Study Abroad Diaries: Airplanes

There’s something about airports that is oddly familiar and strangely comforting. The fact that no matter which country you are in the signs will always have English translations and that there is most likely a McDonald’s or Starbucks around the corner almost makes these transitory locations feel like home.

 

The bathrooms in Barcelona smell like cotton candy and German airports have beer gardens to kill time during layovers. In Paris, you don’t even have to leave the Air France terminal to visit all the shops found on the Champs d’Elyssee. You never have to leave the airport and still be able to get a sense for the country’s culture. 

 

 

This semester I’ve cried in airports, slept in airports, and ran through them with my baggage in tow and my purse flailing at my side.

 

As much of a hassle flying can be, I now crave the moving walkways, anticipate meeting my row-mates, and get excited to see which cheese sandwich Lufthansa is offering on this flight. Each time may be unique–different time, seat, airline, destination–yet I always know what to expect when I finally land back at Charles de Gaulle. Exhaustion, satisfaction, and a long metro ride home.

 

My spring break has just begun and I have four more flights ahead if me. My iTunes library is updated, all my liquids are packed in a clear ziplock baggy. Paris to Munich to Barcelona to Mallorca to Lisbon to Paris. As excited as I am for the next two weeks, I can’t help but look forward to the satisfying feeling of floppig into my bed after my trip and finally feeling comfortable in my surroundings again, not constantly in a state of transit. 

 

 

One thing keeps haunting me–when I do finally make it back to Paris, the next flight I take isn’t round trip. It’s a one way straight back to JFK. At least I know New York has McDonald’s and Starbucks too.