Flying Home

After some days of trying to grasp this city (but not having so much energy to take in another huge pool of information) this trip comes to a close and I think it is just the right time as I am neither terribly sorry nor did I already long for it. I guess it would have worked out the same way with a longer or in a different way also with a shorter trip, I knew how much time I had and adapted to that frame. Now I got all my stuff packed for a last time, store some food in the backpack to survive after I get back to Germany in the middle of the night and prepare my cabin bag and after the last good-bye I am in the taxi to Heyder Aliyev Airport in Baku. I don't fly often and I usually make a point to be quite early, especially since I once had my flight from Cairo cancelled and only having been there very early indeed made me able to still go home that same day. Baku airport is more or less deserted. I buy some sweets at the duty free and wait for a long while until there is some activity of desks being opened.
I am scanned with x-ray like eyes and a digital camera for a last time at emigration and board the plane. Actually the plan was to get some sleep on the flight as I will arrive in Berlin at 2 am and will have to kill the time till my train leaves after 6.

But instead I enjoy the meals (and save up nuts and biscuits for later) and then I read Dato Turashvili's Flight from the USSR, a gift from Christy. It tells the story of seven young Georgians who hijacked an Aeroflot plane in 1983 to get to Turkey. Eight people were killed when special forces stormed the plane the surviving four hijackers three men and a pregnant woman were arrested and tried, together with their priest who was thought to have been their leader. It is a very short, very powerful book, giving a clear picture of a merciless system and young people trying to do more than survive. I cannot sleep now. 

And we are descending to Istanbul, such a nice view! From this peaceful plane... I have a four hours overlay at Sabiha Gökçen Airport, tiresome. I don't dare to sleep. There is absolutely nothing to do except for buying very overpriced food. I do buy a small bottle of very overpriced water and just sit at my gate, watching people. A young German couple getting home from their summer vacation. She is talking to her Dad on the phone. Some senior citizens of Berlin, returning...where? Home? From home? Or is home only on one side for them? I don't know. I just hear how the women talk to each other in Turkish neatly fixed hijabs, middle aged couples, the men remain silent. They just met by chance, tell each other where in Berlin they live. A much older woman joins the conversation, henna colored grey curls showing at the edge of the loosely tied scarf. An old man is praying in a corner. I wonder if there's no prayer room somewhere.

When we board the plane at 11 pm I am quite determined to sleep now, but once more other things turn up, I happen to sit next to a young German art historian who specialized in Indian art and culture and so we spend the whole flight talking about my trip, her visit to Turkey and mostly about India, especially Ladakh. And after Istanbul at night we also get to catch a magnificent view of Budapest. So many more places to see!

We reach Berlin as one of the last planes and wait for ages for our luggage and part after some stops on the city train. I am really tired now and I find there is no place to stay out of the wind at Berlin main station at this time of the night (except for McDonald's probably, but I can't stand the smell, so I mostly wander around, from time eating some of the saved-up nuts. The first bakery opens at five, some decent food and a warmer place to sit. And then, after queuing some more at the first German Railway desk opening in the morning, I am on the train home. I am beyond sleeping by now, only drifting off occasionally, then again realizing both sunny and misty Northern German early autumn early morning scenes. the sun is up and the mist is gone when I reach Greifswald and after a two kilometer walk I unlock my dorm room door, I guess I'm back.