Sunday 10th of April 2005

Back from the dead

Crowded street: In Shibuya.

But, no, I wansn’t able to come back as a zombie, the streets of Spain are still somewhat (I’m still here) safe. I got back from Japan about ten days ago, I loved the damn place.

On the flight back, from Narita to Munich, then Munich to Madrid, I really noticed the difference between the flights. On the one coming from Japan everyone found their seats without trouble and actually sat on them, they made no loud noises, they excused themselves when they walked past you, they didn’t litter the floor with their crap and countless other things that would make one have good etiquette.

Not so on the flight from Munich to Madrid. It was mostly Spaniards coming back from the holy week, but there were some Italians and Germans. Everyone was loud, couldn’t find their seats, sat where they felt like and later got into discussions with the people those specific seat actually belonged to. They just bashed you when they wanted to walk past you without muttering a word or looking at you in the eyes. Girlfriends sitting on top of their boyfriends making these very loud, obnoxious and disturbing sounds to my sleep depravated self. I saw one guy just chuck a piece of paper in the floor after he’d gone out of the W.C. -I ignored most of it, but when I saw one guy start yelling in Spanish to a Stewardess that only spoke German, it hit me: I’m back in Europe, In varietate concordia (right) and all that.