The land of the ...

A whirlwind trip to the U.S. and some musings on air travel.

Forgive me this off-topic post today. Sometimes our own lives take over to the point that we cannot come up for air and see anything beyond the little fires which have surrounded us and need to be put out, somehow, someway. I was asked at a family birthday dinner last night what I think about Ukraine’s invasion of “Kursk” (parts of Kursk oblast, I corrected) and I said in all honesty, I don’t really have a view. This August has been a test of my ability to deal with all things I am terrible at, most notably, bureaucracy of big government and big corporations. I would love to write that I have conquered all obstacles but that would be a blatant lie. I woke up early this morning to try and conquer yet another website with fifteen logins and two-factor authentication, only to see a message that it is offline for maintenance until late afternoon European time. So I turn to writing instead.

Last Monday, I opened my phone to do something incredibly simple: check in for a flight on the airline’s app, and download my boarding pass. Yet when I went to do this, I discovered I had no assigned seat but rather “WL” which I then learned, through a phone call to the airline (half an hour on hold), meant I had been selected to fly “stand by” i.e. I was on a Waiting List for a flight I had paid €1400 for a round-trip ticket for in economy class. My mistake, according to this customer service representative who told me in complete seriousness that he has no boss? Not having paid to choose a seat. To be fair, I was in physical pain paying that much for a single ticket, I was prepared to sit in the middle. I just needed to fly to America for two days, and since no sane person does this, I was paying the price. Literally. After customer service essentially told me I had no rights and there was no guarantee I would even get on the flight, I took things into my own hands and ran to the train station and took a train to the airport. As one does.

At the airport, I found the Austrian Airlines ticketing counter, took a number (the gruff gatekeeper interrogated each of us as if we had to pass a litmus test of right to even stand in that line), and decided that tears would be more effective than yelling. Given my mental state, tears, real ones, were easy to produce on demand. I waited and when my number was called, explained the situation. The very kind customer service rep looked at me with the sympathy of a person who is about to deliver bad news and is trying to figure out how to do it in the least painful way. She explained unfortunately the flight was massively oversold and I was one of the unlucky people chosen not to be given a seat. I explained, in desperation, that I was flying for literally 48 hours to America and my dates of travel were non-negotiable. I asked if upgrading would help. She said yes, possibly, as of now there is no one in stand by in premium economy. But, she warned, I cannot give you a seat, even then. I handed over my credit card not knowing what to do, but thinking this may help my chances. Another €400. Welp. She then began speaking to managers, on site and on the phone. The line behind me was growing. My tears were flowing, as I explained I had to get to Washington to move one kid into college and then fly immediately back not to miss another kid’s birthday. After about 45 minutes, she quietly handed me a boarding pass with a seat assignment on it, and whispered that she had managed to do the impossible. I thanked her profusely through yet more tears, and forgot to ask about the way back. I was just so grateful to know I would be getting on the plane on Wednesday. Mind you, this is having spent €1800 for the privilege. Insanity. I was handed a business card with a link to customer service. I took it for posterity.

In between my rants on X, I was accosted by spammers pretending to be Austrian Airlines, and I even made the juvenile mistake in my stress of sending my data including phone and email to one of them, who then called me over WhatsApp. I pray nothing bad happens from that slip. The real Austrian Airlines never answered me on social media. We really have no other options from Vienna if you want to fly transatlantic without changing planes. They know it, we know it. I write this not thinking it will change anything, but I shock that you can spend so much money and essentially be sold the “opportunity” to “maybe” get on the plane. At the gate in Vienna, they then began offering half-price upgrades, which also made my stomach turn, but I told myself I had paid full price for my upgrade to save myself another 46 hours of worrying whether or not I would get on the plane. On the day I flew out, I went again to that counter, and asked about the flight back, and was assured it was not oversold. This information was true, and on the way back, I had no trouble to check into a normal economy seat, receive a seat assignment, all without paying extra. I was told over X but someone who flew the route regularly that this particular flight from Vienna to Washington is often oversold, and they often select single travellers to fly stand by, punishing those who didn’t pay for a seat in advance. But how would a normal person know this? I stopped paying for seats a while ago, thinking they have to assign you one anyway, so it’s a bit like burning money…

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I left America in 1999 and have since come back to have a baby and attend graduate school, but never to live on a permanent basis. As the years pass, each trip back feels more and more like visiting a totally foreign country. I cannot tell how much of this is America changed or simply I became more European. Therefore I share my observations here with the huge caveat that they are subjective and highly dependent on my own mental state at the time, which was saying goodbye to my eldest knowing it was a forever move, worrying about paying for college, and all of those thoughts which rush through the brain of a parent who suddenly sees 18 years flash before their eyes as if it was some sort of totally unexpected conclusion, as if you yourself are still 30 and none of this is actually really happening.

