The timeless travels

It's one o'clock in the night at the Istanbul airport. The day before Christmas has just started. I take a cup of Chai tea from the counter and walk across the lounge to sit down to a leather chair just socks on my tired feet. I take a zip of my tea and check my phone. It's charging from a battery bank. Laying on my homework pile I took with me to the hand luggage. 

My mom is sitting on the chair next to me, sleeping. My brother next to her, finishing his final projects for school on the computer and bouncing his head to the beat of music in his headphones. Dad is scrolling through his phone with a banana on his other hand. 

It's quiet. The only ones keeping any kind of noise are those who are leaving to continue their journey or stopping to sit down for a moment. Others are resting their eyes on the couches. Or drinking coffee to stay up 'til their planes leave. Ours will depart at 2:40. To land on the Jakarta airport 6 o'clock in the evening. Few hours before Arno does. He is now flying somewhere in between of Moskow and Hongkong. Left earlier than we did. I kissed him goodbyes on the train before he jumped off to switch to an airport transit. I stayed. Went to work. And from there straight to the airport. 

I stand up and walk to the other end of the room. To the massive glass walls that open the view down to the hall were people pass by scrolling luggage or looking into the tax free shops. It's so busy. Just by looking down you could never guess what time of the day it is. People are up. Talking on phones, shopping, holding hands. Few gown wearing Muslims are reading the flight schedule. That's one of the only things that gives you the sense of time. Time passing. Otherwise it is so timeless. Airports usually are. There's always someone. People travelling through day and night. Shops open no matter how late it is - you ca always purchase a perfume.

Words of my colleague cross my mind. "Why do you think you became so international?" 

Looking down to the moving crowd below me clears it a little. I like my world a little bigger and more interesting. I like the wide view, not just the northern perspective. I don't just think outside the box, I get outside of it not to feel trapped somewhere that doesn't fit me. I like life that gives me both lemons and coconuts. Takes me out in the middle of the night and teaches me new thing every day - off school and office and shows me what it is really like to see differently. I was't meant to live on one place, I think there is so much beyond the boarders. I love to lose the track of time, to dive into the timelessness or to wander in time and space. 

I take another zip of my spicy tea and get back to my chair. My mom wakes up. She looks at the clocks ticking on the wall. She shakes her head, asks why the time is going so slow and picks up a book. I shrug my shoulders. 

Maybe it is all about slowing our time? Maybe it feels like we lived longer if we did more and saw wider? Or maybe I just enjoy the tick of a different time zone?

Either way. It is my favorite way to spend time.

Travel hugs,
Linnea