Before I forget, a couple of memorable airport wheelchair “pushers”: One a 30-ish very chatty, very friendly man from Thailand, who cheerfully proclaimed all the possibilities of fraternal love between strangers in airports and in the street and between nations. No more wars! He kept it up quite tirelessly, clear to the other side (it seemed) of the Denver Airport!
The Ethiopian pusher (in the Denver airport en route to Budapest] was the most interesting. He’s eastern Orthodox, married with an American woman, one 19-year-old daughter. His parents still in Addis Ababa, longing to know their grandchild.
He studied Graphic Arts in Russia, could not make a living with this in Ethiopia, then came to the U.S. and started his family. I asked him how to say ‘Thank You’ in Ethiopian. It was a string of subtle vowels, hard to say or translate into English, he explained. It sounded like music. But spasiba worked – that was easier. Or even English.
Amazingly, when a gate change was announced for our flight to Frankfurt, meaning a very long, very fast walk to reach it, lo and behold! Our Ethiopian graphic arts major turned up on a little “golf cart” just in time to get me there! He said it was God’s will. Serendipity again.
His favorite food, here in America, as well as Ethiopia, is bulgur, just as our adopted Armenian uncle Georg Mardikian (and we) always enjoyed. But we just called it cracked wheat.
Jumping ahead again to the Frankfurt Airport, another happy encounter! A handsome middle-aged woman turned out to be Serbian by birth, fluent in English, German and (of course) Serbian. I recognized her surname – a common Serbian one – and, pleased at any opportunity to show off my “command” of her language, greeted her “Dobro jutro” (good morning). And she smilingly responded.
Turns out she was born near Beograd and eventually, like so many in economically depressed Balkan nations following the breakup of Yugoslavia, emigrated to Germany where she found work with Lufthansa. With another of my 9 or 10 words of Serbian, I wished her a good day. Left her, wishing we could have spoken longer.
Frankfurt again – A friendly African-American (from Dallas TX) insisted on helping me with my bag as 8 of us were cramming ourselves into an elevator. One person had a small service dog. We all admired the dog, then my Dallas “helper” followed with descriptions of her own dog, “almost as big as I am,” half great Dane, half mutt, named Charlie, who “reads my mind,” etc. Two other dogs were named and praised for like qualities, before we emerged at Terminal Level Whatever-It-Was.
Since arriving in Budapest I’ve had two unexpectedly warm encounters with English-speaking Hungarians with whom I fell into conversation (forgot how). We exchanged brief “bios” (where do we live, what work we are in, etc.) then briefly, they waxed more somber, sharing chronic fears, grief, anxiety re: Life in present-day Hungary, Western Europe, Ukraine … fearing another war (all of us remembered W War II and aftermath), Poland calling up its men now for military service … After all, Hungary is much closer to all that than many of us Americans can imagine. There were hugs at the end; I felt less the “ugly American” and maybe more like their sixth-degree cousin from East Peoria.