It is more a reflection on the art of traveling through time .
I will start by saying that I am from time that traveling by plane meant to bring almost anything that fits on the trunk or out of it and when I say almost all, is not an euphemism. I must add even that the hosteses of TAP Air Portugal , our exclusive carrier for long and tortuous years, sometimes looked at me with an absolute silent disapproval before the amount of hand luggage I could carry on, not to mention the suitcase bursting sent to the cargo hold, I coul say the one thing lacking was a hang bag on top of my head, such were my needs ... to carry things. Truth be told , although they looked horrified, the ladies always patiently helped me find a little place for my multiple bags and pouches and why am I talking about this, you may ask? Due to the fact that today we are witnessing a genuine period of terror in international aviation leding us to what I call the most bizarre scenario in the every day life of airports . Consider this, a pesssoa practically has to strip not to beep when we passed by the metals detector, since taking off belts, jewelry, piercings, shoes and even at the end we are still lavish with a personal customized search. But this is not even the weirdest, now when I see airport employees tasting beverages that mothers carry in the handbags for their babies , I wonder isn´t too much? After all how the water, or the juice from the baby bottle contribute in any way to a terrorist attack ? And I think , oh time go back !
And I remember, not missing it a lot I might add, when I finished the course , because I lived in Madeira and my parents could not really bring the car to carry all the stuff I have accumulated over the years , and the cost to transport via container was too much for my student pocket, decided to slowly bring everything , and I must stress that I carried almost everything from books, pots even the knives I got for the kitchen , if I tried, or rather dared nowadays go through airport security with such artefacts I soon would be arrested and charged of terrorism. Not to mention the plants, fruits and other items that I carried with me throughout the years, via airplane. One of the funniest trips I took was when I decided to bring a parakeet as a Christmas present for my mother, offered by a cousin ho bread several types of these birds. Of course , I could not put it in the bag that would go to the cargo hold because the poor animal would die asphyxiated, then common sense dictated the handbag. Clearly I had no certificate from the veterinarian, but decided to risk it and I must say it was one of the most hilarious moments that had in an airport, passing by the famous X-ray machine, as I was already on the other side, I enjoy the look of surprise of the employee when he viewed among other everyday objects, a skeleton contoured as a bird, which contained a small beating heart, after the initial shock, he started to laugh and called another colleague to observe this strange phenomenon, after a short whispered conversation, both very amused men turned towards me, looked at my bag, looked back at me and trying to look very serious , they told me they were going to pretend that they saw nothing. Only then I could breathe of relief , to laugh nervously and thought how good it is to live in Portugal . As you can guess this kind of things only happen in our country , in my view, more stringent people would have trapped the the animal, I will be forced to hear a moralizing speech and continuous act would have been fined at the least, so, thankfully we are more forgiving than we believed. The radioactive parakeet arrived safe and sound to the island, after two and a half hours, which it did not want to eat or drink and in fact it was his first and last plane trip and I guarantee that after this mishap he lived for long and many years to the delight of my mother who enjoyed its morning singing .
