Airporting, No-Mangoes Style

Because Life Is A Journey, someone once said.

Or maybe it was the band Journey, who said Life rolls on, Life rolls on everyday, Yeah, life rolls on, Oh-Ooh-Oh, Life rolls on.

Can’t argue with that.

Now I don’t fly as much as that character played by George Clooney in that movie about the guy whose job it was to fly places all the time. He had some sort of million-airmile magic card that got him free stuff and first class and perks. I don’t even have an airline credit card that would get me into the nice lounges, nor am I a member of some glittery club tier that gets me automatic upgrades.

I just fly a lot.

And I do spend an awful lot of time in airports. In the last year or so I have spent time in airports in England, Estonia, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Poland, South Korea, and Japan. And Newark, New Jersey. And Phoenix, Arizona.

And let’s not forget Ontario, California. Because I keep imagining in our age of blithe online do-it-yourself travel planning a lot of misguided tourists aiming for a nice Canadian vacation ending up dumbfounded in this small regional airport 35 miles east of Los Angeles. I flew there to get to the Critical Humor Studies Association conference in April at Pomona College. (I am big into critical humor studies.)

A lot of these trips are because I attended 5 satire / comedy / humor academic conferences this past year, because 2024-25 has turned out to be an absolute banner year in satire / comedy / humor conferences, for those of you who keep track of these things.

Now I am not saying that my readers don’t know how to airport. I am sure you can each airport magnificently, in your own inimitable way. But this blog post is all about how we airport Where No Mangoes.

Here is the main thing to remember:

The Airport is Not a Place For Just Waiting Around. The Airport is a Destination on the Way to a Destination!

I acknowledge that some people do not enjoy airports, but this baffles me because I have always really liked them. To me the airport is a place for exploration and adventure. They are full of things to discover, like an exciting new cuisine moment you could have in the airport on Jeju Island, South Korea.

This entire meal could be yours! —————->>>

And I had no idea that abalone even had intestines.

The Helsinki airport in Finland is where I mooched for a while awaiting a flight back to Kyoto after the very nice International Society for Humor Studies international conference which was held at a castle in Kraków, Poland in July. (I am hugely into international humor and the study thereof.)

The Helsinki airport is basically full of Moomins.

Moomins started out as bulbous things in an illustrated children’s book by Finnish author Tove Janssen in 1945, and today there are more Moomin-related items in the world to buy than you can begin to fathom. There are Moomin clothes, cartoons, housewares, and toys. There is a Moomin theme park in Finland, one in Japan, and heaven knows where else. The Helsinki airport has that Moomin shop, above, and also this bloomin’-big Moomin cafe.

For consumin’ Moomin food before resumin’ zoomin’ like a human to your gate.

It is safe to say that Moomins are a global phenomenon. These are Moomin snacks you can buy in Estonia. They are minty-chocolate candies and oat snacks.

Somebody, I think an editor at the New Yorker magazine, once noted that it was all they could do to stop themself from adding a “g” at the end of both the first and last names of a famous, frequent New Yorker writer whose moniker always seemed unfinished to them: Calvin Trillin. Like it should be “Calving Trilling.” I have to admit I always want to do the exact same thing with Moomin.

On the subject of weather in Finland, it can get very grey there, even in high summer. This is a color photograph I took after exiting our Finnair plane early one Finnish morning on the way to Poland.

Later I enjoyed a really good Finnish coffee and Finnish cinnamon bun for breakfast — I bought these at the Helsinki airport to eat on the next flight I took that day, to Kraków. They came all wrapped in Finnish.

So at that time there were industrial actions/strikes going on by Finnish airline workers on some days. I’d learned online that while my flights would not be affected, there would probably be very reduced food service on short flights like the one from Helsinki to Kraków: no breakfast or coffee, just water and a cookie. But hey, what’s not to like about water and a cookie?

Actually they served water, a cookie, and Finnair’s famous blueberry juice. If you happen to find yourself on a Finnair flight to anywhere, remember to get some of their always-free blueberry juice. Delicious, and goes well if you have happened to bring with you some coffee and a cinnamon bun.

To show solidarity with the striking Finnish airline workers, I made myself a sticker to wear on my shirt during my trip: “I support trade unions,” it said, in Finnish and English. I showed it to the security staff and flight crew, and it made them smile.

So when I am in transit I always try to work on my parked airplane photography. These were taken in Japan and South Korea.

I had never heard of “t’way” airline before, on the plane on the right, but that’s how you’d say “the way” if you were from Yorkshire in the north of England. I decided maybe Yorkshire, long without decent local bus service due to previous government transport cuts, now has its own airline. T’Yorkshire Airline, for t’Yorkshire folk to make t’way home.

Some airports are full of people waiting in lines.

A lot of people were in line outside the Polish Airlines Lot office at the Kraków airport. I’d landed there really early in the day, so was having a coffee up on the mezzanine before heading off to find a taxi to get to the castle where the comedy conference was being held.

I try to avoid waiting in lines at airports.

Instead, I seek out airport locations that offer opportunities for relaxation, like massage chairs and meditation rooms. In Helsinki they have this giant nature installation for travellers to sit under and unwind for a bit. Scenes of nature play above you on 360-degrees of video screens, while the sounds of birds and waterfalls sort of cascade down from artfully placed banks of speakers. There are wooden platforms with cushions for lounging underneath. I did some lounging there. I unwound a bit.

I also wander the shops, not to buy things, but to get free samples take artful photos of the many inspiring crafts on display.

