The Return Flight: A Snapshot
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 10.17.05 | 7:50 AM ET
Thomas Swick has another gem of a column in Sunday’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel, spending 721 well-chosen words on something not too many travel writers write about: the flight home. It’s terrific you-are-there writing.
Here’s a taste:
At Charles de Gaulle in Paris I fingered my last 2-euro coins and used one to obtain a Herald Tribune. (So much of the pleasure of returning—and the frustration in travel—is tied to language.) The two remaining coins got me a bread roll and an Orangina—the meal of a man at the end of his road—which I enjoyed while writing my final notes on Turin.
Boarding interrupted my reading. The people in line in front of me were speaking French, just as the people next to me at the luggage carousel in Miami would be speaking Spanish. (How does that happen?) I plopped into my aisle seat next to two German women who instantly elevated me—they were headed to South Florida for vacation—from homebound traveler to local authority. They wondered if I knew any German.
“Wanderlust,” I said.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
