It all started on a sultry
January evening in Buenos Aires’ Ezeiza airport. I was standing in front of a rundown
Coke vending machine, trying to extort some mineral water out of it as it was
the only thing at the airport that had cold water for an agreeable price. I was
anxiously entering torn and less torn 2 peso notes into the machine that
rejected the majority of my notes but took some on a completely random basis.
You might wonder why I entered torn notes, but anyone who’s ever been to
Argentina can tell you that by a still-to-be-solved miracle of modern
engineering even new notes in the country are already produced torn. Although
most vending machines are torn, too, they still want only new notes. Talk about
supply-demand discrepancy. Suddenly, as drips of exasperation started to
materialise on my forehead, the resolution struck me like a thunderbolt: I want
to write a blog about all this madness and punish the world with reading about
my (mis)adventures.
The steely resolution brought a
change of mind and I started kicking the machine with amazing gusto but the
bastard still wouldn’t give me any mineral water of course. My swearing and
kicking (which by the way was nearly not as spectacular in BA as
let’s say it would have been in London) amused a whole high school class and
some apathetic by-walkers, but nobody was really shocked or moved by it. My
insistence on the other hand proved quite surprising and a lazy security guard
from a neighbouring store showed up with a bored face that has seen many people
kicking the poor machine. When I tried to explain my story in a strange language
composed of Spanish, English and other words, all he could say was that “yeah,
bad luck amigo, machine’s a bastard”. Since I was left with no other choice, I
had to buy mineral water for 21 pesos instead of 12 pesos from a store nearby.
At least I got a nice smile from the girl in the store.
I smiled back with the best
fake smile I could produce and bagged the lukewarm water I bought for the price
of prime quality single malt. The water was of course in pint size bottles
which means I paid 84 pesos for 2 litres (that’s cc 7-9 pounds depending on
which exchange rate is used). Following my airport-wide research I became perfectly
sure that selling bigger bottles would seriously hinder the economic comeback
Argentina has been waiting for since 1931 thus they are not available.
Intoxicated by my unexpected success on the hydration front, I boarded the flight to São Paulo which
was the second leg of my odyssey back to London. I sat down with a winning
smile next to a woman weighing more than the full English football team and
hoped for the best. I had no idea about how wrong I was.
The approach to São Paulo reminded
me of a wild house party back from the days where someone left on the strobe
for too long. Unfortunately the atmosphere on the plane was not reminiscent of
those parties as the bumps and sudden drops would have put back the fear of God
into the late Mrs. Thatcher herself. Miraculously we landed in one piece but were parked for an hour next to the runway.
Once off the plane and with the hope of finally getting on a bird that finally
gets me home, a surprise security check resulted in an unanticipated reality
check as well. The heartless Brazilian security personnel confiscated my
precious little bottles of water (even though they were bought at another
airport) and made me bin them. I never found out about whether they thought
that carrying 3 small bottles of expensive/crap Argentine water would endanger
the integrity of the Brazilian state’s and/or whether it would pose a security
risk to São Paulo’s extremely run down little airport as we never managed to
reach such Aristotelian heights because of my lack of Portuguese (they wouldn’t
speak any other language). I still tried everything from snake-like whispering
through angelic smiles to loud screaming but nothing worked. I had to bin my
water.
You might wonder why I was so
keen to hold on to that water but I did have my reasons. TAM Airlines’ onboard service
is not very much unlike to the good quality service one received in the Soviet
Union not so long ago. TAM like to keep their guests thirsty on long hauls and
as much as this sucks on a 14-hour long transatlantic flight it sucks even more
when one is trying to fight back on a nasty cold. You definitely need water for
that. Since I am not a person who gives up easily, I attacked the flight
personnel right away after boarding, demanding some water. After the initial
shock (FATAL ERROR: crazy sick person screaming in unrecognised language) and
some hollow threats they gave me a LARGE bottle of water before take-off. This
came with a price though: I had to keep my bottle hidden from other passengers
and had to lie about where I procured the water from because telling my fellow
passengers the truth would have resulted in a sudden, VERY violent riot on the
plane which then would surely have sent us spiralling down into the Atlantic
Ocean. Nothing like this ever happened of course, but we were sentenced to 3
more hours of gate parking because of the storms.
I can hear you: so what’s his
problem now? He has water, a large bottle at that and he’s still complaining.
Well.... As much as I was happy with my hydration source, I would have really
appreciated some A/C or some food/drinks given to us. I know that I am really
high maintenance and I am overly demanding, but nothing prepared me for the
disinfectant spray TAM started spraying around the plane in 35 degrees and 100%
relative humidity. Kids were screaming, so were some adults, I would have done
the same hadn’t I been choked by my killer cough brought on by the spray.
According to TAM, they have to do this because of British law. Well, on the way
to Buenos Aires they blamed the murderous spray on the Argentineans. Want my
opinion? They are fumigation fetishists, these people. The process in my
case worked so well that by the time I reached London I could hardly breathe or
see, I had a runny nose and could not hear anything for 2 days.
What happened next? Well,
that’s pretty formulaic, I’m afraid... I tried to visit my GP but did not get
an appointment for the coming 3 weeks so I went to Boots’ and got some aspirin
/ vitamins, I picked up some wine on the way home, I drank the wine, put the
medication on the kitchen shelf and I recovered in a few days. I also procured
a secret special serum that allows me jumping back in time so I can tell you
about my Patagonian and other adventures. To be continued very soon.
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