Not New York (January 5, 2003)
Jan. 7th, 2003 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hmpfToday for a few hours it seemed as if terror was ready to crash into Frankfurt, but at the last moment it swerved off sharply into farce.
Around 3 p.m. a small plane appeared over the city, circling the skyscrapers. My parents were in the city right then, taking a look at the river that has risen far beyond its boundaries in the current flood, and they, like hundreds of people, noticed the small aircraft and the police helicopter that was following it. My parents soon gathered that the plane had been hijacked and that the pilot was threatening to crash it into one of the skyscrapers. They tried to cross the river to get back to their car, but the bridges were closed by the police. Finally they found an open bridge, the plane taking a dramatic dive at them as they and others were crossing, and drove home, where they told me of their adventure.
I’d been working on my FFP (Frelling Farscape Paper), but the news made me nervous enough to stop. We switched on the radio and the TV and sure enough, Frankfurt was on CNN and all the other news channels. The latest news seemed to be that the guy in the plane wanted to crash it into the Central European Bank. My mother called her sister, frightened and excited. Minutes later her sister in law called us, asking what was going on in Frankfurt. Big excitement everywhere.
We heard that the airport was closed down and a few minutes later I heard the sound of fighter planes in the sky. I began to feel as if I had somehow woken up in the wrong universe in the morning. The plane looked no larger than a flying shoebox on TV. An expert was telling us that there wasn’t enough gas on board to cause any serious damage. On CNN, a correspondent explained to the anchorwoman that the fighter planes I had heard thundering across the sky were much too fast to apprehend a slow, small plane like that. Then news began to arrive that the pilot’s goal was ‘to remind people of the death of XY, one of the American astronauts who died in the Challenger explosion’. I went back to work, suddenly strangely certain that nothing would happen – it all began to sound way too silly for any serious harm to come of it
A little while later the hijacked plane landed on Frankfurt airport and the pilot was arrested. The news came that he was a 32 year old psychologically unstable German student. He hadn’t intended to hurt anyone, and had simply wanted to commemorate his dead idol. (A fan. No wonder people think fans are strange. . .)
This event is in relation to September 11 what Frankfurt is in relation to New York: small, and slightly ridiculous. But I’m glad it turned out that way, ‘cause for a moment there I was really, really beginning to feel very weird.
Around 3 p.m. a small plane appeared over the city, circling the skyscrapers. My parents were in the city right then, taking a look at the river that has risen far beyond its boundaries in the current flood, and they, like hundreds of people, noticed the small aircraft and the police helicopter that was following it. My parents soon gathered that the plane had been hijacked and that the pilot was threatening to crash it into one of the skyscrapers. They tried to cross the river to get back to their car, but the bridges were closed by the police. Finally they found an open bridge, the plane taking a dramatic dive at them as they and others were crossing, and drove home, where they told me of their adventure.
I’d been working on my FFP (Frelling Farscape Paper), but the news made me nervous enough to stop. We switched on the radio and the TV and sure enough, Frankfurt was on CNN and all the other news channels. The latest news seemed to be that the guy in the plane wanted to crash it into the Central European Bank. My mother called her sister, frightened and excited. Minutes later her sister in law called us, asking what was going on in Frankfurt. Big excitement everywhere.
We heard that the airport was closed down and a few minutes later I heard the sound of fighter planes in the sky. I began to feel as if I had somehow woken up in the wrong universe in the morning. The plane looked no larger than a flying shoebox on TV. An expert was telling us that there wasn’t enough gas on board to cause any serious damage. On CNN, a correspondent explained to the anchorwoman that the fighter planes I had heard thundering across the sky were much too fast to apprehend a slow, small plane like that. Then news began to arrive that the pilot’s goal was ‘to remind people of the death of XY, one of the American astronauts who died in the Challenger explosion’. I went back to work, suddenly strangely certain that nothing would happen – it all began to sound way too silly for any serious harm to come of it
A little while later the hijacked plane landed on Frankfurt airport and the pilot was arrested. The news came that he was a 32 year old psychologically unstable German student. He hadn’t intended to hurt anyone, and had simply wanted to commemorate his dead idol. (A fan. No wonder people think fans are strange. . .)
This event is in relation to September 11 what Frankfurt is in relation to New York: small, and slightly ridiculous. But I’m glad it turned out that way, ‘cause for a moment there I was really, really beginning to feel very weird.
