Who knows how many hours the plane has been airborne? Perhaps it took off the evening before from New York, climbing northward along the coast before swooping out across the Labrador peninsula over the great Atlantic, grazing the icy southern coasts of Greenland and Iceland to enter English air space via Ireland, and finally descending gradually over Europe. Perhaps not a single passenger on board has given a moment’s thought to all the countries and lives down below as the plane was gliding through the sky. Then my eyes alight on the monitors suspended from the terminal ceiling, showing the arrival and departure times of the flights. I look at the destinations and start daydreaming. I try to picture those cities in my mind, to make the streets, places and people I know come alive before my eyes.

Then comes the most exciting moment of all! I board and take my seat and start surveying my surroundings from the plane’s tiny window. But I can’t see much. The plane taxies to the head of the runway, the motors rev up, the brakes are released.