How much of our lives is spent sleeping? The average person spends about 26 years sleeping in their life, which equates to 9,490 days or 227,760 hours. That’s one third of our entire lives spent asleep in bed! Wait! In bed? Where I didn’t sleep at all, on trains, in ship cabins, on the Greyhound, all night because I saved up for sleep, in a sleeping bag in a tent at 5,000 meters above sea level, feeling every pebble beneath me. In the lodge below Annapurna at minus twenty degrees Celsius. In the middle of the Sahara when the wind was blowing at night and I thought I was going to sail away. At the Hilton in San Francisco. Well, of course, even in a home bed…
And so, in the summer of 2009, after more than twenty hours of sitting in airports and planes, I arrived in Austin, TX. Austin–Bergstrom International Airport, is an international airport in Austin, Texas, United States, serving the Greater Austin metropolitan area. Located about 5 miles (8 km) southeast of downtown Austin, it covers 4,242 acres (1,717 ha) and has two runways and three helipads. The airport lies on the site of what was Bergstrom Air Force Base, named after Captain John August Earl Bergstrom, an officer who was the first person from Austin to be killed in World War II. The base was decommissioned in the early 1990s, and the land reverted to the city, which used it to replace Robert Mueller Municipal Airport as Austin’s main airport in 1999. The airport is the third busiest in Texas, after Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston– Intercontinental.
It was late, around ten in the evening. By some stupid logic, I didn’t have any accommodation reservations. And I decided to sleep in the airport waiting room. I can barely settle into a comfortable seat somewhere in the background, in the shadows, when a uniformed person appears in front of me. The night watchman. He kindly asks about my intentions. I explain to him my sleeping problem. He asks me if I intend to sleep at the airport. Of course, what else? He kindly informs me that the airport is closed at night. And that I can go to the first floor, where the carpets are laid, and sleep there. In disbelief, I walk up the stairs to the upper floor. And a really secluded place and there are already a few others lying there trying to sleep. I find my place, lie down and fall asleep. Early in the morning, a little before five o’clock, another security guard comes and wakes us up. We have to get up and leave because it’s actually illegal to stay overnight at the airport. Only the good will of the guard allowed us to sleep… All groggy and with sore joints, I stagger to the ground floor, find a coffee shop and slowly wake up. Then I went to the street, find a taxi and drive to my hotel.
Radisson Hotel, now Hotel The Line Austin. I admit, I didn’t pay myself, but my job did. Since I arrived early in the morning, I was pleasantly surprised when they gave me the room keys so early. The room is almost like an apartment, with a huge bathroom and all the amenities. What a luxury after a night at the airport.
So that the story does not end like this, I must say that after four days I moved to the other side of Austin to Hosteling International. The official part of the trip was over, and the rest was on my account. I slept there for another week in a room with fifteen other boys from all over the world, with a shared bathroom and a kitchenette where a mug full of hot tea was waiting every morning.
It was here that I met the unfortunate Eve T, a young girl, a musician, whose life tossed her here and there, who wrote me long email letters, with her thoughts that only I knew about. A few years ago she went to the point of no return…
And when I was doing a theater flyer for Primož E in my hometown a little later, we also talked about Texas. And I tell him how I slept at the airport. And he tells me, oh you old hippies, I couldn’t stand it.
Thank you Primož for this, old hippies, even though you are younger than me…