(Back from the Past) Travel Memories: 1. Seat neighbours

(from 4/5/2008)

A flight Frankfurt-Hong Kong —which, according to the pilot when we took off, would take 9 hours and 50 minutes, but rather turned out to take almost 11 hours— is long and complicated enough for having "curious" seat neighbours on top of it. Somehow, since an Amsterdam to London flight a few years ago, where I had two seat neighbours that looked like pakistanis or indian, who never took off their coats and apparently weren't able to fit into their seats, never stopped hitting one side or the other and had smelling customs different that the ones in the West, I am not surprised by anything. I wasn't dissapointed by the ones I had this time.

I had the window seat, so one side was all mine. Luckily. The guy who was sitting next to my left looked chinese, from his aspect and from his clothes. He started hitting me with his elbow or to occupy the whole armrest very soon. In his fifties and thin, he was of the kind "not regarding western conventions". You can imagine. It wasn't too exaggerated, but I attended to a good show of sounds. I slept a lot, I think he didn't judging by the difficult body positions he took. I always feel bad seeing people who try to sleep resting their heads on the seat in front of them. I guess that not taking his jacket off, which scratched quite a lot (see above), didn't help.

The guy next to him was also of a special kind. Dressed in a western fashion, but with eastern traits, a big belly, and a round face, I was surprised when I saw him reading a book of Pérez Reverte in Spanish (a spanish writer). I knew why later. His clear southamerican Spanish accent was explanation enough. So, he ate for two (he always asked for a second ration to the flight assistant), drank for three (he drank many beers, plus wine for dinner) and kept looking lasciviously at the apparently Spanish-speaking flight attendant. Really annoying when buying at the duty free, he had it all. To top it off, he turned on his mobile phone three seconds after landing at Hong Kong, while the plane was still braking. A man used to the good life.

And then they say you don't have any fun on planes.