On the Road

I'm in New York, at the JFK International Airport. I have a few hours before my next flight leaves and I'm enjoying a light lunch at the McDonalds. What kind of trip to America would this have been if I hadn't eaten once at McDonalds?

Sitting here, I thought I'd update my iPod and just for fun turned the Airport feature on (that's WLAN in techspeak). And it found a network! I am connected, there's no fee, and I can update my blog. What's going to stop me from missing my flight now...

This time the airport is familar stuff, I knew exactly where to go for lunch and I could operate the train like a breeze. The plane from San Diego was packed and in the row in front of me was sitting a Jewish family. The man was a rabbi and he had some weird rituals to perform before the flight. Reading a holy book I understand (although it seemed to contain only strange patterns and no text and he seemed to be reading it backwards ;-), but what was the leathery band he wound around his arm? And what about the black cube he put on his forehead like a mine worker's helmet lamp? His young son (who wore an impressive black fedora) performed the same ritual later on flight. I wondered, which would have come first, religion or safety, in the case of hard turbulence? They performed the ritual standing up and quietly. Interesting.

The family had also a little girl and the father would compliment the girl saying "shoine medel", which the woman sitting next to me also repeated revealing her religion, I guess. I understood exactly what they were saying because the German words "schönes Mädel" means "beautiful girl". I guess they were talking in Yiddish.