10-VIII-2005.
Back to the US. Joška drove me to Surčin. My parents gave me a few hundred € to take with me. Now knowing how good the exchange is with american banks, I rather pay twice 3% to get that converted into dinars first, then into dollars, keeping a few dinars on the side to buy cigarettes, which I forgot in the car.
Smoking past the security check is still allowed, as there's a smoking zone, divided from the rest by a serious yellow and black striped line taped on the floor. Have a couple while waiting.
Arrive at CDG with not too much delay, and then there's some confusion as the concourse on the tickets we have is not the same as that on the boarding passes issued on the spot (and yes we have to have the passes because we take off from the E building which is all the way across the field). We get directed through the labyrinth of CDG and a few of the folks seem to have taken a wrong turn. Some girls later said they were following me as I seemed to know where I was going (yeah, right, I saw a display which confirmed what I saw on my ticket... so the boarding pass or whatever the lady at the desk said was wrong). One of them is the one in pink, in the back of the picture. She was sitting five seats to the right of me, by the window, and was, ahem, quite a memorable sight, specially with four empty seats between us, for those first few hours. Snuck half a cigarette in a blind corner where some staff did it, and then another half in the toilet of the E building, where more staff, mostly french Africans (or is it african Frenches?) did the same.
At the exit to the airplane (on foot or another bus?... I'd say a bus, it was almost a kilometer away), some skinny Morrocan or Algerian frisked me and rummaged through my bag, took my lighter, even asked me about the faces on the dinar banknotes. Okay, I knew who Milanković was, and Nadežda Petrović, but when we came to Tesla, I asked him back, he didn't know, and I told him to return to elementary school, it's a shame that he's on such a high responsibility duty and doesn't know who Tesla was. There he let me go, judging my wounded national pride as fully authentic. Oh boy, how they check and recheck everyone going to the US, but not at all in the other direction.
When landing at ORF, it was now about twelve hours without outside - JFK seemed far more chaotic and dirtier than six years ago, but then the customs etc were done in seconds, just a nod and a "howyadoin?" - "aah back to work" - shrug. The temperature is a tad worse then when I left, and it's almost sunset. I have no lighter, had to leave it in Paris (2nd checkpoint IIRC, they do all the frisking for the Amers). So when I finally get my luggage, get out of the building, I have no light and everybody's gone and nobody's smoking outside because this is the deparures side, nobody has an inflamation*. I walk to the cab line and ask the cabbies whether they have a light. The fourth one gives the correct answer. I have another half a cigarette and off we go. The black lady driving the first cab complains about taking cabs out of order and me being a racist. "Tell her she's the racist here - I gave everyone an equal chance, but she didn't even look at her dashboard, there's a lighter there. Why should I take a ride with someone who discriminates against me? It's my money, anyway". Wish I knew how it ended.
I don't even remember whether I got something to eat; perhaps I reheated something from the freezerbox. Just went to sleep and dived into this late timezone.
----
* this merits an entry in the house dictionary.
Mentions: house dictionary, Joška Apro, in serbian