You know that feeling when you think you’re on top of your game, walking with unchallenged assurance, the world in the palm of your hand? I guess you know what I am talking about.
What usually happens right after that, or even in the middle of that, is that you fall flat on your face and the surprise wipes your smug grin in one swipe.
Recently it happened to me as I was attempting to check-in at the Lima airport for my long- haul flight back to Europe. I had my telephone on one hand with itinerary and confirmed booking, in Business Class no less, the sanitary documents requested by Peruvian and French authorities- which goes without saying no one ever asked for- my invaluable British passport and was flying to Paris via Amsterdam with the trusted Dutch-of-KLM-precision: nothing could go wrong.
Think again.
“Do you live in Paris?” asked the agent at the counter.
“No, I live in London”, was my crisp reply bordering on snooty.
“And where is your ticket to London?”
“I haven’t bought one yet” (Duh? Don’t be daft. What’s the hurry? I am going to be in Paris for 10 days and have plenty of time to buy a ticket on the Eurostar)
“I am afraid I cannot check you to Paris”
“Whatdayya mean?” snooty grin completely gone
“You are a tourist and to enter France you need a return ticket, that or else a ticket to a further destination”.
(Crickey. This is when the full force of Brexit falls upon me like the hand of god: I am no longer a European)
I am back to “Others”.
By now I am breaking into a sweat. No longer the conquering imperial traveller that can go as she pleases and when she pleases; I spend the next ten minutes trying to buy a Eurostar ticket on line. That or my well-planned trip is off. Have you ever tried doing that inside the Lima airport? Won’t work. Either their broadband is not broad enough or else the Eurostar site is not recognized in that part of the world.
Anyhow the ticket agent took pity on me, sold me a PAR-LON KLM ticket –that I later had reimbursed-in order to issue me a boarding pass. The next hour duly chastised, I mentally cursed the powers that are which reduced my former culturally diverse world to one -albeit very fetching- small island.
Which brings back memories of trips undertaken with my Peruvian fiancé some thirty years ago. Every time we would hit our first European port of entry I would swimingly sail under the “UK, European Union and Switzerland” sign while he went fuming to stand in a long queue with “Others”.
I always felt a bit of a fraud and feared the Brits would eventually find me out. They did but they also had to take a whole bloody nation along with me.
I am now back to where I always secretly sensed that I belonged.
Back in the chaotic, multicultural, multiracial, noisy, unruly long queue.
Back with “Others”.
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