Written at 8:15am

My friends in Johannesburg took me for a braai where we had great food, met nice people and where my lips got painted red by great South African wine.

Long journey + fur allergy + red wine -exhausted, I boarded the aircraft where I was seated between.. a teenage American missionary and a young Slovakian mother with a hyperactive 1 year old. There were no seats free anywhere else.

I know I could have used the opportunity to ask the kid a million questions about Christianity but I mainly focused on keeping the baby busy and listening to the wonders of Anouar Brahem on my iPod. I asked myself how long it will take until they remove the 1million ‘no smoking’ signs from airplanes. The girl with the baby said it probably was meant for Spanish people “because they smoke everywhere” which wasn’t what I meant at all by my question. So I kept thinking about random details I couldn’t discuss with my travel company, and trying to stay warm.

Because this British Airways flight proved to be the coldest flight I have ever been on. People were wearing hats, winter jackets and blankets over their heads. So I asked a steward if the aircon was broken. “No, a person fainted before.” he said and left. Gaaah.. so I went angry, annoying, demanding Caroline and walked over to another attendant, starting off with an African: “Hello mister, how are you doing?” quickly realizing that he found that completely irrelevant, and continuing to “I’m sorry, I don’t want to be rude, but this is the most unpleasant long distance flight I have ever been on.. Are you actually saying that an entire Boeing 747 has to suffer for 11 hours because of something that probably wasn’t even heat related and that surely won’t be affected by slightly more human conditions?” This man was much nicer and even turned that aircon knob a little. I still kept my jacket on though as the temperature never really got to human levels. I have said this before, I really lose it when I’m cold.

On the flight, I also finally watched “A single man” – a movie I have been listening to the Abel Korzeniowski composed soundtrack from for months. A very touching, real and beautiful movie, really. And watching it next to the missionary guy made it a little bit more fun, I really wish I had been in the mood to discuss homosexuality with him.

London offered a beautiful sunrise and I switched to my Angolan and Mozambican playlist. I am already feeling nostalgic about Africa, and I am still not realizing that I will be seeing my mother soon. Maybe because I’m spending a night in Copenhagen first and don’t want to spoil that by looking forward to what comes next. Or maybe because this was all decided so suddenly and being busy at work hasn’t allowed me to connect emotionally to the fact. Or maybe because I’m tired and everything seems to be working against me now, I’m generally just really hoping I will get my bag.

Another British Airways flight now, London to Copenhagen.
I know I’m in Europe as the 12 year old Danish girl has a little infobox about “how to masturbate better!” in her youth magazine. Just got a bread roll with a piece of extremely slobby bacon in it and became vegetarian in a split second. Got a mini bread packed with wet cheese instead. Most people just gave the thing back when the stewardess came to collect the trash. I can’t believe I will be flying with this airline on my way back.