A Night in Palma Airport, a Foggy Morning in Zurich

One in the morning, Palma de Mallorca, and the airport was mostly lights and cleaning machines. The delay had eaten the evening, and my flight to Zurich was not until six. Because my two budget flights were separate bookings, I cleared passport control and then walked straight back through security, nodding at the absurdity of it.

Then came the quiet math of a person choosing where to sleep in public: visible enough to be safe, dim enough to close my eyes, close enough to the gate that oversleeping was impossible. I picked my corner and slept the way you sleep in airports, in installments, one eye on my bags.

Somewhere between installments it occurred to me that I had been planning this trip for months, and the plan had only ever been the tickets. The slower train, the five pound counter, this exact corner of a Spanish airport. None of it existed before the moment it had to be decided. That should have bothered me. It did not.

The six a.m. Vueling flight was short and I remember little of it. What I remember is Zurich: half past seven, fog resting on the runway, everything quieter than any airport I had walked through before. My first time out through Kloten, and the doors opened onto a morning so calm it felt like someone had turned the volume down on purpose.

I took the train to Lucerne to meet a friend. And that is where this day ends, on a platform in Lucerne, bags at my feet, nothing left to decide. Just waiting.