Flying into the Future

Nancy Triggiani

It was my first venture to Europe and I was flying solo. My husband remained home to oversee our business and care for our only child, a furry two-year-old long coat Akita named, Romeo. Prompted, nudged, and encouraged by an Austrian friend who helped organize my trip, I found myself standing curbside at the departure terminal for Austrian Airlines, amid the crumbling ruins of Newark, New Jersey, kissing my husband goodbye. Having not traveled by air in many years, I didn’t know what to expect …. on either side of the pond!

Waddling toward the snaking check-in line, encumbered with an oversized towering backpack that could easily fit a compact electric car, and a smaller one that wasn’t so small, I eyed the other passengers towing their wheeled luggage with ease. As I said, I hadn’t flown in a long time, but I’m tough, I thought to myself – a former competitive judo player – I’ve got this! As the line inched forward, the others shuffled ahead with smoothly rolling suitcases at their heels, while I lugged and wrestled with mine, sweating, as though in the finals of a judo tournament. Reaching the counter, I handed my opponent over to the airlines clerk who, exactly like a judo official, weighed it in and attached an Austrian Airlines tag around one of the straps, placing it on a conveyor. I watched it vanish into an abyss, wondering if and where we shall meet again.

With passport and boarding pass in hand and the midsize pack perched on my back, I headed to the gate where passengers stood corralled in a maze of rope barriers leading to security check points. Commanded and controlled by frumpy uniformed agents with wrinkled shirts half untucked around protruding waistlines, and whose faces bore the expression of stoic disdain, they hollered, shouted, and belted orders. “Take all laptops out! Place personal items in the bin! Take your shoes off! Remove all metal objects from your person! Keep moving! Shoes off! Shoes off!” I cringed with each piercing bellow; the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. Placing my socked feet in the designated foot-shaped outlines, my arms straight up in the air, my body was scanned in a glass booth, and I was ordered down a plank on my way to be reunited with my bin of personal items and my shoes – Adidas sneakers to be more exact.

Taxying down the runway shortly after 5:30PM in August 2017, the nose of the plane pointed up, as the powerful engines thrust the aircraft skywards. The early evening sun lit the landscape below. With my head pressed against the window, the decaying buildings, chemical tanks, filth-spewing factories, tributaries of chemically colored water, and car-jammed turnpike shrank below like a fading postwar scene. The sun soon faded to darkness. Sleepless, I flew through the night. My chattering seatmate, a jovial heavyset man from Slovenia, made the hours pass quickly, and before long, a sliver of sunlight appeared on the horizon.

Tiny villages dotted the mountainous landscape. I wondered what the people were doing down below as they started their day in the miniature houses. My mind’s eye saw them pouring and sipping steaming coffee from ceramic mugs. Gradually, the mountains, villages, and houses grew larger, as the airliner descended further into Austrian airspace. A beautiful blue-green river came into view. Could it be? Is it? The Blue Danube? I waltzed in my seat. Strains of Strauss rang in my head. I was in three-quarter time. In tempo, the whine of the lowering wing flaps accompanied the descending aircraft. Rows upon rows of wind turbines in a bright green grassy field came into to view – clean energy! I landed in Vienna, Austria!

We disembarked in an orderly fashion; my sneakers squeaked against the polished terminal floors. Calmly heading to baggage claim, the conveyor promptly churned into action. One wheeled luggage after another appeared and finally, one enormous backpack. We stared each other down; I yanked it to the floor and then mounted it upon my shoulders, heading to Customs. A chiseled young Austrian male in a crisp uniform behind a glass booth welcomed me and stamped my passport – my first passport stamp! In a flash, the image of my grandmother, born in Italy, came to mind. “Shhhh….” She would always say after telling stories of her youth, “We are really Austrian!” With my feet on ancestral turf, I walked to the counter to order a taxi. Within minutes, a man in a suit led me to a shiny Mercedes, parked in an underground airport garage. Rolling up the ramp, Vienna came into view. The streets were perfectly paved with not a pothole to be found, equally as scarce was any form of litter. Manufacturing plants sitting in green fields caught my eye and I wondered what the shiny silver things sticking out of their roofs were. Then it dawned on me, they’re smoke stacks of polished chrome, just like all the chimney stacks I’d later see protruding from rooftops of apartments and houses throughout the City of Dreams.

Surrounded by high-tech efficiency, ultra-modern transportation, advanced infrastructure, and exceptional cleanliness, my first impression of Austria remains my last, it was as though I had flown from the stone ages and landed in the future. Yes, I had left the gravel pits of the Flintstones behind and had arrived in a new, more advanced civilization.