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March 18th, 2006

  1. Frankfurt Airport

    March 18, 2006 by Gail

    Quick post from Frankfurt, where my flight from Toronto arrived more than an hour late and made me miss my connection to Hamburg by minutes. I had to go through passport control and security with only 15 minutes before the plane was due to leave. This place is just as confusing as it was last time (many moons ago)! Last time passport control didn’t even OPEN my passport, and this time it was almost as easy — the officer’s stamping hand was ready to go by the time he found an empty page!

    I got halfway through security screening when the agent informed me it was the long way ’round to A gates, so they pulled my laptop off the belt and sent me in the other direction.

    Am quite distracted by the airport personnel scooting around on bikes — I keep wanting to take photos of them, but I’m about to head to the other gate now.


  2. Dear David: Month Three

    March 18, 2006 by Gail

    Lufthansa Flight 471
    Toronto – Frankfurt

    Dear David,

    It’s been exactly three months since we said goodbye, and how could I not think of you while on an airplane? It’s the first time I’ve been in the sky since our last flight in November, and I thought of something that your friend Ed said back in December: that the Wright brothers’ first flight was on December 17, and you passed away only an hour into the 18th. I can’t help but think that date is significant, and perhaps it sat in the back of my mind when I booked this flight.

    Over the Atlantic the moon was full and bright, lighting the wings of the jet in an ethereal glow, a blanket of clouds below and a bracelet of stars above. I wished you were sitting beside me to witness such a spectacle, but the seat is occupied by an English fellow on a ski holiday in Austria. He didn’t comment on it at all.

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