Back to Tegel Airport, on the visitor terrace: For a long time I resisted the temptation to say goodbye without traveling at the same time. And aren’t visitor terraces more for non-flyers?
Once these days I had to open the drawer at home that also contained the Ziploc bag with the memory cards. Pictures from the Ethiopian highlands and Cap Canaveral, from Frazer Island in Australia and the gold digger cemetery in Alaska, pictures from a museum in the land of the Apaches and from the former presidential palace in Ho Chi Minh City. The skyline of Shanghai has to be in between as well as the birch trees in Siberia and the Salute in Venice, San Xavier Mission in Tucson and the lush bougainvillea in Vanuatu. And again and again New York, lots of New York.
Suddenly the shock came boiling hot: not a single picture of Tegel. Not one! Been there so often at 5 a.m., looking at the morning sky like a promise. Made last-minute purchases at “Bon Voyage”, a city guide, a magazine and padlocks for the suitcases that keep getting lost.
Images of Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue are hidden on the memory cards, of Elizabeth Street in Sydney and the roof of Galeries Lafayette in Paris, of the then only department store in Ulan Bator and the market in Montreal. But not a single picture of the “Bon Voyage”!
In the plastic bag, the yellow cabs jostle on the avenues, the red London taxis, and some Chinese are probably there too. But the taxi rank at Gate 6, where I often stumbled over night? Nothing!
The forgotten scarf
So I quickly jumped into the car, the familiar route to the airport it almost drives by itself. Past the place where I suddenly noticed in the home taxi that I had forgotten the beloved scarf in the overhead compartment, past the display panel, that I’ve looked for the right gate so often. I have no idea where the access to the visitor terrace could be. In the end, it is easily recognizable by the snake that stands in front of it.
[Adieu TXL: 46 Jahre flog Berlin auf Tegel, im November ist Schluss im Hexagon. Wir erinnern an Kofferberge, Prominenz im Provinz-Flair und schauen, wer in Zukunft im Berliner Norden landet. Die Themenseite TXL]
So you’d better take a quick, familiar lap. Only inside. And then another outside. And back in again. It’s not that easy to take photos when your glasses fog up.
In the end it succeeds, on the stairs that lead up to Starbucks. Then the eye falls on a signpost: Ulan Bator 6193 kilometers, New York 6387 kilometers… Really never Tegel again? Outside, blue holes tear in the clouds.
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