We Are All Citizens Of The World

Recently my wife and I were flying from Vienna to Bucharest. Seated with us was a young woman from Canada whose flight to Toronto the previous day had been canceled. She was being rerouted via Romania, and she had a tight connection.

When we landed, she worked her way through the crowd as quickly as possible and disappeared ahead of us. We passed a door for connecting flights and assumed she went there, but when we got to passport control she was in the non-citizen line about twelve places back. She told us she’d tried to go to her connecting flight but was redirected here. The line was moving glacially and she would never make her new flight. Frustrated, she began to cry, and my wife and I tried to comfort her.

Then, a woman in the line for citizens noticed what was going on and walked over. She intuited what was happening and went to the front of our line. With gestures, she convinced the people at the head of the line to let the young woman and another man in an identical situation to go next.

When the official at passport control heard their story she left her booth and lead them to the area behind it, where she found someone to take them to their plane. Since there was still close to thirty minutes left, I believe they made the flight.