Vienna almost almost but not quite

FAMILIAR:
Irritating O’Hare Airport. Get rid of O’Hare. Raise it, graze it, bury it. It is not a place of happiness and joy. It is a place of inefficiencies and frustrations. I say start from scratch.

UNFAMILIAR
Hark! A computer with internet access in the Air France Lounge. I pick up some troubling emails but I cannot respond. I cannot cannot cannot. What goes in does not go out. Boil, what else can I do… Boil and steam and then say who the hell cares and board the flight.

FAMILIAR
The French crack lots of champagne bottles before take off. If we plunge into the ocean, we’ll all be giggling and singing songs from Gigi.

UNFAMILIAR
I hear Polish from passengers on the plane. Oh damn! Here comes the guilt, can’t stop it now. I am traveling within a stone’s throw of Poland and I am not entering my homeland. Hello Poland, there, just over the horizon. Sorry. (It’s like going to New Jersey as your kinfolk sit huddled in New York waiting for your gracious return. True, my kinfolk are not huddling nor waiting at the moment, but you get the point.)

FAMILIAR
Going home to Europe. So that I can take in a breath of this small, wee little continent before I return to my regular lofty existence.