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I came back from Prague. The only bad part was Heathrow. Oh dear dog, they outdid themselves. They conspired with the airlines, who could not manage to get me connecting flights with less than a ten hour layover in the middle of the night. Not so bad, really: it was a time of night when I would just as soon sleep anyways, right? And airports are just way oversupplied with horizontal surfaces. Not lovely, but tolerable.
But Heathrow can manage to take any tolerable situation and make it intolerable. First of all, of course there is the geometry of the place. But I knew about that. I knew I would walk several miles getting from one place to another, including going in actual circles -- and knowing about the circles does not make it possible to cut across them, or to avoid them and go in the correct direction in the first place, but that's something I was resigned to, and cheerfully. I did consider asking for help because the leg pain that started in Prague had gotten a lot worse, but as it turned out, that would have been a terrible mistake, so I'm glad I decided to tough that out.
I figured the best strategy would be to get to the correct terminal and sleep there. No. I started following signs and quickly found that they were taking me to the frozen hell of Godot land. The staff -- always polite, though sparse and not always correct in their assessment of things -- had disappeared. So the signs, which were increasingly ambiguous as I proceeded, had no interpreters. Though as it turned out I did go where I was supposed to go, according to the information available. I should have been suspicious, however, as actually informative signs were increasingly replaced by billboards advertising the London metro as an escape from the airport ("I don't want to leave the airport," I thought. That's just more expense and more opportunity for me to get lost or be late and miss my plane. Not to mention the security hassles getting back in and having to declare crap to customs twice").
By the time I reached the space where I was supposed to meet the bus that would drive me around the snowy back lanes of Heathrow land to the terminal where I could actually get on a plane someday, there was not a single other human being in evidence. I was pretty sure that the other passengers must know something I didn't (as it turned out, no. Some intercepted staff sooner, others were just lucky enough not to be going from Prague to San Francisco). I did meet one staff person about a quarter of a mile back who had said yes, I was going to the right place to meet my bus. There was clearly not going to be a bus, however. The doors to the outside were locked (I think they always are except when the bus is loading: it unloads somewhere else, I think).
As I said, there was no other human being there, not the guy who sits by the door and tells you that your bus is here and whether you're doing something wrong (you are). Eventually a janitorial person wheeled a cart by and they didn' know but they were pretty sure the first bus would leave about half an hour after I needed to be in the other terminal. No, on further reflection, they thought probably it would leave a couple of hours before I had to be there, whbich sounded realistic, so I decided to sleep right there on the relatively comfy bench. It was really cold, though, and my legs hurt a lot, for that reason, as I figured out much later. So it was hard to fall asleep.
Just about when I did fall asleep I was woken by a disembodied voice from very high up telling me I couldn't sleep there. I sort of fuzzily explained myself -- briefly, I have learned something in all my years -- and the voice told me I had to come up and there was a lounge I could wait in. So I hefted my stuff (I bought way too many children's books in Prague and I suffered for it) and found the elevator (No way was I going up that staircase, it was made of beading wire or something and pitched about right for replicating Galilean gravity experiments) and came up to the mezzanine about a half-mile above the surface to find - - nobody.
Apparently I had hallucinated the voice.
I looked around for a bit and then this fellow arrived, a thirtyish guy with a uniform suit on, and he seemed surprised to find me bewildered. He lead me sort of in a direction, kind of, and left me in an immense waiting area with less comfortable benches but not quite so cold where maybe thirty or forty other people were trying to catch a nap before they would be allowed to go to their correct terminals. Only in this place there was a lot of construction going on and the lights were very bright. So I fretted and squirmed and finally fell asleep, and you guessed it. I was woken again by, this time, a small force of staff who informed us we couldn't sleep here because of the construction. And off we went . . .
This time we had to go through security because we were being taken out of arrivals and into I don't know what since the mausoleum we were taken to had no obvious connection of any kind that I could see with airplanes or airlines or travel or anything but massive discomfort. It did have immense restrooms, but no water fountains (no water fountains in all of Europe in my vast (read: tiny) experience. Are they security risks? Or is it a conspiracy by the transnational corporations to sell more water in plastic bottles? The water that they steal from municipal and regional water systems, sometimes after it has already been cleaned and without paying for the process). There was no construction noise, but it wasn't any warmer or less caustically bright. There were television screens with flight information -- I guess -- but since none of the information seemed to correspond with anything so mundane as actual arrivals and departures in the real world I have to assume they were actually keeping track of things in other dimensions and were of no use except as something to look at when sleep failed, as it did.
And it could have done nothing but fail. The benches here were essentially that kind you sometimes see at bus stops and in public parks, designed to prevent the hapless traveller from lying down on them. I say essentially because these were much fancier and more diabolical than any of the ones you see in more ordinary places. They were made of bent playwood, backless, with deep undulations to make sure there is no surface large enough for more than a narrowish butt and metal bars to prevent a person from lying down. I suppose they call them arm rests but they are clearly not meant as armrests: they are the wrong height and the rods they are made from are too narrow to rest an arm on. Nevertheless, those who had arrived at this particular circle of hell earliest had shoved the benches together so they could lie own on them perpendicularly, which could not have been comfortable but it got them off the icy floor. There were, of course, not enough of these, once people had invoked their personal space and the four benches could now only hold two. And not all of the benches were designed in a way to make this possible.
A few hardy souls had given themselves up to the floor. I tried it but it didn't work. I paced and composed my letter of complaint (to which I got an entirely unsatisfactory answer, all the more frustrating because it was clear that the answerer had paid attention and there was nothing they could think or say or do about it). And I went to the bathroom a lot.
Eventually we were allowed to move again, we went through security again, we got on our airplanes, and I came home to my dog and slept for two weeks.
