Transit

For a moment, it felt like we were on top of things, but by the last couple of days in Geneva our possessions had gotten the better of us.  We did manage to get rid of a lot – friends of one of our musician friends were happy to take the washing machine and a lot of the furniture and appliances – but, inevitably, a few loose ends remained on Wednesday morning at 5 when the taxi came to remove us. 

Geneva Airport was less crowded than the last time I was there back in March, but there was no shortage of check-in tension.  We were flying KLM through Amsterdam, and a few days earlier the Dutch authorities had issued a new regulation requiring a negative PCR test before boarding any plane into the country.  Fortunately, I had received an email from the airline over the weekend, so we were able to scramble and get tested at the private clinic in Champel.  Others, including a group of Irish kids returning from a ski holiday, were not so lucky and were queuing up across the hall to have their flights rebooked.

My main source of worry leading up to the trip was going through security with the cats, which would require me to take them out of their carriers and walk them through the metal detector thing.  Fortunately, my nightmarish images of their clawing their way out of my arms and disappearing somewhere in the bowels of the airport went unfulfilled, and the other passengers were treated to the image of a middle-aged man in stocking feet walking back and forth three times through the metal detector, each time with a different Siberian clutched to his chest.  The cats themselves were basically fine for the rest of the trip, save some complaining and panting from Nocturno the larger male.  I put his carrier on my lap and petted him through a slightly unzipped opening in one of the doors, and that calmed him down a little.

There were maybe ten people in the normally heaving passport control area at Logan.  We handed the documents for L&C’s immigrant visas to the Customs and Border Protection guy in his booth.  These were in manila envelopes that I had picked up at the embassy in Bern a few weeks before, all edges of which had been sealed with packing tape and rubber-stamped with warnings not to open or the applications therein would be invalidated, which lent a silly cloak and dagger vibe to the whole process.  The CBP guys try hard to project a stern and menacing aura (and I’m sure the experience is not at all pleasant for some people trying to enter the US), but they can’t completely suppress their innate American friendliness.  The guys downstairs who gave our bags a final run through the x-ray seemed more interested in admiring the cats than in sussing out any contraband.  I breathed a slight sigh of relief, realizing that I would not have to explain the sourdough starter and kombucha scobys in plastic bags deep in my suitcase.

We took a taxi to the apartment we had rented, sight-not-exactly-unseen, but only seen through a YouTube video.  The driver took us up 93 and around Cambridge, along the Mytsic River and then along 16 which snakes alongside Alewife Brook.  These are not the prettiest parts of town, especially in the grey sogginess of winter.  L&C commented how everything looked like a movie to them.

Rob the property manager, well-groomed and wearing a property-management-branded mask and a dark necktie, was waiting for us when we arrived.  We trundled bags into our apartment, which felt bigger than in the videos.  We released the cats and showed them where the litter was.  Later we would take an Uber back to the airport to pick up the rental car.  We could have done this right when we arrived, but the idea of dealing with the shuttle bus and another line at the rental car place after 14 hours of travel was too daunting. 

It was already dark as we drove back into town.  I opted to go the longer way, over the Longfellow Bridge and through the middle of Cambridge.  Still disoriented with jet lag, we realized we were hungry, so I stopped by the Clover in Kendall Square.  For the uninitiated, Clover (officially Clover Food Lab) is a chain of healthy fast food joints started by a Harvard MBA, with a highly optimized user experience and killer rosemary fries.  As we pulled up, the seating area was empty, and a lone person puttered in the kitchen area, so I thought for moment it might be closed.  The door swung open though, and I entered a makeshift vestibule, walled off with three big plexiglass screens in a half-hexagon.  The young woman on the other side explained that they were only doing pick-up service, but that we could order online, and she pointed me to a QR code taped to the door.  We ordered and paid for our food from my phone, and the website told us that it would be ready in 7 minutes.

8 minutes later, we ate our food – chickpea fritters and hummus and Japanese sweet potatoes and egg and eggplant platter and ginger soda – sitting in the parked car.  I felt the stress and anxiety of the long day of travel displaced by, for lack of a better term, fun.  Fun that America, with its market-honed ability to comfort and gratify, is especially good at enabling.  Fun which I know in the longer-term can lead to some dark and unhealthy places.  But that night I chose not to think about it so much, and I reached into the compostable bag for another handful of fries.