I was asked more questions in passport control arriving back in my home country than I am ever asked in Europe. The more complicated your story is, the more questions arise. They finally stopped when I explained I have an address in Ohio I use to pay my taxes from — my sister’s place. The mention of the IRS seemed to satisfy the officer. Ordering an Uber was easy and relatively inexpensive, meaning a trip from the airport to metropolitan DC was about the same as I would pay from the Vienna airport to the city center, plus it is a longer drive. The hotel wouldn’t let my 18 year old son into the room as I wasn’t there yet and apparently being 18 in America isn’t a real adult yet, and there are rules. When everything is run by a large corporation, there are only rules, and no one is authorised to bend them. This is funny to me as I thought of all those small hotels in Europe which just use common sense. The land of the free doesn’t feel free at all these days.

The blasts of industrial air conditioning smack you awake. I love air conditioning, but this is next level.

I was worried about booking a table for dinner and yet I should not have been. The restaurant business too is big business, there are tables for miles and everything is run like a factory, you interact with about five staff members before you actually reach your table. Don’t look at the prices. Don’t calculate sales tax. Don’t think to ask why the Aperol spritz is made with gin and costs $15. The 18 year old doesn’t dare order alcohol. I push my glass across the table towards him. The food is good if lacking greenery. The portions as you expect. You slowly start to realise over the next few days what a supermarket desert is, when your only options are tons of fast food or processed snacks, where getting your hands on a banana or apple you would actually like to consumer is easier said than done. You leave a 22% tip, that being the smallest option the credit card machine offers you.

You struggle to select the “no tip” option every time you buy Starbucks, you would need your reading glasses to see the fine print. Starbucks itself is like a factory now, everyone pre-ordering their drinks and only coming into collect them. The drinks are being made faster than people can pick them up, one employee just shouting names. Tanja became Tia. It took us ten minutes to figure that out. It happens. On the wall there is a Puppacino wall of fame with photos of puppies and their Starbucks treats. You think of all the homeless and drug-addicted people you saw on the streets. No one makes a wall of fame for them nor offers them treats. Puppies are something everyone can agree on. People whose futures did not pan out as they had dreamed of are something no one wants to see. It is incredible to observe how they become invisible. In Vienna, I live near the train station, I see a lot of homeless people every day. But in Washington, I saw addicts lying in the middle of the streets, passed out, and people just walk around them. And on the historic border between north and south, you can imagine the racial images at play here. In front of an expensive hotel, a wealthy white family was getting in an Uber, and a black man came up to them and yelled his grievances at them, as if they were the embodiment for everything unfair about how his life turned out. We walked past, and turned into that same hotel to use the bathroom. I knew we would not be called out for trespassing — the very definition of white privilege. A block down the road, a black man was passed out in broad daylight in front of a store. No one blinked. The shop across the road is selling preppy pastoral pastels. Cashmere sweater for $190? That’s before sales tax, of course.

You can follow the Potomac, past Watergate and the Kennedy Center, to find Lincoln lit up in the early evening. You will pass dozens of joggers, male and female in incredible shape, pounding the pavement after having spent a day in front of screens. It is a solo endeavour, each in his/her own world, earpieces in place. You near the monuments and tourists start to become more plentiful, you can see from a mile away those who are not from the east coast.

You ask from where did Trump launch his insurrection? How far from the Capitol were they? You look at the reflection and remember that this is as close to the Acropolis as America gets. In a recent conversation with a European who had never been to America, this person expressed, without cynicism, a wonder how the U.S. could be so different from Europe, after all, it was founded by European immigrants and “only a couple hundred years” had passed. I thought to myself about the changes I observed in only a few decades. Then again, maybe I changed too.

The Uber takes us back to Virgina and we pass a swampy island and you find yourself saying out loud, “wow, it really is a swamp”.

In the morning you walk back to a college campus, half of which feels so familiar, half of which didn’t exist before. In your mind the place is trapped in time in the mid-90s, stuck there forever, and yet to your utter shock, you uncover other people have been calling it their own ever since. It is no longer yours. It does not remember you. You try and use the restroom on the last day in the library, a brutalist structure in which you spent hours poured over Russian language books in tiny upstairs cubicles, searching microfilm in the basement for research papers, and the security guard takes one look at you and says no ID, can’t use the restroom. You nearly cry and simply turn around and head towards the gates. There are balloons welcoming all the new arrivals, enormous SUVs from all across the country and even Canada. You remember arriving in a taxi from the airport with two suitcases, and a student-driven golf cart delivering you to your dorm. Now the students stand with posters and balloons and just cheer, as the actual heavy lifting has been outsourced to a company with moving crates and black and brown minimum wage employees. Serving a line of SUVs. Driven mostly by white parents. I say this because I think the visual is important. A Chinese-owned Birken bag walked by me so unique, so custom, that I gasped knowing that handbag alone is probably worth 6 figures.