Sometimes there are comedy dress-up opportunities, like these giant bug-eye sunglasses in Seoul:

They would be a good investment if you badly needed to look like a bug.

Of Course You Need To Visit Every Shop

I am not really an airport consumer, as I like to travel light. You know, with just a change of clothes and room for all the memories! But airports are great places to discover new things. For example, every time I have been through the Rome airport in the past few years I have encountered my good friend, Mr. Gin. He seems to be in the duty free shop at Leonardo Da Vinci airport reliably from 9 a.m. onwards, cheerfully dispensing shots of various artisanal Italian gins. There is also a food counter there that always had sample sandwiches featuring products you can buy, like cheese and pâté. On my last jaunt through the Rome airport I enjoyed some artisanal gin and a mushroom pâté sandwich for breakfast.

My good friend, fellow satire scholar and current PhD student Nikos Koulopoulos of Athens, Greece, and I spent some very fun hours exploring every single shop at the Copenhagen airport last November. We were each heading home from the Satire Research Network conference in Denmark (we are both massively into networks of satire research!), me to Philadelphia and him to Athens. At the Copenhagen airport you can practically eat and drink your way for free through the entirety of culinary Denmark.

For starters, there is the famous WinterSpring Årgångsgløgg.

There was this shiny Årgångsgløgg fountain with little cups: “Have a sample” the sign said. We had a few.

I am not sure this exciting news has circulated widely yet, but Denmark has invented a new kind of chocolate. It’s the “Amber” chocolate you will find on these very nice cookies.

You must try several cookies to really experience their “unique flavour universe.” I had to hail Nikos, who was still enraptured with the WinterSpring Årgångsgløgg fountain, to come try some, before somebody ate them all.

Personally, I was fine about skipping the shellfish course at the Copenhagen airport.

This can only be described as some extremely attention-seeking Danish cheese.

This was a chocolate discovery I made at the Stockholm, Sweden airport, where I ended up spending some surprise extra time last September, when I flew in from Estonia and the onward flight to the US was cancelled till the next day. With an added stop in Brussels, Belgium. Which was all okay, since the airline put us up in hotels, and gave us food vouchers. And I discovered the delicious Salty Fred.

Now this was an epic disappointment. I can no longer remember in which airport I encountered this pastry, but the very sad thing I have to report is that there are no actual Weiners in a Supreme Weiner Apple Cinnamon. Most anticlimactic pastry ever. It exists somewhere where airport pastries cost 60 somethings.

Clearly I have blotted out a terrible memory.

On Being An Occasional Airport Day Drinker

So I pretty much retired from drinking alcohol in 2010. It was an easy, made-in-a-moment decision, when I realized that instead of a bottle of champagne for my upcoming birthday, what I really wanted was a bottle of fancy cranberry soda that I could enjoy with my son. And just like that I became a very occasional drinker. These days, once in a blue moon, I will drink a Blue Moon.

But apparently I have become an occasional airport day-drinker of high-end liquor. That is because robots are now handing out buckets of the stuff.

The following escapade takes place at the very modern, very welcoming Gimpo International airport, one of two airports in Seoul, South Korea. I had scads of time there before flying to Japan on my way back from Jeju Island, South Korea, where I’d gone to swim and eat lots of fish for a few days with my son.

One of the duty-free shops in Gimpo has something I had never seen before in an airport: a duty-free robot bartender.

The duty-free robot bartender was set up with bottles of very expensive high-end whiskeys, brandies, and rums. A sign explained that if you bought one of those products the robot would pour you a free sample.

I was definitely not buying but I was still fascinated, and asked if I could take a picture, because I was being polite. The worker smiled, and said Yes, and then asked if I wanted a drink, I guess because she was being even more polite. Either that, or there just weren’t enough takers for a bucket of booze at 9 in the morning.

I’d already memorized the offerings; “The Glenmorangie 12-year!” I replied in a flash!

They age Glenmorangie Single-Malt Scottish Whisky in sherry casks, so it always has a very honeyed finish to it. That, at any rate, is pretty much all I remember from visiting much of The Whisky Trail in the north-east of Scotland many years ago. And that Glenmorangie rhymes with orange-y.

The machine is these two robot arms which pour your drink, transfer it to a cocktail shaker, add ice, shake, and then decant your now-icy beverage into another cup to serve it. Sometimes it is hard not to think that science has really gotten a bit weird.

It was a very large serving of Scotch! I had a few sips and immediately felt the milk of pure humankindness coursing through my veins. I thanked the robot, I thanked the duty-free shop staff several times in Korean with a bow, I believe I then bowed at the robot, and I headed off to see the rest of the airport through the sparkling lens of my free 80-proof breakfast.

I had a few more sips and decided that I should smile at any strangers I saw (everyone is a stranger in an airport). Next I beamed at a display of Hello Kitty things in a gift shop, although it took me a while to remember her name. I kept thinking of “Miss Kitty.” “Oh no,” I realized. “Wrong Kitty. That’s Gunsmoke.” (Which is a tv show from the 1950s.)

I was never going to finish that much Scotch and still be vertical to board an aircraft, so after a few more sips and some enthusiastic smiling at a luggage display, and all through the electronics shop, and I think at some Moomins, I quietly deposited the cup on one of the carts dispersed throughout the airport lounges for leftover drinks. Gosh, airports are fun.

Now it was most definitely time to go try out some airport coffee, I decided. Because it was time to be alert and pay attention to more of the interesting things around me before boarding that flight back to Japan. I knew I’d seen a coffee shop somewhere . . .

From Where No Mangoes Headquarters, I hope all of your future airporting is enjoyable and fun!