Text 7273, 40 rader
Skriven 2010-04-24 06:38:10 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
   Kommentar till text 7271 av Björn Forsström (2:236/150.6)
Ärende: Airports
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Replying to a message of Björn Forsström to Michiel van der Vlist:

 RB>>> and my clumsy attempts to speak French were applauded and
 RB>>> complimented.

 MvdV>> That probably did it. The French are a bit sensitive on
 MvdV>> that issue. Had you bluntly addressed them in American
 MvdV>> English and simply assumed that they would adapt to you
 MvdV>> and speak English, you might have been met less
 MvdV>> friendly. By advertising your willingness to to adapt to
 MvdV>> them, you broke the ice. It does not matter that your
 MvdV>> attempts were clumsy and ineffective. You TRIED, that is
 MvdV>> what matters.

 BF> My experience, and I don't speak a word French, is that one
 BF> time we came from Bangkok and I had my left arm in plaster
 BF> after an ortopedic operation and then I still had the metal
 BF> stitches left. The metaldetecor found them and the security
 BF> people went nuts. They didn't speak any English and I
 BF> didn't speak any French. So we stood arguing and I tried to
 BF> explain it but they didn't understans a s*it. For a while I
 BF> thought they were going to arrest me but then a higher
 BF> security office came that did understand a bit English. So
 BF> I told him what it was all about and then he ordered
 BF> another to go and get another metalldetector with a
 BF> flexible arm that they could stick in under the plaster and
 BF> then they found the metal and all of a sudden everything
 BF> was Ok. And I've said it before, airport security stinks.
 BF> This time I had, due to an illnes, 120 small 10 ml glass
 BF> ampoules withholding a fluid in my hand luggage to Bangkok
 BF> and 10 of those with me home. I wasn't stoped one sigle
 BF> time by anyone in either Gothenburg, Helsinki, Bangkok, Koh
 BF> Samui or U-Tapao airport. What do you say about that? I say
 BF> it stinks.

I say don't fly to the US.  The TSA thugs at US airports have no functional
brain cells.

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 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)