Embarking on the Tourist Trek…

Its somewhat ironic that after a June that was abnormally busy with business travel spanning continents, my eventual time-out to return to blogging should begin in an airport! Well, they do say there is no place like home and, given my regularity with inter airport transit, as always it tends to be a common source for my blogging muse, if not on this occasion, amusement.

Travelling à la tourist tends to mean travelling with an airline of less familiarity (the ones that pack in as many holiday makers and their beach gadgets as possible), and with them the unfamiliar territory of the pre-flight wait without an exec lounge. As much as I may be guilty of lounge snobbery, as a result of more time spent chez terminal than chez home, as I wander in search for solace and a socket in a rapidly filling departure lounge, I wonder ….what it is that brings out behaviours of the infrequent flyers, than those of us who start red-eye and end the 9-5 on the last flight home?

I have numerous previous airport writings, all openly admiting my self confessed impatience in a terminal which, by the time a Friday business flight is called, is quite possibly insensitive to the fact that not everyone spends their morning and evening rush manoevering check in and security. However, looking around, although I recognise familiar pinstripe suits from the frequent flyer club lounge, I am surprised at the usual lack of control and precision displayed, now as glaringly absent as the colourfullyclad neon Bermunda shorts and I wonder….does a summer vacation automatically mean mayhem for even the seasoned traveller, or does the switchover to travel with the 2.4 children and boarding with more than a brief case and a blackberry call for a mental switch off of all things controlled?

The disciplined precision of time, pre-security planning and minimal hand-luggage is quickly little more than a distant postcard from Corporate as the family holiday commences and the proverbial Brits on Tour begins – security queues get longer with prams and groups, trays are overloaded with kiddie coloured ipods, family-sized mobile phone collections, teenage jumbo headsets and the inevitable  Nintendo DS ('cos it really wouldn’t br right if the electronic puppy died of starvation in the 2 weeks away, would it?...)

Once into the common room departure lounge, I watch as the travelling masses separate like the parting of the waves – ladies and children to the WH Smith mecca for the obligatory stock up of boiled sweets, full collection of weekly magazine issues, flight pillow and '3 for 2' book offer, whilst the non 2.4 owners (and the odd escaping husband) prop up the closest bar to top up their 6am tequila shots with beer and bacon sandwiches – and I wonder…does our holiday brain exert a certain vacation endorphine that pre-programmes us into a pre-defined airport itinerary, and indeed, at what point did my travelling maturity leave either, or both, of these tourist traits behind?

Notably however, I wonder if in all of this chaos it is just I that is panicking to find the socket to charge my blackberry, and if the last minute business is the real start of the non-business? So, flight called and ready to join the vacation nation, I wonder ....what is it that will really make the perfect holiday - tourist-topped up hand luggage packed with a giant sized duty-free Tobelerone or simply the will power to switch off my mobile phone?

‘Til next time, Pandora