[tramadoldiscountes]

This piece about the authours experience at the Florence airport appears in today's NYTimes.

There is a lot of wisdom in this article. Unfortunately the authour does not mention that planes come in for a landing in what seems like just a few feet over the main highway into the city. It's quite something... a miracle all has gone well so far.

I've never experienced the "technical glitches" he has... infact I find the airport actually rather civil... like it's 1975 again. Or maybe 1938.



Florentine Choices

By ROGER COHEN
Published: March 11, 2010

FLORENCE, ITALY — I actually got nostalgic for U.S. air travel. I did. It felt weird, like pining for root-canal treatment, and it happened right here in the city of Michelangelo.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Italy. I lived here for a while and learned how beauty is the consolation of every past empire. I learned how style can be deployed as a shield against disappointment. I learned that change can be overrated.

Florence Airport doesn’t seem to have changed much since my uncle, Captain Bert Cohen of the 6th South African Armored Division, hitched a ride here in 1944 after battling up Italy with the U.S. Army. On leave, he went onto the runway and stuck out his thumb. A pilot offered a ride to “bomb the Brenner.” He opted to go to Naples.

Makeshift is how I’d describe the feel of the “airport,” as if a few boxy pre-fabricated units were offloaded from a truck a few decades ago and thrown together.

The temporary has fossilized. This happens in Italy. Things have a way of not getting done. When I lived in Rome in the 1980s, there was much talk of a Naples subway. A tunnel was bored 12 meters into a hillside for a few gazillion lire. It never went much further.

In the U.S. culture of achievement, efficiency and logic are prized. In the Italian culture of aesthetics, the artful scam has its place. America acts in the belief that life is linear and leads to the realization of goals. Italy idles in the belief that life is circular and objectives an illusory distraction from pleasure.

I reached Florence Airport at around 6 a.m. Florentines are smart. At some point, perhaps 1984, one of them must have said: “Hey, we live in a tourist town. First impressions matter. There’s this new thing called a jet bridge. Let’s build a few so that planes can actually park at the terminal!”

But the thing about change is it’s disruptive. If you have jet bridges, what about the guys employed to drive buses a distance of seven meters out to the planes?

I call this Italy’s “Straits of Messina Phenomenon.” When I lived in Rome there was also much discussion about building a bridge to connect Sicily to the mainland. Plans were drawn up. But then what would have happened to the guys who operate the ferries? End of story.

Creative churn, America’s staple diet (unless you’re too big to fail), is not the Italian way. Sensual stasis is.

I made my way through Florence Airport to discover that it has a (strict) one-piece-of-hand-luggage, belts-off, shoes-on, toiletries-out, laptop-out, watch-off approach to security. I’ve wondered about this. You’d think security would be a one-size-fits-all thing. If the objective is shared, shouldn’t the methods be? But I know other airports with a two-piece, belts-on, shoes-off, toiletries-in, laptop-in, watch-on practice.

No other airport I know, however, has a plastic-trays drought. Florence does.

We got loaded onto a bus after a modest delay. There we stood. The temperature was sub-zero. An engine was chugging but not delivering heat. After a half-hour, we were informed of a “small technical problem” and returned to the terminal.

Twenty minutes later, a beaming agent — “Tutto a posto!” — “Everything resolved!” — led us back onto the bus. Same routine: People were losing sensation in their toes before the announcement of a second “small technical problem.”

Back to the terminal; then back to the bus a third time. Same routine (deep chill yielding to frostbite), before cancelation and delivery by bus (it moves!) to “Arrivals” 10 meters away, to collect bags and return to the check-in hall — where a scene from the “Inferno” awaited, crowds eddying like frenzied ants dislodged from their path.

I’ve noticed God is making a comeback. It’s not just all the craziness in the Middle East. Soccer players now look to the heavens when they score goals. Come on! A touchdown prompts skyward glances. This didn’t used to happen. It would have been considered loony. My theory is it must have something to do with air travel. Survivors of it feel compelled to search out a savior.

As Walter Kirn writes of airlines in his novel “Up in The Air,” “How do they keep their lies straight in this business? They must use deception software, some suite of programs that synchronizes their falsehoods system-wide.”

It must have been when I boarded the bus a fourth time that a voice rose within me: Deliver me, please — all is forgiven — from this nightmare to the rude, anxious, attitude-rich, line-ridden hell of U.S. air travel!

Still, I’m ambivalent about Italian modernization. No sooner was I airborne than my thoughts turned to a meal at the Trattoria del Carmine, where nothing had changed since 1973, the “ribollita” was a restorative wonder, the fettuccine with wild-boar ragout just as succulent as I recalled.

Perhaps you can’t keep food like that and get jet bridges. Life’s a trade-off. Italy long ago made its choices. As the bumper sticker says, “Don’t drive faster than your guardian angel can fly.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/op...tml?ref=global