The Happy Hermit

The following are some disjointed observations and thoughts I scribbled down while on a Ryanair flight from Bari to Cagliari (both in Italy) on 24 May 2014:

• Bari Airport. Where you pay more for a piece of cake than you paid for your flight.
• The same people who 15 years ago insisted on taking all of their household items on holiday are now too stingy to pay for an extra bag and are suddenly able to restrict themselves to exactly 10 kg.
• Help! Why is there no airline that doesn’t fly children?
• As soon as the gate opens, why do people jump from their comfortable seats to stand in a long line, to wait in the stairwell, to wait in a bus, to wait on the tarmac? There are seats for everyone. No need to fight for them.
• Why can’t I bring my cat aboard a plane? It would certainly cause less trouble than all these children.
• People don’t trust air travel a lot, it seems. Why else would they all be on their phones for as long as they can before take-off, as if going on a 6-month mission into space?
• Only 17 % of people on a plane can entertain themselves without using electronic gadgets.
• Cute: people sitting next to me on a plane asking me “are you going to X as well?” – I am always tempted to say “no, this flight goes to Afghanistan”.
• Why are there prayers before city council meetings, but not before a flight?
• I still don’t get the logic behind having to give up a can of Coke when walking through security, but then I can just buy a new can of Coke from the shops behind the security barrier and take them aboard.
• It’s also kind of inconsistent that I have to give up a bottle of water, but I can keep a pen made out of metal. I can kill people with a pen.
• After writing this, I am worried that pens will be banned from aircraft.
• Actually, after writing this, I am worried that I will be banned from flying altogether.
• I still remember the time when smoking was allowed on planes. Passengers could indicate whether they wanted to sit in the smoking section which was at the rear of the cabin. However, there was often no physical separation, thus allowing the smoke to circulate freely. Nervous flyers ensured a constant supply of new smoke. – I was a non-smoker at that time and was terribly annoyed by the smell. Meanwhile I have picked up the habit of smoking cigars and I wonder how the cigarette smokers would feel about being engulfed in a large cloud of cigar smoke for all of their flight.
• Don’t worry about the smell when I take off my shoes. It will have dissipated in a few minutes.
• Children on flights should be given a mandatory sedation.
• Don’t bother trying to get a seat next to that attractive girl. She won’t speak to you.
• Clouds. Everyone must be thinking the same when flying above them.
• If you have never flown across the snow-covered Alps, you haven’t seen the most beautiful sight in Europe.
• Why do airlines sell everything aboard, except life insurance policies?
• The yellow interior of Ryanair planes strikes me as a color not very helpful for people prone to become sick on flights.
• The boats in the bay of Naples look like white vectors on blue canvas.
• Parents: when your child has thrown up, don’t feed him/her more food!
• Are flight attendants trained not to display any sign of fear or worry even during the wildest turbulence?
• Considering how much more comfortably short/small people can sleep on a plane, evolution should actually make humans become smaller again in the future.
• Cagliari Airport. Where you have to walk such a distance to its train station that you might as well walk all the way into the city itself.
• When I see these people waiting at airports with signs, I always want to introduce myself as the person whose name is shown on the sign, just to see where they will take me.
• It would also be funny to copy somebody’s sign and stand next to that person, telling the arrival that the other person is an evil copycat.
• Or to put a famous name on a sign, wait in the arrival hall and let all the photographers gather around you.
• If there was only one airline in the world, I would already have collected enough miles for a free flight.

(Zur deutschsprachigen Fassung.)