From Jenifer Altman’s Polaroid Notes.
Frankfurt Airport, September 13, 2015, 8:54 a.m.
I’ve gotten into the habit of staying awake on red eyes to Europe. A habit, if you can even call it that, based on my last two flights here. The last time was Zurich in March. Now, here I am in Frankfurt on a layover to Croatia.
There’a a certain anticipation cycle that comes with travel. I’m going to skip over the whole process of actually picking a destination and  planning a trip and get straight to the actual act of travel.
At some point on the plane ride, I’m seized with a sense of dread, a second-guessing of why I’m even going anywhere. Why am I disrupting and uprooting my life? Wherever I’m going, the landscape and customs will be unfamiliar. Will I fit in? Will I get it? Will all of the locals immediately know that I’m a foreigner? Will I be as chic, as down-to-earth, as well-informed as everyone else? Will I be able to navigate? How many steps ahead should I calculate in my mind right now?
This anxiety then melts into a sort of dreamlike paralysis. I’m captive and confined on a flight, after all. And as uncomfortable as that may be, there’s a certain pleasure that comes with succumbing to it. Whatever it is: sleep, work, watch a movie, read, eat. It becomes so sublime at a certain point that the thought occurs to me, I never want the journey to end. I want to sit here forever and keep reading or turn on another movie and eat another airplane meal.
Then, inevitably, the landing ritual begins. Announcements over the loudspeakers, tray tables and seat backs up, organization of belongings, cabin lights on, window shades up. The subtle feeling of the plane’s descent. And that’s when I see it, a whole new terrain outside my window, either foreign or familiar. And with it comes a feeling of exhilaration. Every time. No matter whether I anticipate it or not. Without thinking about it, in an instant, any insecurities fall by the wayside, and I’m filled with the sublimity of endless possibilities, reminded of just how big the world is and how little of it I’ve seen, that I’m about to discover another small corner of it, and how exceptional that is.
I woke up in Miami, but now, here I am, in Europe, in Germany.
Whether it’s airports and air travel that are the great equalizer or, simply, humanity itself, I fit in here just as well as I fit in anywhere. And the parade of people around me, no matter where they’re from are, yes, all different, all disposed to their own cultures, languages and mannerisms, but they’re all just variations on a theme, and that theme is humanity. All of us just striving to live, to be happy, to make it from Point A to Point B, and hopefully encounter kindness and compassion along the way. And, of course, have people to love, lots of people to love, scattered at all the places where we’ve been before.
