OS841 VIE-DAM

Picture comparisons for this post are already available, but because of a very slow internet connection, I hope to post them later.
Flying to Damascus is always a fun experience, especially in terms of people-watching. The excitement starts at the gate (C57 for as long as I remember), where the Syrians start queuing up long before boarding begins. Here you have people, usually members of huge families coming to visit their home for the first time in years, carrying what looks like their whole fortune with them in bulky bags and boxes. They throw all their passports at the officer at once while their children play hide-and-seek between other passengers’ legs. At security, they awkwardly spread their arms for the security officer (usually female so nobody feels humiliated) to check them. Little boys are asked to remove their sneakers and put them on the conveyor belt, and they happily run around the waiting area without shoes.

Once inside the airplane, the commotion really starts. Many people don’t know how to interpret their boarding passes and just take any free seat available, causing the line to block up and the stewardesses to despair. Fathers command their children to sit close to their mother, who is in a wrong seat anyway. The families who can understand what their seats are complain to the stewardesses that the whole bunch is sitting all over the plane. The huge bulky cabin baggage items are laboriously lifted into the overhead compartments while babies scream for their mothers.

Austrian Airlines workers must have to wear some of the ugliest uniforms in the world – it’s not that red is unattractive, it’s just that the shoes and stockings and lipstick just make them look like circus entertainers. They try their very best at keeping patient and helping the passengers although they are stretched to their very limits. Yesterday, one of them had to run out of her seat and force a boy to sit down while the plane was taking off.

After just three hours of flying, the plane lands in Damascus international airport – the women start crying, the children squeal and the men whoop, and almost every time the whole plane erupts in applause. Who said flying was boring?