Something In That Lounge

There’s simple flight back to Dar.  It can’t be more than a 15 minute ride.  We’ll get some dinner and then kill the hours till our flight in the airport.  Ahh, but the Chinese place we’d been recommended to dine in is closed.  I look over the Lonely Planet and though it will be expensive the Asian restaurant at the Hyatt sounds pretty nice.  We’ll be able to have wine.  We’ll be able to have wifi.  All of which is true and we kill a few hours at a side table there, underdressed and over-served. 

After all the proper good byes at the airport we were quickly disabused of our plans for how to spend the next five hours before the flight. The folks from Turkish Air aren’t going to arrive to check in for at least two hours.  You’ll need to wait out here. Here isn’t much.  I plead for a bit but realize there isn’t anything he can do.  The inside isn’t worth fighting for anyway.  There are benches but they are half full of people.  The only restaurant is a neon fast food establishment with orange Formica tables.  I order two waters and we sit at the table considering our environment.  Two other people are also waiting.  Otherwise it is empty.

A few hours later we had our lounge access.  Nibbling samosas and sipping wine.  I think it is the first lounge I can remember where the staff actually serve you.  The Asian American bar maid in the SFO United lounge will serve you a complementary glass of wine if you stand at the bar, the tip jar prominently placed between you and she.  This gent is popping over every few minutes seeing if I need a refill.  A few hours later it becomes clear that something in that lounge did not agree with me.  Good thing I’ve got my aisle seat as head back to the economy toilet, over and over.

The Star Alliance airport lounge in Istanbul is worth fighting for access to.  We’ll have a few hours to kill between flights in Turkey.  I get to bring one guest in but I’ve got three ladies.  The Mrs. wants a glass of wine and the younger ones want Turkish delight.  I take the older one in first and then the younger one and then my wife one by one into the lounge with my pass and a bit of discrete creativity.   A half a dozen different olives, enough baklava and stuff a camel and unlike many a fine Muslim country, this one has a wine industry. 

The next flight is even longer then the last.  This time I don’t have the two middle seats free.  I exchange pleasantries with a young man who is also returning from a summer time in East Africa.  He wants to know if I’m Christian.  To the left is a large older man with a deez-dems-n-doze New York accent and native Turkish.  He is extremely nervous about a painting he has in the overhead.  Five, six, seven times now he’s stood up and checked it. This ride is a few hours longer than the last one and I angle myself imperfectly, typing, hour after hour trying to finish up my grading. 

When we arrive in New York I call an Uber ride and soon were talking about the driver’s home country of Pakistan. He sounds as though he grew up in Brooklyn.  Perhaps he did.  But Pakistan is what we talk about sailing along the BQE, home.   “Yes.  I thought Lahore was remarkable, but it was twenty years ago now.”

Monday, 7/10/17