Why do we travel? Now, most people would say, I travel. Perhaps to go someplace, perhaps to experience a new culture, you know, maybe we even enjoy just something different because there are many parts of the world that are very very different than our own for sure. But a big part of the travel, of course, is the adventure of just getting there. Now in the modern world, as we know, travel is subject to security.
People that are obviously extremely bored looking at literally thousands of pieces of luggage and people. Many of whom are tired after 10 hours or so in the air and they don’t really have a sense of humor. But these people, these security people are somewhat trained to look out for those evil doers which are under every chair obviously and under every table and under your seat on the airplane. But in reality, of course, most people are good so the chances of something really bad happening is small. It almost doesn’t exist.
Regardless, this is the new age, the new phenomenon. After 911 in America for sure and all the other horrible things that have occurred in Europe as well. So I’ve had my fair share of misadventures along the way. I’ve missed some flights. I’ve been detained in the Shanghai Airport by the Shanghai Airport Police for about 10 hours.
That was pretty exciting. I’ve been held in a cell in Louisiana, detained at the airport in Victoria of all places. But the best one the best one for sure happened to me very very recently in Frankfurt. I was transiting through in Frankfurt on my way to Vancouver. I was coming from Poland.
So I spent the night in Frankfurt and then the next morning returned to the airport and made my way to security. And I was gonna go through security when they detected that my luggage, somehow piece of my luggage had some semblance of bomb making equipment. Now I’m not making this up, bomb making equipment. And so they had to summon security. Now these people obviously at this point and in these times do not have a sense of humor at all.
And I got my little bow tie on. I’m trying to be very polite, but it’s not fun at 7 o’clock in the morning when 2 very large policemen arrive and they are armed of course and they want your passport and they study it very closely and then they hang on to it. They don’t return it immediately. And the young security agent then proceeds to take every piece of clothing, personal item, whatever out of the luggage. And if you try to help, you obviously have something to hide.
So this results in a great deal of admonishment immediately. So the whole process takes about a good half an hour in the end and you’re left with an absolute mess. Of course, there is, you know, the requisite shift change as this is all going on. Right? So you end up finally, they don’t find anything at all and you’re dismissed inconsequentially back to another lineup to get on an airplane.
So the adventure of travel is also I think why we travel. But you know what I’ve learned from all of this and I think this is very, very important. You must learn patience. No matter how tired you are, you must be patient and you must be polite. Because if you are not, you will only anticipate new problems.
You will encourage new problems and you will just spend more time. But it does pose the question, how could anyone really smuggle anything through these security systems? As inept as they may be, they are so efficient because there’s so many people and so many electronic devices. Be it may an x-ray, an x-ray machine, a sniffer dog, whatever it is, that it seems incredible that things could actually happen. But does the public really feel any safer?
I suspect not. It probably just feels more harried, more frustrated, to be honest. Because in today’s electronic age, it’s hard to believe we couldn’t have a more efficient way to process all these 100 of thousands of people that travel. And I think that because we like travelling and we are good people for the most part, we want to experience the Earth. Right?
I think that we do have to say, gosh, there’s gotta be another way. But regardless, travel we will continue. So enjoy your adventures, and you know what they say, you know what they say, Critical thinking is necessary for travel and for other adventures, and critical thinking is truly great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.