When I woke up, I looked around, and the nice fellow was still not here, and well, here I am, starting over again.
Prague pictures still to come, sorry.
But Heathrow can manage to take any tolerable situation and make it intolerable. First of all, of course there is the geometry of the place. But I knew about that. I knew I would walk several miles getting from one place to another, including going in actual circles -- and knowing about the circles does not make it possible to cut across them, or to avoid them and go in the correct direction in the first place, but that's something I was resigned to, and cheerfully. I did consider asking for help because the leg pain that started in Prague had gotten a lot worse, but as it turned out, that would have been a terrible mistake, so I'm glad I decided to tough that out.
I figured the best strategy would be to get to the correct terminal and sleep there. No. I started following signs and quickly found that they were taking me to the frozen hell of Godot land. The staff -- always polite, though sparse and not always correct in their assessment of things -- had disappeared. So the signs, which were increasingly ambiguous as I proceeded, had no interpreters. Though as it turned out I did go where I was supposed to go, according to the information available. I should have been suspicious, however, as actually informative signs were increasingly replaced by billboards advertising the London metro as an escape from the airport ("I don't want to leave the airport," I thought. That's just more expense and more opportunity for me to get lost or be late and miss my plane. Not to mention the security hassles getting back in and having to declare crap to customs twice").
By the time I reached the space where I was supposed to meet the bus that would drive me around the snowy back lanes of Heathrow land to the terminal where I could actually get on a plane someday, there was not a single other human being in evidence. I was pretty sure that the other passengers must know something I didn't (as it turned out, no. Some intercepted staff sooner, others were just lucky enough not to be going from Prague to San Francisco). I did meet one staff person about a quarter of a mile back who had said yes, I was going to the right place to meet my bus. There was clearly not going to be a bus, however. The doors to the outside were locked (I think they always are except when the bus is loading: it unloads somewhere else, I think).
As I said, there was no other human being there, not the guy who sits by the door and tells you that your bus is here and whether you're doing something wrong (you are). Eventually a janitorial person wheeled a cart by and they didn' know but they were pretty sure the first bus would leave about half an hour after I needed to be in the other terminal. No, on further reflection, they thought probably it would leave a couple of hours before I had to be there, whbich sounded realistic, so I decided to sleep right there on the relatively comfy bench. It was really cold, though, and my legs hurt a lot, for that reason, as I figured out much later. So it was hard to fall asleep.
Just about when I did fall asleep I was woken by a disembodied voice from very high up telling me I couldn't sleep there. I sort of fuzzily explained myself -- briefly, I have learned something in all my years -- and the voice told me I had to come up and there was a lounge I could wait in. So I hefted my stuff (I bought way too many children's books in Prague and I suffered for it) and found the elevator (No way was I going up that staircase, it was made of beading wire or something and pitched about right for replicating Galilean gravity experiments) and came up to the mezzanine about a half-mile above the surface to find - - nobody.
Apparently I had hallucinated the voice.
I looked around for a bit and then this fellow arrived, a thirtyish guy with a uniform suit on, and he seemed surprised to find me bewildered. He lead me sort of in a direction, kind of, and left me in an immense waiting area with less comfortable benches but not quite so cold where maybe thirty or forty other people were trying to catch a nap before they would be allowed to go to their correct terminals. Only in this place there was a lot of construction going on and the lights were very bright. So I fretted and squirmed and finally fell asleep, and you guessed it. I was woken again by, this time, a small force of staff who informed us we couldn't sleep here because of the construction. And off we went . . .
This time we had to go through security because we were being taken out of arrivals and into I don't know what since the mausoleum we were taken to had no obvious connection of any kind that I could see with airplanes or airlines or travel or anything but massive discomfort. It did have immense restrooms, but no water fountains (no water fountains in all of Europe in my vast (read: tiny) experience. Are they security risks? Or is it a conspiracy by the transnational corporations to sell more water in plastic bottles? The water that they steal from municipal and regional water systems, sometimes after it has already been cleaned and without paying for the process). There was no construction noise, but it wasn't any warmer or less caustically bright. There were television screens with flight information -- I guess -- but since none of the information seemed to correspond with anything so mundane as actual arrivals and departures in the real world I have to assume they were actually keeping track of things in other dimensions and were of no use except as something to look at when sleep failed, as it did.
And it could have done nothing but fail. The benches here were essentially that kind you sometimes see at bus stops and in public parks, designed to prevent the hapless traveller from lying down on them. I say essentially because these were much fancier and more diabolical than any of the ones you see in more ordinary places. They were made of bent playwood, backless, with deep undulations to make sure there is no surface large enough for more than a narrowish butt and metal bars to prevent a person from lying down. I suppose they call them arm rests but they are clearly not meant as armrests: they are the wrong height and the rods they are made from are too narrow to rest an arm on. Nevertheless, those who had arrived at this particular circle of hell earliest had shoved the benches together so they could lie own on them perpendicularly, which could not have been comfortable but it got them off the icy floor. There were, of course, not enough of these, once people had invoked their personal space and the four benches could now only hold two. And not all of the benches were designed in a way to make this possible.
A few hardy souls had given themselves up to the floor. I tried it but it didn't work. I paced and composed my letter of complaint (to which I got an entirely unsatisfactory answer, all the more frustrating because it was clear that the answerer had paid attention and there was nothing they could think or say or do about it). And I went to the bathroom a lot.
Eventually we were allowed to move again, we went through security again, we got on our airplanes, and I came home to my dog and slept for two weeks.
When I woke up, I looked around, and the nice fellow was still not here, and well, here I am, starting over again.
Prague pictures still to come, sorry.