A friendly Devil

I left for the RDU airport yesterday around 3pm EDT.  No problems getting checked in and heading up to Newark.  I haven't flown on a Friday afternoon in awhile and had forgotten how busy the airport can be at that time of the week.  Good for the airline industry though so no major complaints.

I landed in Newark at 6pm which was about 20 minutes early.  Unfortunately for me, the additional time wasn't really that welcome since my flight to Singapore wasn't departing until 11pm.  I wandered around the terminals for a bit doing some window shopping to kill time. Then just decided to head over to the international terminal.

The non-Continental airlines international terminal at Newark is nothing fancy.  In fact, it reminds me quite a bit of the airports in the 80s.  The boarding area is a large, round area with plenty of seating.  They've done a nice job of updating an old airport with new carpet, chairs, and nice restrooms.  The only problem is that there is only one little bar/restaurant in the terminal.  I've stopped at the bar every time on my way through.  It's usually about 9pm by the time I get there and most of the other flights have already departed so it's pretty quiet at that time.  

Friday night I walked up to the bar and was greeted by a friendly bartender, Nina.  She looked over at me and said "Hi Kate - I'm still mad at you for beating us...what'll you have to drink?"  I've only been to this bar 2-3 times but have chatted with Nina each time.  She's quite friendly and gets stiffed entirely too frequently...maybe since it's an airport bar people don't think it matters as much...this happened twice in the 3 hours I was there Friday.  Anyway, the last time I flew through I was getting quite a few text messages from Alan and Ruth because the Canes were playing.  She and I got talking about hockey and I discovered she's a huge New Jersey Devils fan.  Her anger at me is well directed because the Devils all but had the first round of the series wrapped up and the Canes scored twice in the last 80 seconds of game 7 to take it from them.

It was nice to see a friendly face in the Newark airport.  All of the other patrons thought that we were old friends because of the way were talking.  It's just another interesting part of travel...I guess if you are nice to people you'll make friends anyplace you go.  Although, I have to say I'm glad it was here conceding defeat instead of me...