Why I sometimes hate airports.

Monday, August 23:

I was outsmarted by a toilet today.  Or maybe it was yesterday—it’s hard to tell.  We’ve been traveling since 6:00 Sunday morning to get from Iowa to Romania, so my sense of when events occurred has been rather seriously skewed.  But regardless, at some point in that journey, I definitely got out-witted.

We were waiting in the Dusseldorf airport for our flight to Bucharest, and I had to, well, you know.  So I left my luggage with the group at the gate and went off through the mysteriously-empty airport in search of a WC.  I couldn’t open the door to the first women’s room I found, so I kept going.  Soon I happened across a coed, single-serving, handicapped restroom, so, seeing no nearby handicapped clients, I decided to use it. 

Opening the door, I see a typical bathroom, so I walk in.  The door shuts behind me with a firm thud, metal and impenetrable.  But it’s not locked.  And there’s no way to lock it.  I examine the handle like a scientist, peering at it to see if I’ve missed something, but to no avail.  Then I notice two buttons: one red and one black, each is inscribed with German words I don’t know (there are, by the way, very few German words I do know, but still).  I press the black one.  Click.  I assume that means the door is locked, but just to be sure, I decide to press the red one too.  With a whirr, the door unlocks and mechanically opens, swinging smoothly outward.  Feeling foolish, I tug at the handle, expecting it to close again.

It doesn’t.  There it sits, wide open (and handicapped doors are quite wide, you know), sticking out into the terminal like a sore thumb.  I stare at it dumbly.  I press the black button again, the red button again, to no avail.  There it sits.  And sits.  And sits.  Eventually, I decide to save face and just go look for a different bathroom, so I step outside.  An old man sitting at the coffee shop in the terminal stares at me.  I hesitate for a moment, planning on saving face and walking away like I meant to open the door, when suddenly it begins to shut.  Abandoning my pride, I yelp and jump back into the bathroom, barely slipping in the rapidly-closing crack.

When I emerged a few minutes later, the old man had folded his newspaper and was drinking his coffee.  As I passed, he gave me a bemused smile.  I think he was laughing at me.