the flying-in headrush

There are few things more exciting than flying in to a new country.

Actually, I should qualify that. Let’s start by adding the phrase “for me” in there somewhere. I mean, obviously people have different priorities. I've heard talk of houses, cars, job security … quite the range of things which people seem to be rather keen on. So yeah, for some of the folk who generate such talk, I imagine there are lots of experiences more exciting than flying into a new country. And fair enough too.

For me, though, it's one of the biggies. That’s the first qualification.

The second: there are definitely times when flying into a country isn't quite as exciting as my opening sentence would have it. It can happen in Europe, for example, that you fly out of a pretty green land with a patchwork of fields below you, dotted by forest-ringed villages, and fly into another one that looks … well, from the air, virtually identical.

I’m thinking more of the complete transitions that happen when you take off from a country like, say, Ukraine and land in one like Egypt, as I did in 2010. On those kinds of flights, you start with the pleasant eastern European landscapes, but then just a few hours later you’re suddenly descending onto a full-on freaking desert, jutting out dramatically into the Red Sea. The birch trees have been replaced by palms, the green fields by swirling sands, the cool spring breeze by impetuous gusts of hot air that buffet your aircraft around in the sky, and when you finally disembark and reach the airport terminal, all the signs around you have changed from Cyrillic script to Arabic.

Those are the ones that bring out the excited little boy in me, my eyes bulging and my mind racing as I stare through my little round window at the destination.

I'm thinking about this tonight because I've just enjoyed one of the most breathtaking landings of my life. Once again, the starting point was L'viv in Western Ukraine. This time, however, my plane set down at Sabina Gökchen airport, which serves the city of Istanbul.

As we approached the runway, the little-round-window view was enough to make me start muttering expletives under my breath. My heart quite literally started beating faster*. Precipitously steep hills surround the city, many of them covered to the last possible inch with pastille-coloured high-rise blocks or older, crumbling two-storey houses. Other hills remain mysteriously bare, affording glimpses of the rust-brown Turkish soil and the occasional dramatic rock formation. Everywhere you look, you see slender minarets pricking the sky, while traffic darts wildly in every possible direction, like the tentacles of a frustrated octopus trying to explain something to a dim-witted friend for the fourth or fifth time. It is, briefly put, a stunning sight.

So now I'm sitting in the airport, thanking Allah for the utter fabulousness of Turkish food and the titanic strength of Turkish tea, both of which are making my five-hour layover a lot more pleasant. Later tonight I'll fly to Ankara, where my new teaching contract will begin in a few days' time. 

This is my first time ever in Turkey, and hence quite a big risk: the contract is two years long, and I'll be dragging my family here with me once we get their documents sorted out. But right now, it all seems like it can't possibly go wrong. Why? Because a little bit of that flying-in headrush is still coursing through my system, and I'm just ridiculously excited about being here. 

I love this feeling. 

May it last until at least 2015, if not longer. 

:-)

(* Btw, I'm not one of those irritating people who use the word "literally" about things that clearly aren't literal at all. So yeah ... this actually did happen.)