At the moment, we’re in the Madrid airport, on our way between Casablanca and Tel Aviv. After one month in Tunisia and Morocco and two weeks in Hungary, Romania and Turkey, Spain (or at least this airport) feels positively cozy and familiar. For one thing, it’s Christmastime here. For another, we can read a bit of Spanish and muddle our way through, for example, a McDonald’s order. Needless to say, Hungarian and Arabic were not so easy to manage.
We've been flying between the last few countries and I’ve learned to abandon all of my expectations for airport procedure.
On Air France, I spent about 5 minutes waiting to pass the beverage cart on my way back from the bathroom before one of the flight attendants invited me to simply pass by the cart. My mind was blown by the forethought of making the cart sufficiently more narrow than the aisle.
Between Istanbul and Tunis we stopped in Marseille and currently we have a layover in Spain. In both cases, we were surprised that we had to go through customs to enter and then immediately leave the European country. Hooray for more passport stamps!
As we’ve used up all of our permitted 90 days in the Schengen zone, we were a little nervous. Luckily, in France the agent didn’t look at any dates of entry and exit and here in Spain he didn’t even look at the picture page of the passport. If one were brave, it would be possible to stay in Europe much longer than allowed. But I’m not brave like that.
Speaking of passport stamps, it seems that in Arabic speaking countries they can’t resist stamping on the first blank page they find at the end of the booklet, so things are quite out of order :) I expect Israel will be the same.
Early on the morning we left Tunisia, a Tunisian Air plane was held up at gunpoint on the runway in Libya. Therefore security was high and we had to shuffle along in a huge line to go through scanners with all of our luggage at the very entrance of the airport (Swiss Army knife and all). In Marseille we went through security at a similarly unexpected point and then again, just outside our gate. For us this meant guzzling the contents of the water bottles and then boarding the plain with full bladders and empty bottles (the horror!).
Oh and Air France gave us a delicious meal, the dears.
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