WhyI’mbitter’s Weblog

Interesting Plane Journey

September 26, 2009 at 9:04 pm (arsehats, bullying, feminism, Giant Babies, idiots, male privilege, personal)

I´m currently killing time in a bus station in Marbella, so figured I´d post an update.  Especially given how neglected my poor blog and readers have been lately.  It´s a pity I have so much luggage and that it´s raining because I´ve heard Marbella is nice to walk around.

So anyway, having an interesting journey on my third trip to Europe since Sept 08.  I´m still trying to work out if the reactions I´m getting are based on my age or my gender, but I´m trying not to dwell on it.

On the plane ride between Milan and Malaga I had quite a typical specimen sitting behind me.  He was a white, middle aged man (obviously from the ´he´) using a laptop, so presumably important in some way, even if only in his own head.  And he was definitely important in his own head.  The flight attendants were some of the nicest I´ve encountered so far (and I´ve been on a lot of flights…); unexpected given I was flying with a discount airline.*

The woman next to me appeared to be slightly older than middle aged and was travelling with a four year old girl.  She didn´t speak English or Italian (she was Romanian fwiw), and it appeared to be her first flight from her reactions to various things.  I helped her, as best I could through the language barrier, to put on the seatbelts and follow the basic instructions of the staff.  When the food cart came along, she attempted to purchase a hot chocolate for the little girl, but only had a 50 euro note on her.  Now I don´t know what the hell is the issue on this continent, but they will very rarely accept such a large denomination for anything, and when they do it´s always with lots of sighing and pointed looks at all the extra work you´re giving them.  This woman had nothing smaller than a 50 and could not understand the attendants, although they did try switching languages for her, and even attempted Spanish.  At this point I checked my wallet and took out enough money for her hot chocolate and my coffee.  It seemed to be the easiest course of action, and also felt like the right thing to do.  As someone who travels quite frequently, and often alone, I´m grateful for every little bit of help I receive from strangers, whether it´s directions, help with my luggage (it´s so heavy!  and there are so many stairs! everywhere!), or whatever.  So I helped her out because I could.  I only include this part of the story because when I was reflecting on the second part it struck me as twice as ridiculous given this part.

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