We were booked on Delta to fly to Venice out of Atlanta on Monday, but Delta could not find a gate for their plane. We ended up in B107, and left there three hours late. That meant we missed all our connections the following day, and depended on the kindness of strangers. At the train station Bolzano a shuttle driver agreed to give us a ride to the airport, even as he was off duty. We offered him twenty euro, and he only reluctantly took it, hiding it under papers on his passenger seat. Our car rental agency was closed, so we needed to get to our hotel, but no cabs were available. Two police officers, the only other people in Bolzano Airport, called all over and finally ran down a cab for us. They were very kind. Europcar the next day downgraded our reservation to a tiny Fiat since we were late getting there. I have to duck my head to lower the visor.
White guy problems? I suppose. Delta, by way of apology, gave 200 of us a free snack, airline peanuts or tiny bags of chips.
But here is the interesting thing, and I have experienced this once before. Delta announced when we finally boarded that our faces would be our boarding passes. To get in the plane we stood for maybe a second before a camera that looked at our facial plates, recognized us from passport photos, and let us pass.
My facial work is far less sophisticated, but this reinforces my notion that no two of us look alike. Take that, all you Martin Luther King/Don King doubters.