April, 1996 (continued):
The next morning, Erik Strieleman was kind enough to pick me up at my Antwerp hotel and drive me to Brussels for the day’s seminars I would be conducting for his station, Radio Donna.
In case this repeated travel between Brussels and Antwerp is beginning to sound confusing, here’s how it worked:
• Fly into Brussels
• Drive to Antwerp, conduct seminars in Antwerp that same day, sleep in Antwerp
• Next day, drive to Brussels, conduct seminars in Brussels, then drive to airport in Antwerp to catch evening flight to England.
Why didn’t we schedule the Brussels seminars for the day I arrived in Brussels and the Antwerp seminars for the day I departed from Antwerp?
One reason is that although radio people gladly will talk about radio day or night, any day of the week, people who work for advertising agencies expect to spend their Saturdays doing…who knows? Something other than gathering at a radio station for an advertising seminar.
The choice of airports to arrive at and depart from, however, was dictated by where I was coming from immediately prior to and leaving for immediately after my stay in Belgium.
So after a long and enjoyable day with the air staff of Radio Donna, Erik drove me to the airport in Antwerp from where I was to take a flight to Amsterdam, change planes, and continue to Birmingham, England.
The airport in Antwerp was small and unadorned.
How small? After passing through Security, I found myself faced with a choice of two doorways. Taped over each was a handwritten sign; one said “Amsterdam,” the other said “London.”
How unadorned? Good luck if you’re thirsty.
Especially because I knew I’d be flying on a couple of small aircraft, I wanted to take some Dramamine before boarding the plane.
(Hmmm…..Dramamine….Excedrin. Are my travels increasingly sounding like drug-plagued, brain-numbing, body-wracking assaults on my nervous system? Hey, c’mon – we’re just talking aspirin and anti-motion sickness medicine here.)
But there was no water fountain anywhere in the small airport. Rather unusual, but no problem for me; I’d use the sink in the men’s room.
They did have a men’s room, at the gate. And the men’s room had a sink.
The sink, however, had no plumbing. I’m sure that at some time it had, but no longer.
There being no other airport employees in sight, I returned to the security check station and asked one of the two guards — a white-haired man in his late ’60s whose biggest challenge appeared to be remaining awake during working hours — if there was any place inside the airport where I could find some drinking water.
“You can get some water from the sink in the men’s room,” he replied.
“No,” I said, “I tried that. But there’s no water going into the faucet; the pipe has been removed.”
He stared at me.
I stared back.
“So,” I repeated, “is there some place where I can get some water?”
He looked at me as though I were a complete idiot and said, “You can get some water from the sink in the men’s room.”
“No, I can’t!” I proclaimed. “I already tried that. The sink in the men’s room does not work!”
He continued to stare at me. Or perhaps he during his long career in airport security he has mastered the art of sleeping with his eyes open.
Either way, if I was going to avoid extreme nausea during KLM flight #396 from Antwerp to Amsterdam, it would be without his assistance. So I returned to the gate area and took a seat with the other travelers.
I had two choices:
1) Forget about the Dramamine. I mean, how bad could it be? Answer: If you’ve ever been airsick (or seasick), you don’t have to ask that question.
2) Sneak into the ladies’ room and use their sink (assuming, of course, that that sink had water).
The two restrooms were in full view of the gate area, just a couple of feet from the nearest seats. I already had seen that the men’s room was very small — one person at a time. For me to use the ladies’ room would require me to wait for someone to come out and then rush in before another female passenger decided to use the facilities.
“Sneaking in” was out of the question; much of the airport would witness my transgression.
Although I am not fond of public humiliation, I am even less enamored of in-flight nausea.
I did enter the tiny ladies’ room. I did take my Dramamine. I did rush back out, deliberately allowing water to drip from my face and carefully swiping it with my hand in the pathetic hope that people would realize I had gone inside only because I had to take a pill and there was no water in the men’s room.
