Some aspects of travel are fun to gripe about but they are merely side issues with the true king of cursing: airports everywhere in the world, writes Ben Groundwater in a column in Australia’s Sun-Herald.
Why is that?
“There are several reasons for this, not least of which is that most airports are spectacular bastions of poor planning and rampant commercialization. They gouge outrageous amounts of money out of you for the privilege of walking across their sky bridges and going through their duty-free sections,” he writes.
This wouldn’t be such a problem if travelers spent so much time in airports. With budget prices, more and more people are taking ever more flights. That can mean up to 12 hours waiting at an airport.
“The other problem with airports is that we demand so much from them. You expect bus terminals to be a bit ratty and train stations to be hit-and-miss but airports, for some reason, are always held to the highest standard,” he points out.
Personally, he’s not that picky.
He does not need expensive jewelry stores or Gordon Ramsay-designed menus or even a sky bridge to get to his plane.
“All I want is free Wi-Fi, a decent bar with decent beer, somewhere comfortable to sit and a McDonald’s (this last one being a product of the weird urge I get to visit the Golden Arches any time I’ve got a boarding pass in my hand),” he says.
If he was going to be really demanding, however, he would add a golf driving range — not even a gigantic one but a small space to swing a club and hit a golf ball into a net.
He thinks others may feel the same but the only problem is that then there would be something else to whine about:
Perhaps their golf game.
David Wilkening
