I Hate London Heathrow

Yes, yes he did.

There’s a lot to think about as you’re hurtling in a metal can 37,001 feet above sea level. You think things like: holy shit, I’m traveling at 600 mph 37,001 feet above sea level. And: did that kid just take his shoes and socks off? You realise you’ve been playing (and cheating at) solitaire on your phone for three hours straight, and wonder what your seat mate thinks. You wonder if you can even cheat at solitaire, or if the rules are merely a suggestion – the name of the game, after all, implies that it’s single player, and you aren’t playing for rank or status. Cheating, therefore, is only what you define as cheating. Then, when the woman in front of you downloads solitaire to her seat and begins to play, you wonder if judging her moves makes you a bad person. You wonder if, when the doors to the plane are opened, it’s like opening up any other can, and the pent-up aroma of three hundred people bursts out into the fresh air of the terminal.

Standing alone in the international terminal of London Heathrow Airport, you wonder, briefly, if you’ve made a mistake. All of these are things I couldn’t – and can’t – stop thinking about as I made my way from San Francisco, California to Edinburgh, Scotland. And that was just the first leg of my thirty-hour journey. 

In a strange return to form, the plane had seat-back entertainment. I drank water from glasses made of glass; I was handed a paper menu outlining “dining options” with phrases such as “Starter” and “Mains” and “Dessert” thrown in. I did not indulge in the “seared beef with a red wine demi-glace,” nor did I partake in the “tropical panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis” (which, now that I’m looking at those words in that order, I am regretting deeply.) The flight attendant, in a moment of exasperation, asked “Can I get you anything?” after I turned down politely offered cups of water, juice, and wine. I finally, after some convincing, accepted a small can of ginger ale, at which point she seemed to assume I anticipated plane sickness, or nausea, and offered me a second, third, and fourth can. How could I succinctly tell her that no, my frantic and immediate search through the seat back pocket for the barf bag when I first boarded was not because I felt ill but rather the side effect of a single incident on a plane sixteen years ago, where I had the misfortune of becoming overly anxious and vomiting, like a dog. I, a creature of planning and preparedness, learned my lesson sixteen years ago, and will not go through that again. I simply like knowing where everything is, just in case. Better to let her wonder, anyways, and keep playing solitaire. 

Regardless of cheating at solitaire and feeling physically ill, I find myself in an interesting and exciting endeavour: studying abroad after a hectic bout of indecision. In less than twenty-four hours, I’ll be in “university housing,” half a mile away from the church housing the body of the queen (which I swear I had nothing to do with), adjusting to living abroad for the first time. And all of this having come after barely a month of planning, a terrifyingly close arrival window for my student visa, and several sleepless nights wondering if I would really be able to pull it off. Unlike the familiar location of the “barf bag” in the seat pocket of a commercial airplane, I come into this with less planning than I would like, knowing only a handful of people and with absolutely zero sundresses. 

I want to add something here, something that I believe wholeheartedly to be true: Heathrow is hell. Liberated from rolling luggage and armed only with a spare battery to charge my phone, a backpack to hold the blanket I permanently “borrowed” from British Airways, and a water bottle recently emptied of 32 ounces of water, I got to explore Terminal 5. It didn’t help that I was the opposite of thirsty (infer what you will about that and the water bottle, but I won’t admit to being the laughingstock of several other passengers who may or may not have witnessed me drink all of it in less than a minute). We disembarked the plane on to buses. I acted cool. Yes, cars on the lefthand side of the road. Totally normal. Keep your mouth shut and your head down, act disinterested. Don’t be like the other Americans you see. You belong here. Breathe in the hazy London air. 

Customs seemed innocently quick (despite a brief conversation with a customs agent, who assured me I didn’t need a stamp, while I showed him the letter from the UKVI saying I did, and which ended with him compromising and refusing to give me a stamp), until I reached security. And then I discovered the horrors of security in the international terminal of Heathrow. At least I was at the front of the line. Escaping out from the gate into the terminal at large felt like being liberated, until I realised: I was even more stuck. It was like letting the giraffes out of the barn at the zoo. I was suddenly free to explore what felt like a very large space. Maybe giraffe is a generous description; I’m barely five-foot-four. It was more like releasing a bear. I lumbered to one end of the terminal, as un-thirsty as I have ever been yet looking for a water bottle filler. I stopped, watched the planes, and walked back across the terminal, finding nowhere to fill my water bottle. I perused the row of high-end shops: Chanel, Hermes, Burberry. I was surrounded by people and their people smell, which competed with the perfumes and sanitisers utilised by the army of hand sanitising kiosks set out for travellers to “use at their leisure.” I briefly stopped by the “Quiet Area,” which was tranquil. I considered returning there, but it was small and I only found space on the floor. 

Heathrow "Quiet Area"

But, much like the humble zoo bear, I soon discovered the truth: Terminal 5 isn’t that large. I paced up and down the terminal thrice before finding water. Terminal 5 is crowded at noon. Terminal 5 has practically no outlets. Terminal 5 wanted to chew me up and spit me out. I did not let Terminal 5 win, because I've braved Chicago O’Hare. I’ve braved the mile-long terminals of Miami-Dade. I’ve braved a terrifying sequestering room in Ecuador, where at least we were served refreshments while our fates were decided. 

Heathrow was hell, but I adjusted. I grew as a person, becoming stronger and better than I was. Heathrow became almost like a home. Who am I kidding, my ass was sore from sitting on that hard seat and I got really good at ignoring the passive aggressive looks of travellers envious of my quiet seat at an airport cafe. 

Of Edinburgh, what can I say? It was dark when I arrived, and raining, and the woman in front of me waiting for a cab had a mental breakdown while the rest of us watched on – her traveling companion included. I’ve only seen the city in light for about an hour, but I’ve spent that hour glued to my window, taking it in. My home city for the next year. I don’t know how you’re supposed to feel when you move to a new country. If I’m being honest, I don’t feel much of anything yet. I can hardly believe that, with little more than forty days of planning, I did this. I’m alone in a city I’ve never been to, about to start a program of study that I’m passionate about, with little more than a handful of people I know by name and not face.

 I did this. 

So, here I am, preparing for life as a full-time writer, because when I went through with getting on the plane to Edinburgh, I decided that for the next year, that’s what I would be. (And I’m lucky enough to be able to pursue it full-time). I turned down a job offer as a winemaking intern; I left work on a California weed farm; I didn’t say goodbye to my cat (which is really on him for being asleep at noon). Instead, I enrolled in a master’s program for creative writing. 

I’ve been in Edinburgh for less than twelve hours and already own a bottle of gin (house made at the hotel and traded to me in exchange for two vouchers after I made sufficiently sad eyes and looked like someone who’d just been traveling for thirty hours). I took a cab for the first time, all on my own. I’ve been staring at Edinburgh Castle for an entire hour. Time will tell if it was the right call, but with the number of pub meet-ups I have planned for the next week, I can only hope that I’ll be able to type coherent sentences when the start of the semester rolls around. 

I’ll be writing weekly – and likely more often than that – because I came here to write, and I’ll be damned if I don’t do just that. Sometimes, I’ll even hold myself to telling true stories. Sometimes, just sometimes, I may edit what I write. Plus, it’s hard to complain about much when you’re sitting on the windowsill of your hotel and the view looks like this: