Fokker 100

I boarded a small plane from Swiss International Airlines. My seat was in the last row, 20B. From the small window, you could see the engines at the back, near the tail. This is how the plane was: the engines obstruct all your view even if you wanted to see it.

I sat down and changed my Danish money in my wallet to Euro, so when I arrive I wouldn't have to look for them. With some effort, I pushed my rucksack into the small overhead luggage compartment. When I went back to sit down, there was a new guy who had the seat next to mine; my seat was on the aisle. He was a bit chubby and had his luggage in the seat in front of him. I asked him if he wanted to put it in the overhead compartment before I sat down. He told me it was fine for him like this.

So I sat down next to him. I couldn't put down the armrest between us completely because of him, and I felt he was slightly sweating. He continued talking about his luggage, "The flight wouldn't take long, it's only half an hour." He said it took longer for the plane to get out from parking position and take off and land, than it took for our flight. We laughed a little. I said, "I think everybody on this flight is coming from a connecting flight, because it's faster to go from Zurich to Stuttgart by train." He agreed with me. I said I was coming from Copenhagen today, and he said he was coming from Madrid. He said, "Because Zurich is exactly on the straight line from Madrid to Stuttgart. So this is the shortest connection for me."

He was Spanish and worked in Stuttgart, and he goes back to his home city whenever he feels like it. At first I thought he was German, because his accent for English showed that he had been in Germany for a long time and it wasn't at all a Spanish accent. He said he worked with Mercedes. I wasn't surprised; actually I expected he would say something like this. Some weeks ago, during a beer fest in Stuttgart, I was drinking beer on a table with people who worked with Porsche. We continued talking about the large number of engineers working in Stuttgart, about economies of different countries, different languages, and people with Swiss bank accounts.

He slept during take off, and I had a short nap too. We stopped talking from now on. They gave us a chocolate and a small water bottle, and later they came again to give us another last chocolate. I didn't want, and him too. We landed and I switched on my phone while the people were getting out. Since we were at the last seat, we had to be some of the last ones to get off.

When half of the plane was empty, my friend called me on the phone and I started blabbering in Maltese. I had one hand on my phone to my ear and I was trying to pull out the stuffed bag from the overhead compartment. I couldn't manage with one hand, so I had to shout to my friend to stop talking so I could put the phone down on the seat to pull out the bag with both hands. The people waited and stared. I wore the backpack, took back the phone, and ran to the door.

I waved to the crew with my empty hand and hurried to catch the train. I had forgotten about the Spanish guy and didn't even say goodbye. And I felt stupid.