Anything is now possible.  I can solve my own problems.  I seem to have fixed my computer with only one sleepless night and a Gemini.  

But now the story of our Berlin Airport event seems stale.  Still, I must tell it to you.  We arrived in Berlin early in the morning – for me it was after a sleepless night of travel fever and an uncomfortable flight with food i couldn’t stand (Everyone else was fine).   So I was not in a condition to appreciate the beauty of the modern new airport in Berlin. And when the automatic border control machines didn’t work, we found the border control with real people in them almost totally unmanned.  The border control room filled up with people, mostly Arab and Jew, and border control replacement officers were called in and slowly appeared.  But we got to our destination over 2 hours late.  Our friend, who by contrast came in by train from Amsterdam, experienced no border checks and enjoyed every minute of her train ride to Berlin.   

This delay was nothing compared to our experience upon leaving Berlin.  

The first part was to some extent our fault.  We assumed that once we had been checked and our cases had passed security we could go to breakfast and then board the flight.  But, after we were not allowed to enter the boarding flight area, we discovered that there was another passport control to go through at the other end of the airport.  

Apparently no one knew this either, because the passport control was full of aisles of people waiting to be allowed in to their boarding areas.  The boys behind me estimated well over a hundred people, with 4 officers to check them in.  But more officers were called and in less than an hour we were on our way back through the entire airport to our boarding area.

There we found another line for security checks, and because our friend complained of our advanced age, we were allowed to move up the line. But I’ll bet those generous people cursed the moment they allowed their courtesy to overcome their desire to board as soon as possible.   Because when we stuffed in our bags on the conveyor belt, they stopped at the x-ray machine and chaos began.  

something was wrong with our bags.  The three young security officers were told to stop us and question us as the x-ray officer raged over an unknown suspicious article in our hand luggage.  

“let me open it,” Ezi said, “maybe it’s that little fan i bought.” but the luggage was imprisoned in the x-ray machine, and we had to wait an hour for the bomb squad to look, laugh, and go off for a beer.  

The plane waited two hours for us and all the people waiting in line for us to free the x-ray machine.

What I learned:  the young officers were following the orders of the x-ray officer, who disappeared almost immediately after barking his commands.  They were humane, a bit embarrassed, and did everything possible to ease the situation, but not free to make their own decisions.  

We – on the other hand – were stupid for putting the two-inch fan in the trolley, even though we were following the orders of the airline company about not putting batteries in our stored luggage. 

As I write this I hear Ezi shouting about something else on the phone – something he would have handled easily had we not been harassed so badly the day before.  Clearly we have been damaged by this experience.