Behold the modern airport- this looks better than the Yellow Brick Road! Well at least for the first five minutes of your stay…until you realize that this Belgian chocolate doesn’t come for free.

I find it mildly amusing that modern conveniences such as thoughtfully-placed moving walkways have become for me a strange yet pleasant sight to behold- and how within hours my unhabituated appreciation becomes devalued as I reassimilate into the mass who takes advantage of these contraptions with a critical eye.

“Why can’t they make these things wider?”

“Why can’t my fellow traveler understand that he must not stand abreast his friend because in doing so he causes a glaringly inconvenient road block?” 

“Why can’t they just make these things longer so I don’t have to haul my luggage across this terminal in search of the only open bathroom when I already feel like a trucker who has driven all night from Bamako?”

It’s not like I have been gone that long, but I must also admit that the sight of a Starbucks did strike me as a jolting surprise (and it was even next to an ATM!). This pleasant discovery was quickly replaced with disdain once I checked out the menu- ever in search of a Pumpkin Spice Latte I’m afraid- and I observed that a small coffee drink now runs a customer almost five euro. And that’s the bottom end of this coffee shop’s price list.

You want to get some water in order to wash down that malaria medication? Those bottles will cost you €3.60. I find such sums to be outrageous after originating from my little corner of Senegal- and accordingly I am more than happy to campaign for an empty cup that will be filled with water from the bathroom sink. Located back down at the other end of the terminal, of course.

Umm, on second thought, maybe I won’t have that bottle of Coke…

I don’t find much that is both economically and nutritionally redeeming amongst these airport dining facilities, so I rely upon my inner miser and fish out a protein bar from a stash in my carry-on bag. As I gnaw on my breakfast of champions, I reflect back to a kitchen exchange that I had with my dad (a now retired airline pilot) while preparing for an overnight flight to Geneva. He had prepared a sandwich that was wrapped up in a brown paper bag and handed to me. I looked up with a questioning face that accused him of getting ‘school’ and ‘airplane’ mixed up.

“Put this in your bag,” he said “Survival skills.”

Later that night as I retrieved this instant gratification provision from my backpack, I realized that my father knew a thing or two about soulless airport travel. Having your own food handy is not only more likely to satisfy, but it is also good value. It’s a a lesson that I continue to apply eighteen years after that flight.

They still have these things? It’s Back to the Future!

But returning to my adventures in Brussels LayoverLand, it actually seems quite ridiculous that I am finding so many mundane observations to be worthy of comment. I mean truth be told, I judge all of these travel aspects to be quite fantastic in their own right, and not at all deserving of castigation. Well, perhaps we can surely gripe about the highway robbery price gouging that is rife with respect to alimentation. You’ve got a captive audience in the airport, and sometimes the last thing we want is to introduce another damn Clif Bar into our digestive system.

Captive audience indeed. I may have plunked down a cool G in order to come up and make this journey, but there is no way in Hell that I am patronizing an airport internet that charges rates like these. No matter how badly I want to make my next move on Words With Friends.

I would have thought that my graduation from life as a starving backpacker in the 1990s to a fully-salaried professional would ease the sticker shock that accompanies modern travel, but I’m afraid that my mindset is relatively unaffected. Or perhaps you could chalk up this crotchety diatribe to the fact that I’ve just completed another trans-Mediterranean flight and I am still tired. Or better yet, maybe I’m simply continuing with my metamorphosis into a fantastic and unrealistically-nostalgic old fossil. Cool.

Whatever the case may be, it’s always a pleasure to be back in Europe. I’m going to go see see if the overpriced smoothie store will sell me a single banana.