Airports are generally a disaster in most countries, the sorts of places where you buy $7 coffees and lose your sense of humour, get treated like and idiot or a terrorist depending on your skin tone and don’t tell the staff to fuck off, as dearly as you’d like to.

Every country’s airports have their special tortures. Canadian airports are very cold. Spanish airports are very disorganized. German airports are plagued by fogs that cause excrutiating delays. But after some intensive (though not comprehensive) research I’m going to state that the worst airport experience is usually reserved for England. Where else do you have men at so insignificant a place as Luton, London’s fourth airport, stationed at a quarter to 6 in the morning snapping at all passing women that your handbag must fit into your carry-on. At Luton they have also brought the great airport rip-off to a whole new level by selling the zip-loc plastic bags you need to transport liquids in vending machines (generally they are handed out, in most civilized places, or it’s informally understood that you don’t really need one).

Then there’s Heathrow, which is rather like a small country unto itself… a small country without a public transportation. Walk walk walk walk. Realize you’re in the wrong terminal. Walk some more. Occasionally you luck out and find a moving staircase.

The newest Heathrow outrage is having to remove your shoes, not only to put them through the scanner with your hand-luggage, but also immediately afterwards, to have them radioactively scanned. On the plus side, in all the commotion, all my non-bagged, non-sealed make-up somehow made it through the scanner without detection.