When Trump banned travel from Europe to the US, many Americans abroad were awoken in the middle of the night by concerned messages and calls. Instead, I was alerted by practical joke. My partner, who had woken up first and read the news, came in and sat on the edge of the bed expectantly. He waited a few moments for the slant that his weight created in the mattress to wake me up. “Look!” he said and held up his iPad. When he is invested in a prank, Jonny’s eyes get a mischievous glimmer that usually gives him away even if he doesn’t smile. This time, though, I was so groggy and undercaffeinated that when I read, through the spiderweb cracks on his screen, that Trump had banned all travel from Europe to the United States, I admit that I was more than mildly alarmed. “Wait what? When is this happening?” “Friday,” he said, as a grin spread across his face. I continued to complain about switching flights and the stupidity of our current president. His joke had succeeded. “But US citizens can keep traveling, so it doesn’t apply to you,” he admitted, as he gave me a consoling pat.
With the travel ban in place, Geneva airport, already low volume by international standards, is now desolate. I stand for only a minute with my toes at a masking tape line on the floor, two meters back from the family ahead of me. When I travel to Geneva, I usually try to guess which families are American and which ones are Swiss, but even without knowledge of the travel ban, this one – clad in sports T-shirts with luggage in an assortment of gaudy colors and patterns – is clearly American. Before I am called to the counter, I examine the cartoon characters on the youngest daughter’s suitcase. I am officially too old to know who they are. The airport worker who takes my bag fumbles in oversized, lunch-lady type gloves. She tries, unsuccessfully, to peel luggage stickers off without them adhering to the nubs of extra glove at the ends of her fingers. After a French profanity that she assumes I don’t understand, she looks up cheerily and says “All set! Enjoy your flight!”
Security is the definitive hurdle of the flying experience, but this time the ease seems almost criminal. “Le sac entier?” I ask. Yes. I am supposed to put my entire bag – liquids, laptop, stash of marzipan and all – directly onto the conveyor belt. Something feels deeply wrong when I walk through the metal detector with my shoes, jacket, and dignity intact. I can’t tell if this security area is some special section usually reserved for UN diplomats or if security is just a joke now that the most dangerous threat won’t set off a metal detector or hide in a shoe. Regardless, it is a relief to not have to unpack half my bag before sending it through an x-ray machine that can literally see inside of it anyways.
Although most people complain about waiting in the security line, I am of the opinion that the most disagreeable part of the security experience is the moment that you make it to the front of the line. The pressure is on. The whole line is behind you. What have the TSA agents been saying for the past forty-seven minutes? Shoes on or shoes off? Does my iPad count as a laptop? Is hand lotion a liquid? What is this guy doing with his shoes on? Wait… he’s dressed too nicely to be one of the plebs in regular security. I bet he paid upfront to keep his shoes on.
Worse than this confusion is that years of taking the trash out as my childhood chore has given me a distain for people who dump liquids into the trash. Memories of garbage liquid leaking onto my flip-flop-clad feet prevents me from emptying my water bottle or coffee thermos into the trash can. As a result, whatever liquids I reach the front of the line with, I am compelled to chug on the spot as travelers still within the winding maze of tape give me dirty looks. On the way to Geneva, I had awkwardly perched in the neutral zone between the two conveyor belts to chug twenty ounces of water.
This time, though, security takes all of five minutes, and, after a vigorous disinfecting with hand sanitizer, I leisurely make my way to gate C91. The Geneva airport hand sanitizer has some sort of moisturizing element in it which allows me to re-sanitize with impunity every time I pass another dispenser. At the C91 waiting area, every other seat has black and red caution tape stretched across it, marking it “interdit.” The heterogeneous mixture of masked and unmasked people waiting to fly to Newark is reminded periodically by a robotic French voice to stay two meters apart. Anyone could be coughing, sneezing or speaking a cloud of coronavirus into the air.
