…and while he was there, he built Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

All you want to do after a transatlantic flight is get to your hotel room as quickly as possible, shower, and then maybe have a nap. If immigration and customs isn’t bad enough, when you arrive at this hellish hub you are only briefly reunited with your luggage before you hand it over to be conveyed to a different building in the airport, wondering if you will ever see it again…

After that, you get to go through security once more, just as if you were about to get on a flight! Shoes off, belt off, laptop out, set off buzzer, remember phone is in pocket, go through again, drop your loose change… precisely which circle of hell is this?

Next is the train ride to the faraway luggage terminal on a vehicle that accelerates and decelerates with such G-force it could be used to condition astronauts. Finally we get our bags and escape the underworld in a taxi, driven, may I add, in a similar manner to the aforementioned train – a 20 minute stay in purgatory before we reach our paradise – downtown Atlanta. (OK, ‘paradise’ might be a stretch, but trust me, compared with the airport…)

I’m not looking forward to the return journey this afternoon, but other than that, it’s been just peachy. Atlanta – thank you – you’ve been a perfect host.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)