The Euro Diaries - Day 1

03.27.07 Frankfurt, Germany

11h30

"I have always believed that Germans make the best Americans; although they certainly make the worst Germans." It was Henry Miller who said that, author of the once-illegal book Tropic of Cancer among others. I didn't much care for the book, and I'm not sure I much care for Germany either, but the quote is supremely applicable.

I have dismounted from a long, cramped, but not unenjoyable flight from San Francisco to find myself here, in Frankfurt. Everything smells like cigarette smoke. Perfume and cigarette smoke, to be exact, a combination reserved in my mind for the much more pleasant aroma of Buenos Aires. But anyway, it is grey and rather cold and looks like any other big, dull city filled with people in a hurry to be wherever it is they're going. A sharply dressed woman in a severe bun cut me off in line, and I took somewhat superior pleasure in being polite to her; a pleasure that was only exceeded by my satisfaction in noticing a spattering of spilled make-up down the leg of her perfectly pressed dress pants.
It's quite awful of me, I know.

And then there was airport security, where I was thoroughly (quite thoroughly) searched after attempting to carry on a two-ounce tube of toothpaste not packaged in the standardized plastic Ziploc bag. Lord knows how much difference that fraction of a millimeter of plastic must make when facing the possibility of...whatever it is that is so threatening about liquids. It wasn't as bad as the security line leaving the US, though, where I was left alone in favor of the complete searching of an ancient woman in a wheelchair. I must admit I actually stopped in line and stared. They thoroughly scanned her chair, clothing, and wheelchair, even asking her to stand up with help so as to more thoroughly examine her seat.

I felt very secure.