The Kindness of Strangers: 1/4/18 – 1/7/18

In all the chaos and mess of the last few days it’s important that I mention the positive side as well.

I was really surprised and thankful for the little communities and camaraderie that developed. I was lucky enough to meet some awesome people, including a couple from the USA that were living abroad and a guy from Korea. The four of us kind of formed a little group over the days and helped each other out. That group in particular, as well as some other shorter connections and various people I talked to provided:

Fun

Typically travelers are some of the most interesting people and when you get stuck in a never ending line you get to hear some pretty intriguing stories and learn a lot. Meeting and talking with people from all around the world helped to pass the time and dull the boredom.

Understanding

As much as people try, no-one really understands your particular experience unless you are going through it, so it really helped to have people there to share frustrations with and laugh with when the situation was such a mess that the best thing to do is find the humour in it.

Familiar Faces

By the time I finally got on the airplane I felt like I knew half of the passengers. There were all these little moments where you would turn around in line and it would be like “oh hey, it’s you”. The airline actually never posted our gate once it was confirmed, but my Korean friend and I found it just by recognizing the people at the gate. On my third day at the airport after only about 15 minutes after arriving at the airport and standing in line I was greeted with a hug by one of my new fellow stranded “friends” and given early relief to search for a toilet and food. 

Information

Because the airline staff was useless in knowing information and even more useless in distributing it, we all worked together to gather and convey information to each other. We took turns going to other airlines to collect information, hounding the manager, and standing in different lines to see what we could figure out. There was kind of a line of information. Whoever was at the front would pass the current information back.

The Essentials

Other people were also vital for bathroom and food breaks. There was no way I could have waited in line that long without the breaks and hauling my luggage around every-time would have been another big hassle onto the already stressful days. We worked together to watch luggage and stand in different lines. One time I went to investigate the situation and by the time I was back, the line had moved and changed direction significantly. I had a quick panic about my luggage, but one of the kind people behind me had brought them to our new lining up space for me. Another time someone braved the gigantic food lines and bought me some food because earlier when I had went to get food the place closed immediately before I got a chance to order.

We are conditioned to believe that our fellow travelers are the unsafe ones, but after this experience I was trusting a stranger a lot more than an airline representative. A group of us laughed at the frequent “unattended baggage announcement” as we were standing by a pile of luggage left by the airline for a previous flight that didn’t make it on the flight. There was not a single person watching that luggage and honestly any worker nearby could care less. So instead of being frustrated with the people who were not helping, even though they were being paid, I tried to focus on all the people who weren’t even being paid and didn’t need to help, but did so anyways.