat beer) I thought: when in Münich, etc. When I asked for the special, the assistant pointed me to the self-service area. Ah, of course. Then I had trouble understanding what the lady was saying about tablett until I realised it was German for tray. I took my meal in the small football themed open air eating area. It was a sunny cool day with temperatures in the high teens. A group of nearby Turks were amused by me taking a picture of my meal. There was no escaping being labelled as a tourist anyway.

It seems that you can even buy an iPad from this vending machine. One up on the Japanese.

Palma de Mallorca airport is huge as it has to handle a flood of tourist traffic in season. I was worried when my backpack had not come out when everybody else had left. Then I spotted it on a nearby belt, this one in the non-EU area. I had wondered how they would let me bring in baggage without inspection on entering the EU if my baggage was checked through and lumped with those of all the other tourists on the internal EU flight from Munich. Now I knew. I wish they had told me this when I checked in at Sydney. In the event, the inspection station was not running.

I caught the city bus to the combined metro and bus station. It was only supposed to be a 15 minute walk but I got a bit lost not following the map instructions to the letter and wasted some minutes retracing my path. Finally I reached the hotel and got to bed around 2300 local time, which was 0700 back home. Amazing that I was still cogent by then. I had stayed up late in the nights preceding but it was way past my bed time.