A Delayed Flight South, Helsinki to Istanbul

The flight from Helsinki to Istanbul was supposed to leave at night and did, eventually, an hour later than the ticket promised, delayed for reasons that were never fully explained over the gate speakers. I killed the wait with a drink at one of the airport bars, something red and cold in a glass frosted over enough that it looked more like a block of colored ice than an actual beverage, and watched the departures board hold its answer for longer than felt reasonable at that hour.

A genuinely strange stretch of geography to cross in one sitting.

Three hours and fifty minutes in the air took me from one edge of Europe most people forget is Europe to another edge most people forget is partly Asia, the whole flight a straight diagonal line down the map from a country with a few hours of daylight left in December to one that would greet me with something closer to an actual sunrise. I landed tired in the particular way a delayed night flight makes certain, eyes gritty, the specific stiffness that comes from a seat that reclines just enough to make you think you might sleep in it and not quite enough to actually deliver on that promise.

A friend was waiting to show me around a city the next morning, the last new person on a trip that had, by this point, been mostly strangers, hostels, and my own company for three and a half weeks. A trip that had covered enough ground by now that one more delay, one more unfamiliar airport at an unreasonable hour, barely registered as an inconvenience anymore. It had simply become what traveling felt like.