Holy Security Line Batman!

When the plane finally arrived in Frankfurt I was anxious to communicate that I had made it safely through the first leg of my trip. We took a quick shuttle from the plane to the terminal and entered on the ground floor. Once inside we were directed up an escalator. Since I knew my cell phone was unlikely to work in Frankfurt I was on the outlook for a pay phone. To my delight, I quickly spotted a row of hot pink neon illuminated pay phones sponsored by T-Mobile as the escalator ascended. Jackpot! These credit card operated pay phones were exactly what I needed. But uh oh...no...No!...where was this escalator going? We were going further up. No problem I thought, I'll just have to circle around. When I reached the next floor and got off the escalator I found another row of hot pink towers. Perfect! Now, I wouldn't even need to make the trip down a flight. However, suddenly there were German fraus in red vests snapping at us (the crowd of roughly 50 passengers that had just arrived at the terminal) to form a line and go around the corner? What was around the corner? I didn't want to go around the corner! My hands ached to touch the hot pink neon goodness that was just ten feet from me.

I pushed along the crowd around the corner and to my dismay this is what I saw: 500+ people in line to go through security. What!!??!! Another layover of red tape! The fraus hurried around telling us to "move this way", "stand along here", "form two lines here", "make this the turning point," and "don't touch the dividers!" I have to admit, they were being rather patronizing. I myself, found it all quite amusing. If you have to get 500 people through security you might as well do it effectively. Yet, many of the other passengers were agitated. There was definitely some tension between these German women yelling out snappish commands and the mostly Indian crowd that had no choice but to follow along.

I was discouraged about the line, but knew once again that I would have to gather up some strength and just accept the situation. I passed the time talking to one of the authoritative frau. Each had on a name tag that said "Frau LastName." Their last names stuck in my head at the time, but have been lost in the daze that has become my trip. She told me that she could not understand how it came to be that so many people were in line at once. Granted three international flights had arrived at the same time, but she had never seen a line so long and chaotic. She told us we arrived on the worst morning she has ever seen! Awww. She explained that new international rules required passengers to pass through security before every international flight even if they had already gone through security.

I also passed the time by watching the families and faces that I had become familiar with. It seems silly, but just knowing the whereabouts of a few others (none of whom I actually talked to) made me feel less alone. There was the one family with one baby that had gotten on the flight at RDU with me up to Chicago. How coincidental that I would be with this family the entire length of my journey to Mumbai. The mother had on a beautiful green sari. Then there was the second family with one baby that was sitting in my compartment on the plane. The mother in this family was also wearing green, but this time a green cardigan and casual pants. I also looked around for the women who had become my plane buddy. We were told that we would possibly be returning to the same seats and I was anxious to have her companionship again.

For all their aggressive behavior, the fraus must have known what they were doing because I was actually at the security belt within 45 minutes. I passed through easily and was happy to find that my airplane buddy had caught up to me and we waited to collect our bags together. I said hi quickly, but rushed off to find the phones.

The phones were user friendly, so I quickly ran my credit card through and dialed Ben's number. I knew it would be close to 3am there, but I wanted to tell someone that I was doing alright. I carefully followed the instructions and typed in the numbers. It connected but then went into a busy signal. What? I knew that had to be wrong. There was no way Ben was up at 3am, besides he had call waiting. I tried again. Same thing. I decided to try the country code as just 1 instead of 001. Yesssss! It was ringing. Please pick up. Please pick up. Pleeeeeeeeasssssse pick up. For the love of all things holy please pick up!!!!!!

Finally, he did. He was very sleepy. I told him I was safe and asked him to send out an email to everyone, which he did. He also confirmed that Anand, my contact at SEARCH, had replied to my email that the driver in Nagpur would have my name on a placard.

After speaking with Ben I exchanged some of my US dollars into rupees. Even though the airport exchange completely ripped me off I felt so rich. $200 turned into 5900 rupees! Woohoo! I headed towards the gate, happy to know that despite that chaotic mess that was security I was able to accomplish everything I needed to while in Frankfurt.