Grey Berlin

I'm sat in Berlin airport. It's grey and dull outside, and once again, I've made a fundamental error of judgement. Why does this keep happening to me?

Normally in an airport there are a few shops and cafes before you go through to departures, but once you've gone through passport control you enter the world of duty free shopping (except it's not duty free anymore) but there's usually a wider range of shops and cafes because that's where people have to spend more time because of the nature of airports and the way things work.

Well I did what I normally do in an airport. Check out the few shops that are near the check-in desks and buy something small for the kiddiwinks. You know the kind of guilt present I'm talking about, the "mummy's been away for a few days and she's missed you and she's feeling bad etc." present.

Well Hannah gets a Barbie doll - it had to happen sometime. She had a Cinderella Barbie and carriage from my brother's family for her birthday and I'm not entirely sure she gets the whole Barbie concept but she probably will at some point. I'm sure Mattel don't waste millions of marketing dollars on a product with zero relevance to their target market.

Ethan gets a Trabant. I think that's the right spelling for the old Eastern European car with a reputation for breaking down. He definitely understands how the toy car thing works. He plays with them to the point of their destruction which is usually within a week or so of purchase.

I've just realised how much I'm reinforcing gender sterotypes. How terrible. Oh well, if I didn't do it society would.

So after the guilt present buying, and realising that actually there aren't that many shops on the check-in side I decide it's time to move across to departures where I can gorge on shopping. Gorge in a hypothetical sense. I don't tend to buy much, if anything but I do like to look. So I repeat some of the ritual humilation of the security checks that I encoutered in Stansted.

No footwear removed this time but for some reason I had to remove my tiny watch and had a very detailed scan with the metal detector thingy. Well my breasts and calves seemed to beep a little too much for my liking. I thought the breast beeping may have been the result of the underwired bra but I can't explain the calves. I did start to wonder whether the moisturiser I used may have had a metallic componenet, maybe zinc or aluminium, but then I realised I was being silly. I think it may have been proximity to my shoes which have some metal trim.

What an idiot! After going through security I realised I had walked into barren space. There is just a departure gate, one solitary duty free shop and not even any toilets. How outrageous, but what can I do. Once you've gone through security there really isn't any going back. So I'm stuck, with you. Well it was either you or the book and I haven't got much book left so I thought I'd save that for the flight. Plus my last experience of Air Berlin was a delayed flight. I could find myself delayed and arriving home tomorrow which could mean I would have missed my date with you.