Meditations on a Foreign Sortie, Part the first
In which I dupe the German TSA
I have nothing against the Transportation Security Administration. They are a lovely organisation of patriots whose competence and value to these United States cannot be impugned. Also, please don't put me in prison. But the German variety has really got their number.
I was in Germany the other day, Dusseldorf to be precise, and more or less against my will. I blame Delta for this, as well as the fifth columnists in New York public transportation services. But I had had a long and tiring week, and was exhausted and a little sick. But when the stewardess started passing out medical forms before we landed, I knew it was time for subterfuge. Obviously, they were screening for der swine flu, and I was not about to be trapped in some German quarantine. So (and I admit this only because I have no plans ever to return - we don't have an extradition treaty with them, do we?) I lied. There were boxes to check with symptoms... and I left them all blank. Crazy. Then it was just a matter of striding nonchalantly through the phalanx of medical staff, handing off the form, and bluffing my way through customs. I also corrected the grammar of the English version, which I am sure they appreciated. Smooth criminal.
So having broken through to freedom, and feeling very much species: man of mystery, genus: international, I wended steadily outside, and proceeded to be lost for approximately the next fifty minutes.
To quote from Austen: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an airport with the name of a city large enough to be interesting must be within convenient walking distance of said city. Leave it to Jerry to blow my tidy paradigm out of the water, just like the Lusitania. Apparently there is nothing close to Dusseldorf Airport except more Dusseldorf Airport, and finally in desperation I sought parley with a native.
I was vaguelly disappointed that she answered me in perfect English, as I had been concocting and declining a foolproof back-up plan that consisted of asking her in Latin. Germany, as everyone knows, has a laudable tradition of classical scholarship, and it goes without saying that airport employees would know the once-international language of business, culture and the Church.
But as I say she knew the modern one, and I finally and disappointedly found myself upon the metro.
