"It's that time." I drag myself out of bed at 6 am and rush to get ready to catch the TXL bus. To my surprise, my luggage is significantly lighter when I finally close it and pick it up, although mostly what I've taken out of it are small items weighing far less than a kilogram each. Proof that all the junk really does add up. This morning my luggage weighed in at 14,1 kg rather than the 18 kg it had been the day before.
I'm afraid the RyanAir lady has ripped me off further by not reserving a baggage ticket beforehand, but either she has or the check-in lady is too much in a hurry to bother, because I get through without a problem. The German immigration control officer examines my passport in more detail than I've seen before, and stamps it with equal conscientiousness within the proper box on the page. And although all the non-EU citizens in front of me at passport control in London Stansted seem to get questioned extensively--in a friendly, almost bantery manner, if you can believe that--I get sent on my way coldly with no issues or curiosity at all. Either I appeared extremely harmless or extremely boring or extremely rich, as the young Chinese couple in front of me had to show their credit cards to prove their solvency (in truth, they probably have much more money than me--she was carrying a Galeries Lafayette bag). Probably the first two and not the latter, as I was traveling in my heaviest clothes, whether they matched or not, to reduce the weight of my luggage.
Black is the color of London. When I step onto the Northern line, what should I see but an entire left row dressed entirely in black and toting all black bags and accessories and an entire right row that bursts with color. Pity my camera was already full of pictures. though even it hadn't been, I probably still wouldn't have snapped. Where do photographers find the guts to shoot everything, and why don't people in the pictures usually look back.
To be continued... (starting to intersperse my English with German)
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