Pico flies to Mallorca

Pico woke up when the stewardess nudged him lightly. Questioningly, he looked up. Quietly she explained to him that a dense fog was hanging over the Alps and that they had now diverted not to Geneva, but to Basel. The plane would land in a few minutes, and that he should please fasten his seat belt. Confused, Pico asked how the connecting flight to Mallorca was, but she only said, about it he should not worry, she would take care of it at Basel airport of course.

Pico looked around and smiled involuntarily at himself – of course, it was the same 5 or 6 passengers with whom they had departed from Vienna. Discomfort and fear rose up in him as he reconsidered the words of the stewardess. Fog, diverted to Basel. He glanced briefly out the window and saw only fog. His fear grew even more, became a throat‐tightening panic. Pico called himself to order and held on ironly to the armrests. No, the pilot could surely handle this problem – besides, modern planes were equipped for equipped for flying blind. In Pico's brain, some magazine articles he had seen on television at some point pulled flashed through his mind at high speed: Autopilot, blind flight, radio guidance system. As if to confirm, the on‐board loudspeaker was turned on. The pilot or pilots spoke in mumbling, rapid English to the tower. the tower, one could hardly understand one or the other word. But it had a very calming effect.

Half an hour later, Pico stood in the almost deserted hall of the airport and looked around him in a hurry. The other passengers had followed a young woman from the airport company and were probably getting their accommodations; but he was waiting: the stewardess was going to take care of his connecting flight after all! He was about to desperate to go to the information desk, his foot stopped, because the pilots and stewardesses of his flight were walking through the hall through the hall towards one of the side aisles. Pico quickly ran to meet them and waved his ticket from a distance. The stewardess who had awakened him stopped until Pico reached her. She seemed a little annoyed, probably because a colleague was already probably because a colleague had already taken care of the passengers and she had forgotten all about Pico, who had been waiting for her like a little lost dog. Then she made a phone call with someone, asking Pico in between how he was going to get to town; the passengers had all left. When she saw the desperate look on Pico's face, she covered the phone with one hand and said that here at the airport there was only the was the Swissair Hotel. Should she put him up there? Pico nodded vigorously, because he wanted to get to Mallorca as soon as possible. The stewardess nodded, then she negotiated in fast Schwyzerdütsch. When she hung up, she told Pico he was staying at the same hotel as the crew and could go with them now.

As he walked beside her across the parking lots to the hotel, a thought flashed through his mind briefly; but then he remembered how she had walked the concourse with the pilots; no, she was surely with one of them, he didn't need to get his hopes up.

On arriving at the room, he took a long shower and then sat sleeplessly on the bed; he rummaged through the old diaries for a long time before falling asleep.