Travel anecdotes and notes

Towards the light

A series of observations, imaginings and happenings on a recent globe spanning flight.

The flight from Hong Kong to Frankfurt is with Lufthansa, the German carrier. Why I am flying Deutsch air, some considerable distance from my intended destination, is a long story perhaps tedious in the explaining; for now it is enough to say that I am content in the experience of a new culture, albeit a highly pressurised, climate-controlled, stratospheric version of such.

Twelve hours distant from my first visit to Germany, I don't need a Nietzschean insight to tell me that our Lufthansa air hostess represents everything great about this strangely familiar Fatherland. Equine nose, features plain in a way that is dignified rather than ordinary, and a manner no nonsense and all business, she is the very portrait of a genuine politeness and sincerity that, to me at least, is highly refreshing.

She is also the mirror image of a former workmate—a project manager who would chase down errant details and deliver jobs perfectly to deadline, all efficiency and politeness, never straying from the task at hand. I often used to reflect, with no small admiration, how German in manner she was.

I enjoy encounters with character, German or otherwise, wherever I find it—it is refreshing, inspiring even. One is reminded that you do not have to be a conscious traveler of life's spiritual road to understand it's laws, and benefit from doing so.