Airports!

Between 1:30 pm in Columbus on the 27th and 5:30 am in London on the 29th, a time span of 34 hours, I visited eight airports: Port Columbus International, Philly International, Frankfurt International, Berlin Tegel, Berlin Schönefeld, London Stansted, London Heathrow, and London Gatwick. I therefore feel entitled to rank them.

1. Port Columbus International: I have some home-town bias. And they have free WiFi!

2. Philly: They have a shuttle which takes you between terminals so you don’t have to go out and back through security! And they have a B of A image ATM, where I was able to change my ATM card PIN from 6 digits to 4 digits to ensure compatibility with European machines. Also they have free WiFi for college students, although I didn’t bother to take advantage of this.

3. London Gatwick: They sold me an egg and watercress sandwich! Also the airport looked really easy to navigate. Also I didn’t actually have to take a plane here, so I have no negative security experiences.

4. Berlin Schönefeld: You find out what gate your plane is at approximately forty-five minutes before departure. Cool!

5. London Stansted: It is nice enough, but is £19 and 46 minutes away from the city. It is Ryanair’s hub, and their flights are nice and cheap. I saw Air Force One there when I was taking off to go back to Berlin! I didn’t get a picture, but Ryanair was making a big deal of the fact that Obama was arriving at Stansted rather than any other airport. And they weren’t lying!

6. Berlin Tegel: It is kind of hard to find the buses. And when you do, the TXL bus is really crowded and unpleasant and takes forever to get to the city.

7. Frankfurt International: No reason.

8. London Heathrow: It is too huge. And when my bus was stopping at every terminal there, I was worrying that it might actually be Gatwick and that I might have missed my stop.