The education itself is a premium product. I have been battling unsuccessfully with a federal government website to be able to access private aid (oh the irony), and I am still losing my battle, with a huge amount of money on the line, depending on my ability to navigate something that should be so simple, but alas, is anything but. This morning it is down for maintenance. In the cellar (messaging crystal clear) of a historical building, it was explained to me that this digital bureacracy must be conquered in order for my bill to be reduced by the promised amount of private help. So you are basically hyperventilating knowing how much money is on the line, and trying to login for three people: student and both parents. You try in vain to send a paper version in last winter. It probably didn’t get scanned because you sent in A4 paper and they use 8 1/2 x 11. You print it out again at the hotel business center. Fill it out again, carefully circling the dots not to go over the lines. You run to the local post office. Lunch break 1pm-2pm (impressive, a first I’ve seen). You pay $30 for 1-2 day mail domestically. You wonder if the PO Box even exists, if a human will ever through your form in a scanner to be miraculously uploaded and the funds to be released. It all feels unreal. The money, the aid, the forms. Like Monopoly. You are assured your kid can still attend class, sleep, and eat while it is being sorted out. You exhale, a bit.

Your kid takes you into the city, to museums you never saw, you walk this close to the White House. You never did that before, either. You wonder why the flag is at half mast. Because they are all in Chicago? Or Delaware? A young black man walks past, starts shouting, “suck my dick, Joe Biden”. The secret service officers don’t flinch. No one cares. I imagine this near the Kremlin walls. But he is non-partisan, in his next breath, “suck my dick, Donald Trump”. A few people giggle. He keeps going. You can rant as loud and as long as you want in front of the White House. No one cares. Free speech in that sense is protected.

A few blocks before that you go see the presidents in a museum with free entry. You ask about Michelle Obama, the one you really wanted to see. She is on loan for the year. She is not there. You walk past fancy stores with no customers and see a ridiculously bright coloured handbag on sale for 50% off. You don’t need it but you buy it as the professional saleswomen feed you compliment after compliment, and then discuss amongst themselves, quietly, who will take the commission for the sale. You smile. You like it when capitalism works as it should, commissions and the like. You cannot remember the last time any salesperson in Europe paid you any kind of complement. You could get used to this. But you know it is all artificial, like the sweetener in the Diet Coke which just tastes so much better than Cola Light ever will. You wonder why. Must be some illegal pre-cancerous ingredient.

On move-in day you hug a mom you used to hang out with in a London park. The kids were in preschool together. Now moving into the same dorm. The world is microscopic sometimes. The kids don’t remember each other. They were 3 when they went to each other’s birthday parties. Now they chat over Instagram.

You feel so old. You feel terribly alone. You know all these paths and these steps and yet everything is different. So very different. You give a hug goodbye and try not to cry ugly mama tears as you make your way to the airport. You fail. You breathe a sigh of relief when you board a plane to Europe. You look forward to making your own food and eating tomatoes that taste like they were grow in the Mediterranean sun. At one point in suburban Virginia you look at your kid and say all you want right now is to be in a Voli near Tivat and he looks at you and rolls his eyes. You realise what getting old is. It is about picking you favourite place and wanting to hide out there. You overhear conversations amongst men wearing golf clothes as athleisure about acres of land bought near ski resorts and tax breaks when you let a farmer take a corner. Part of you wants to vomit, part of you understands the motivation.

America has so much to offer and yet so much is so painful to see, many people choose to live as far away from the unsightly-ness as they can, those who can afford to create their own bubbles do exactly that. And yet they pretend to be everyman, we can all bond over football in fall and what will be on the table this Thanksgiving. Everyone can be American. That is the dream. And part of it is true.

You smell more pot than cigarette smoke. In fact, you don’t even see people vaping. You don’t see a lot of alcohol being consumed. You start to think everyone is numbing themselves with pharma. You see Ozempic faces. Your X ads start offering you this too. Again, corporations. Wherever there is a margin to be made from normal human emotional suffering and the desire to be a newer, better version of yourself, they are there. You thinking of Pookie’s husband buying up dental clinics or whatever private equity does these days. You pray you don’t get sick. You just paid €227 to see a private doctor on a Saturday in Austria to get basic antibiotics; you know in America it would be probably ten times that.

So now back in Europe, I am going to try and win my battle over a federal government website, and if not, cry some more (although I don’t think tears work in America like they do in Europe), and try to control my emotions. I am shocked by the speed with which the youngest, who never had her own room, has now occupied the room of the eldest, the dust didn’t even settle yet and her clothes are already filling his nearly empty cupboard. The kids, they are fast. They don’t sit in their feelings. The move on. We could learn from them.

I know this may come across as hugely negative and it should not. I love how friendly and open everyone is in the U.S. I wish we could transport some of that across the ocean. Despite all of the directional changes the country has taken — that friendliness aspect has not changed. The cars are either gigantic SUVs or old and beaten up. After Austria’s roads, they look surreal. You don’t see a lot of European branded cars. An enormous Tesla Cybertruck drove in mid-morning to park on an open-air lot in the middle of Georgetown, minus the gun rack Kadyrov has on his. It was a frightening sight. But then you ask yourself, why does this scare you but the G-wagons of Balkan drug dealers do not? And you have no answer. I think we get used to what is familiar, and the human being can get used to almost anything.