A German airport and another lesson on the pervasiveness of art

Art is all pervasive. It touches all aspects of our life. Art reflects on the people that make the art. It's almost like an inside view of their personality. Do countries have a personality? The media tells us they do, like India is how as noisy yet colourful, while Japan is shown as technologically advanced even in the most normal and mundane objects. Something that made me reflect upon this happened in Germany. 

And we begin...

When you have time, your mind wanders and when you have a husband like mine, it's mostly chatter chatter chatter from my end and him quietly nodding to my genius. Jokes apart, this is a story about when we were flying out of Germany, the Frankfurt airport was empty as an airport  can be at 3 am. We were drowsy, but still excited. After clearing security, we walked around in the airport only to discover there were hardly any shops, none of which were open. Such a stark difference from the one we'd just flown out of, Chicago.

A weird thought hit me, are all airports representative of the people there? The Frankfurt airport was easily a representation about all things we consider German. It was clean, grey, superbly functional, it was working with machine like precision. The industrial decor is hard to miss, the White and Grey tiles are easy to walk on and the trains are on the dot to the very last millisecond. The salty pretzels were big in size (like breakfast should be) it was packed in a way that you could carry it easily, so was the coffee. The lady setting up her store asked me if I'd like a beer. That's how stereotypically German it was.. It got me thinking about all the other airports and it struck me! All the airports I had been too, or at least seen pictures of were in some ways a representation of the people that lived there. Another instance was Paris, when you say Paris -fashion is the first things that pops into my head, that and romance... Everybody that I saw at the airport was probably a super model -not even joking. The entire place was done up beautiful, huge stores of all kinds, big brands lined up, beautiful cafes, a spot of green here and there, carpets to welcome you and a general feeling of glam. 

The Chicago airport, embracing all it's Americaness was shop after shop.. Lots of food and carried a more casual air to it, not to forget a big dinosaur. The Vegas airport had slot machines, after all, Vegas is gambling haven! When I reached Bangalore, my idea that airports try their best to embrace the values of that place or country really cemented, the Bangalore airport was firstly smelling of amazing sambar and some masalas, other than that the music, the bright red colour, the warm lights, the general noisiness really painted the image of India. 

I don't believe in stereotypes, but I do enjoy noticing patterns in the otherwise mundane. Hey! If you don't think airports represent the general stereotypes of the country, please tell me. This was just a fun observation for me from the few airports I saw, doesn't have to be true
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Representative image because I didn't take any at the airport.

*I will be travelling over the next few days, if I haven't commented on your blog; I promise to do as at the earliest* :D