This is United’s very last direct flight from Geneva to New York for the foreseeable future, and, one week into the travel ban, it has drawn a motley crew of US citizens. Although the backmost middle seat which I’ve been assigned is objectively the worst in the entire plane, one must admit that it is excellent for people watching. A couple of teens have moved behind their mom so that they can pull their masks down to their chins. Later in the flight the mom would strike me as being a tad overprotective when she pre-emptively ordered a seltzer water for each of her children before they had the chance to choose a sugary juice or soda. In fact, she asked for both a water and a seltzer water for each teen, ensuring that they would be adequately stuffed with sugar-free liquids. Diagonally from where I sit in the back, there is a man dutifully cleansing every inch of his seat. He is thin in an effortful way that makes me sure that he weighs himself each morning. It is still early in the pandemic, so he and the overprotective mom are among the only people on the plane wearing masks.
As the disinfectant man is taking out another wipe to advance his virus killing expedition beyond the tray table and armrests, I lean across the empty seats next to me to ask the flight attendant if I can go change to a window seat. Mildly rotund with a not-too-neatly trimmed beard, he is one of the rare flight attendants who appears at ease both in his stiff, starchy uniform and the narrow space of the airplane aisles. He is leaning casually against the head of an empty seat when I catch his attention. “Sure! Go shopping!” he exclaims, gesturing with delight at the three quarters of the plane that is empty. For the circumstances, he seems all too cheerful, but it strikes me that it might be a relief for him to grant everyone a seat of their choosing.
Having been alerted to the flexibility of seating, the disinfectant man jumps up to vanquish germs elsewhere. “If you want my seat, I’ve cleaned it quite thoroughly,” he offers. “Yes, I can see that,” I think to myself, but instead, I just say “thanks!” and take my chances with a contaminated window seat.
Flying, in general, is an absurd experience. You, and a number of other humans, are neatly packed into metal tube with wings that will soar through the sky, guided by a pilot who appears, each flight, to be a small variant of the same confident, middle-aged, conventionally decent-looking white man. An otherwise unacceptable drink to food ratio is established, which permits passengers to periodically rise, stand outside the “in use” bathroom wondering what could possibly be taking so long, and eventually empty their bladders. Flying during a pandemic pads this absurdity with an odd sense of luxury.
I can now comfortably sprawl across two seats as I gaze out the window at the retreating Alps. My book, of which I will read approximately three pages, can occupy the seat next to me instead of being stuffed into the magazine bin where it will be dangerously camouflaged. I amass pillows from the surrounding seats to cushion my entire area just because I can. When I ask for a second and third cup of coffee, the flight attendant fills a paper cup to the brim. “You take your coffee black, right?” he checks casually, asserting that he remembered my preference. I am brought extra Stroopwaffels and a toiletry bag from first class. The rotund flight attendant does all of this with glee. I feel such a sense of luxury that I splurge on the in-flight WiFi. With a ten-foot radius of empty seats, no one cares when I loudly engage in a two-hour BlueJeans call.
I am even allowed to use the fancy front-of-the-plane bathrooms with minty face spray inside. Alongside the face spray is lotion so thick that it adheres to the sides of the container and won’t come out of the pump. When I unscrew the cap to examine the inside of the bottle, it gives off a pleasant, peachy aroma. Calming, blue lights make the bathroom feel like an oasis. The lighting also makes me look surprisingly acceptable as I gaze into the mirror, watching the minty face spray dry. Somehow the usual smells of previous bathroom use and the one, obligatory piece of toilet paper stuck to the floor are not present in this high class bathroom. After the face spray dries, I have no more excuse to stay and make my way back to my seat.
“Traveling in a pandemic is the way to go,” I think to myself before immediately realizing the gaping flaws in that logic. Throughout my travels, I feel a confusing mixture of enjoyment and guilt. On the one hand, I never imagined that I would so thoroughly enjoy a 9-hour flight. On the other hand, I feel, as my plane rockets across the Atlantic from one pandemic epicenter to the next, that I am giving new meaning to the phrase “out of the frying pan into the fire.”
Brooke Bernardin is an MS1 at the Perelman School of Medicine. Brooke can be reached by email at [email protected].
