the joys of overseas travel

Yesterday I woke up in Rome at 6:30am, had a quick breakfast at the absolutely delightful hotel my friend and colleague Elizabeth Corey had recommended to me, and then:

walked to the Circo Massimo metro stop

took the metro to Termini (Rome’s chief train station)

took the Leonardo Express to Fiumicino Airport

walked from the train into Terminal 3

took a shuttle bus to Terminal 5

got into a long queue to be asked questions about my visit by a security agent

was funneled into another long queue with people who were checking bags, even though I already had my boarding pass and wasn’t checking a bag

got into another long queue to have bags and body scanned

got into a fourth queue to have my passport stamped

was funneled into as fifth queue to get on another shuttle bus to take me back to Terminal 3, where I was finally dropped off near my gate

took a ten-hour flight (complete with screaming baby) to Charlotte

got off the plane, went through customs

got back into the TSA security line

walked to my gate

took a two-hour flight to Dallas

waited for four hours for my two-hour-delayed flight to Waco (spending some of that listening to an American Airlines employee be loudly rude to an old man in a wheelchair who had missed the last flight of the day to his destination, Madison WI)

flew home, arriving at 11pm Texas time, which is to say, nearly 24 hours after I woke up.

This is simply insane. There is no way for the airlines and our security-theater system to make a voyage like that pleasant, and yes, Louis C.K., I heard you, but everyone seems to have gone out of their way to make it as complicated, confusing, frustrating, and generally unpleasant as possible. My visit to Rome was wonderful, if exhausting, but the memory of yesterday is going to have to fade considerably before I will be able even to contemplate another overseas trip.