“Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
I finally got to the airport and I was so lucky to have whole three and a half hours until my next flight. It’s not like I flew to the north to get way more south that I was before because they did not have a one way option and I still shortened my travelling from 14 hours with the train to… well to 45 minutes to the airport + 90 minutes waiting, check in and security, about 60 minutes flight, about 3 hours waiting and then about 120 minutes for the next flight – which flies over the city I started from and then of course the three hours with the bus to get from the airport in Naples to Amalfi. Phew, good thing I’m travelling hand luggage only.
What I did not see because of the cheap price and because of the short time frame I had to book and because I really did not want to travel 14 hours by train + the bus from Naples to Amalfi, are the details of my travel to get back home.
We started today at 7.30 from the Hotel L.B. which is not the hotel I was staying in because they were overbooked – more later – with the bus. The time was appropriate for people who usually get up at 8, the ride was really nice – sunny day, freezing setting of the air conditioner in the bus – nice view of the sea and then of the Vesuvius. It took us only two hours to get to the airport which gave us the right amount of time to prepare for our flight at five past two. we had already checked in online, no luggage to check in, no cigarettes left to smoke. Since my colleague who I met there a few days earlier is always as prepared for all situations as I am, he realised that his phone had died. The online check in is more environmentally friendly, hence he was not able to show his ticket. We quickly went to the flight company boot to get him his boarding pass, but this is only possible three hours before the flight, even though he theoretically already got a ticket. So, we sat at the airport, drank one last espresso, ate one last testa di moro that in sum were way cheaper than in S. and went on mindlessly scrolling, well I did. He took out his laptop and started I don’t know what but theoretically he could have boarded scanning the code from the laptop – but we really did not want to try that. The hours passed as fast as if we were listening to an audio book of the bible read in old Greek language.
We arrived in F. without complications except the small delay and the slightly uncomfortable feeling of starvation that was invading us – after having decided against spending 8.50€ for a “cheap” sandwich. He got lucky and got to jump on a train. I got even more lucky and got to spend five hours at the airport waiting for my one-hour flight to S. I walked really slowly towards the terminal I needed just to see where it was, before deciding what and where to eat. The airport looks way bigger than it is. I was able to get through the one wing in about ten minutes and find my terminal with a plane to S. departing in twenty minutes. I walked past it and stopped. “what if I get that plane?” I walked back and asked the women about the flight, but she was so nice and just started talking to a guy that was obviously late for boarding. The guy sitting next to her was more helpful. He mentioned a few times that he had a lot of space in the plane – which was probably empty, but he could not change my booked flight because… bureaucracy? I know why it sounds so much like idiocrasy. So since he had an empty flight and I wanted to get on it and already got a ticket for the same company, same destination, only five hours later, he offered me a ticket for the price of 75€ in addition to the 165 I already paid.
I started off walking through the airport again, wandering about the decision of building it in shape of a V instead of a round shape where people could walk faster to their planes. I saw four shops of the same company offering the same food that looked kind of fake. It looked like food, but it didn’t. It’s probably some kind of synthetic shit with a hologram that convinces our brain of its prober being as “food”.
After having walked through the half of the airport where there are indeed almost no restaurants, my fight or flight instinct kicked in and I bought a small “pizza margherita” and a coke for 6.50€. I’m not sure what I hate. I’m not sure it was food, but it helped fighting the feeling of hunger. The woman standing on the other side of the counter was so happy to see a customer that she even put away her phone to get my order. She put my pizza in the oven to warm it up, or so I though, and told me to wait before picking her phone back up. She was obviously in the middle of an important discussion with some guy I guess, asking him what he wanted from her. The oven rang, she even ended the conversation, picked up the pizza and went for her break leaving her colleague the honour of putting away her phone to make my pizza. The two minutes previously announced, obviously from another time space. The new woman was way faster in getting me the cold pizza from the oven. Thanks a lot.
Aromatic deception 