Re-entering Eastern Europe.

I had a long layover in the Rome airport today, on my way home from an IMPACT international meeting in Armenia, and I noticed something interesting there that I thought was worth writing about.  I’m not usually prone to writing in dramatic generalizations about the “air of oppression” or “sadness” of Eastern Europe, though I’ve read plenty of books that speak rather poetically into that image -- the plaintive scenes of Balkan Ghosts, for instance, or other dramatic tomes that paint a melancholy picture of an Eastern Europe where the people are morose, the restaurants bleak and empty, and the air wreathed with cigarette smoke.  The Romania I live in is not like that -- although occasionally on gray winter days, looking out at crumbling cement apartment buildings, I sense the probable truth of those words at some point in history… and yes, every time we arrive at the Bucuresti airport I find my eyes tearing up and my nose itching as the ever-present haze of cigarette smoke starts up again, surprising me.

But today in the Rome airport I noticed something interesting.  And I’ll give it a thorough disclaimer – I really doubt that the Italian officials are trying to discriminate against the Eastern European travelers, or that there’s any deep meaning behind this phenomenon other than the convenience of geographically-grouped flights.  But still.

The Rome airport is laid out in two main buildings.  The international building has terminal G, where all the big overseas flights depart from (to North America, mostly, but also Russia and Armenia and the “far” East).  It’s nicely arranged, with lots of shops and restaurants and bathrooms, and large waiting areas with plenty of chairs in front of each gate. 

The European building is much larger, connected to the international building by a tram car.  There’s a long hallway full of restaurants and upscale shops and Italian souvenir stands lining the way to terminals B, C, and D – all the EU Schengen member-country flights depart from those gates.  Again, spacious and modern, with lots of restaurants and plenty of seating.

And then there’s terminal H: the Eastern Europe (and northern Africa) terminal.  There are eight different gates smooshed into one cavernous room, with hardly enough chairs in the entire space to cover two full flights of passengers – much less the eight flights who are all waiting there at once.  You descend a set of stairs to enter the terminal, and there is the throng below you – hundreds of people, almost all on their feet, standing in snaking lines all over this room, waiting to board flights to Kiev and Split and Bucuresti and Algiers.  The air conditioning isn’t strong enough in this room to keep it as cool as the rest of the airport, and it’s sticky and faintly smelly, like any train compartment or bus station… except that it’s an airport, the rest of which is cool and climate-controlled and light.  There is one kiosk selling sandwiches, and a few vending machines, but no tables for sitting at to eat.  It’s definitely a marked difference from the rest of the lovely Rome airport.

Who knows why it’s like this… maybe it’s just the last wing of the airport to be renovated, or flights tend to be smaller and have fewer passengers, or maybe nobody’s really noticed.  But it just struck me as interesting, this dichotomy.  I often forget about the “second class citizens” sensation that many Eastern European writers have written about (Slavenka Drakulic, for one notable example) – but if this is an example of that, it’s a pretty stark one.