Airport Memories

Last week I was in Copenhagen Airport. I was walking around the concourses to pass the time, because there was two hours before my flight. So I thought I would do a stroll around and look at things. I first wandered to concourse F. It is one of the farthers concourses there is - the other one is concourse A. So I was walking to concourse F - there was nothing to see. All the gates were closed - there were no sounds there besides the occasional announcement over the PA. Other than that it was empty. I then decide to head over to concourse A. It was placed on the other end of the airport, so I started walking - and I walked and I walked. Concourse A was the former domestic flights departure terminal. You couldn’t actually enter the terminal/concourse without going outside first and then go back in again - this was before Schengen. Now it was connected to the rest of Copenhagen Airport. So I started walking down towards the old and former domestics terminal. It was just a very long hallway with exits to different gates. There were nobody there. I kept on walking until I came to an escalator heading downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs there were a couple of single leather sofas and a table. They were all empty. No one was sitting there. You could actually get a good nights sleep there if you had a long layover. On the left side of the sofa arragement there was a hallway heading to four other gates. I followed the hallway and came to a desk - walking past it some sliding doors opened and I went inside. There were four gates, lots of seating, some kids entertainment tables with some toys and just empty departure desks. There were 4 huge departure screens but no one from concourse A. I was all alone in a desolate part of the airport. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there. There were security cameras around me, and I kept wondering if someone was watching me on their monitors. Would they send the aiport police to my location to escort me out of this place? No one came. I sat down and ate my sandwich while listening to a podcast. After a while I decided to leave the place - still I didn’t see anyone on my way back to the more populous areas of the airport.

If you want to go to a place where no one comes - a place that is liminal space, I would definitely recommend the far away land of concourse A in Copenhagen Airport.