M for lounge
(The M lounge at Schipol Airport: Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
After my four and a half hour wait in the rebooking queue (to end up 43rd in a reserve list for another flight, I might add), I was directed to the left of the desk and told to make my way to the ‘M Lounge’ where there were perhaps some beds. Of course there were other stragglers making the same laboured pilgrimage in a similar direction. I made for a map display, but no M Lounge was noted. Perhaps they meant the ‘M’ of the Mercure hotel? There were several of us in discussion by this time, all of us at a loss as to where to go. We were exhausted – most of us were on the second leg of a long haul flight. The hotel was (not particularly surprisingly) fully booked, as was the other hotel inside the airport. A kind of tired, latent desperation was setting in for me, though I was relieved to be able to leave the confines of the queue.
After forty minutes of searching, another passenger directed us and we ended up here. We were handed a red flight blanket and a pillow and supplied with a green drawstring bag of metal and canvas pieces. As I turned the corner of the lounge area, this view almost took my breath away. There were so many people. I imagined that we might be in the tens of people, but not hundreds. Behind me, the beds were two or three deep against the walls and in my fatigue, I couldn’t face dragging the bed any further than necessary so I set up just to the right of this image, between an elderly lady and a boy. The corridor was cold and electric vehicles kept whisking past, no doubt to carry more passengers to the ever lengthening lane of beds. Each time a vehicle passed, a waft of cool air would creep underneath the bed and I would begin to shiver a little. i woke more than once from cold, but there was nowhere else to go. At that point, I think I would have paid ay amount just to secure a real bed in my own room. Oh, and a shower,
I promise I won’t go on about my travel dilemmas anymore – in retrospect, it was an interesting experience in many ways, but one I also hope never to repeat. I hope something similar doesn’t happen to Ying on Friday when he flies to the UK.
– Today Rosie is recovering in Glasgow –
