Sweet home Alabama…

I decided to share one of my travel stories today. It was a weird situation, but when I heard the song "Sweet home Alabama" this morning I just had to think about it and smile. The following happened just a few weeks after September 11 2001. Back then I was on a three month trip, traveling around Australia and Thailand.

…I knew the Airport in Darwin, I had been there twice, but this time it was like hell on earth for me. I was waiting at the check-in counter, when a old men passed by, stopped, turned around, looked at me and said: “Where ever you go, you’re not going to make it”

How would you feel about something like that? I was confused, a bit scared, thought about the possibility to not go on the plane, looked at my right site and realized that three guys from Pakistan where standing beside me. I didn’t knew anything about those people, just that that they had passports from Pakistan, but it increased my fears a lot. I have nothing against people from Pakistan or any other country in the world (including Iraq and Afghanistan), but it was just not the right time to see them checking in for the same flight. To make this situation even worse, I switched on my CD player and the first song to start was “Sweet Home Alabama” (singer died during an airplane crash). But, as I’m typing this, sitting in the youth hostel in Bangkok, you should already know that everything went fine. I don’t believe in fate (but I was relieved when the plane finally landed in Bangkok), I don’t trust in old stupid men, I had a nice chat with the guys from Pakistan and I switched off my CD player.