Welcome to America

10 October 2015

My nightmare about the check in at Heathrow turned out to be something of an omen for what was to come although not in quite the way I expected. Suffice to say, my welcome to America was not at all welcoming and most certainly not an experience I’ll be rushing to repeat. The following is a tale of woe that certainly doesn’t reflect on all my lovely American friends. It says more about the lack of organisation and common courtesy of the staff employed by American border control at JFK. 

A restless night with the flight ahead on my mind left me feeling tired before I even set out. It had been filled with dreams, jumbled affairs of queues and walking in circles, lost, with Commando Senior. Still, it might mean I could sleep on the plane. For some reason I find it hard to sleep on flights normally but, with a seven hour flight, sleep might be a blessing. For once we had an airport taxi, which did at least take the slog out of the drive to the airport. Commando would have been cursing at all the roadworks with average speed cameras and the inexplicable jam on the M25. My eyes kept closing but I tried to fight sleep, hoping it would come on the plane instead.

It’s been a while since I flew from Heathrow, probably Egypt or the fateful Moroccan trip where we hit a bird as we came in for landing at Casablanca airport. Check in went smoothly, more smoothly than expected after my mad dream. In the next queue a young couple had a small ‘handbag’ dog in a crate. It yelped  and cried the whole time and I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like after a seven hour flight. Poor thing. The American Airlines check in staff were polite and helpful and, for once, I didn’t set off the metal detectors. Once we were airside we went straight for the food emporia. Commando had a big breakfast and I had pain au chocolate, although we’d had breakfast already at home. All the while I couldn’t stop thinking about that poor little dog.

The flight was a disappointment in many ways. The seats were cramped, worse than on most budget airlines I’ve used short haul. I’d expected better of a transatlantic flight with American Airlines. When the man with a head shaped like a giant potato in front of me and his mini potato head son in front of Commando leaned their seats right back we could barely breathe. It didn’t help that Mr Potato Head seemed unable to sit still. We did get plenty to eat and drink and the food was good but sleeping really wasn’t an option and the staff on board were grim faced and slightly surly. On the upside I watched two films on the little screen in front of me which helped to pass the time. I guess you can’t have everything and at least we got to America in one piece.

When we landed at 15.45 American time, 20.45 English time, things went from bad to worse. It took a long time to get off the plane, mostly because we had to wait for a vehicle to tow us to the gate. Such is life. Sadly, this was followed by immigration. Yes, I get the need for security, I’m all for it, there really was no problem with me giving you my finger prints, in fact you were welcome to swab me and take my DNA if you felt it necessary, if you really wanted you could even have had a vial of my blood. What I did object to was a two hour queue with staff rudely barking orders to people in a way that really didn’t say welcome to America at all. We were tired, we were thirsty and we were stuck in a long, long queue, a smile and a kind word or two would have been nice. Finally, when we got to the front we were greeted by the most obnoxiously rude woman it has ever been my displeasure to meet.

We’d watched her taking what seemed like forever to deal with the people in the queue in front of us. She looked red in the face and harassed and I felt a little sorry for her. For some reason our queue seemed to be moving far slower than the ones around us and I thought, maybe, she was new. The people before us were eventually done and moved away so I moved forward only to be shouted at.
“I didn’t call you. Go back behind the line and wait until I say. Now it’s going to be a long time.”
At this point I’d have turned round and got a plane out of there right then if I could.

Eventually, after she felt she’d kept us and all the people behind us waiting long enough she called us forward with a glare. There was no greeting, no smile, just a barked, “why have you come here?” spat in what sounded like an accusation.
“Holiday,” I said. What I wanted to say was ‘right now I have no idea but I rather wish I hadn’t.’
“How long.”
“Three days,” suddenly three days seemed about two days twenty three and a half hours too long.
“Right hand. Four fingers on the green light,” was the next command, followed by “thumb.” Then it was all repeated with the other hand. Not a please or thank you to be heard and all the while she glared at us as if we were some kind of evil terrorist criminals rather than two tired English people who just wanted to get out of there and get on with our holiday. After the events of 9/11 we all understand the need for strict border control but good manners cost nothing and what happened left a very unpleasant impression. Welcome to America it most certainly was not.

Then we had to find our luggage, which had long since been dumped from the conveyor. There was no indication at all where it might be so a lot of wandering about ensued. For a while I thought it might have been lost or taken by someone else but we did eventually locate it and finally we were able to leave the terminal.  Suddenly the poor little handbag dog’s fate didn’t seem so bad, he didn’t have to go through border control or spend ages searching for his luggage and I’d bet his welcome was nicer than ours.

At least finding our transfer vehicle proved fairly easy and we didn’t have to wait long before we were off in a little mini bus. As we hadn’t paid for a private transfer it took a while to actually leave JFK as we went round and round to different gates picking up other people. Maybe if I hadn’t been so tired I’d have enjoyed the two hour journey with the sun slowly going down outside the window, past odd little houses that looked like shrunken children’s play houses and winding round the small, slightly scary looking streets of Long Island. Eventually we saw the Manhatten skyline ahead. By this time it was dark and the buildings were lit up. It might have been a good photo opportunity if we’d been walking. Come to think of it, we’d probably have got there quicker if we had been walking. The traffic was horrendous and quite a lot of the time we weren’t moving at all.

We finally reached our hotel, the Excelsior, at about 8.30 US time, which was of course, 1.30 in the morning for us. It had been a long, long day and it hadn’t been a good start. Hopefully, things could only get better…