Cultural Mores. Soldiery.
06/05/2120
Munich.
The white clouds rushed back and the city blocks of Munich appeared below. Judging by the navigation available on the phone, the plane had to drag itself along at this low altitude for another ten minutes, waiting for its turn to land. Looking at the views below, Zavirdyaev, using the edge of the wing as a sighting device, managed to watch how the plane overtook cars rushing along some isolated highway. No doubt, the Autobahn.
Finally, the altitude began to decrease again - the plane was on the glide path. The airfield fences appeared. Another thing that caught my eye was the airliners lined up in two rows, fifteen in each, repainted in military, so-called desert color. This is what the requisitioned planes looked like, now carrying personnel. The mobilization campaign of the twentieth year had started only a couple of weeks ago, but already the transportation was in full swing.
The liner touched the ground, then firmly stood on all three of its support points. The traditional applause rang out.
At the exit, Zavirdyaev heard the voice of a Russian-speaking stewardess, simply informing one of the passengers that it would be better to bypass the waiting room.
That was not what was surprising. What was surprising was that someone else had to be told about this.
Walking, Zavirdyaev glanced at the glass in the sleeve of the boarding terminal. Somewhere in the distance, a column was marching along the airfield - they were moving towards an airbus that was waiting and ready to take the next group to one of the fronts. Judging by the sand color of the liner, to the Central African one. With his free hand, Zavirdyaev took a paper guidebook from his pocket, which he had grabbed on the plane, and with a jerk unfolded the folded sheet. The brochure described the entire route to the station, which he had to reach by train, departing directly from here, from the airport. First, he had to get his luggage - just one not particularly heavy bag, in which he could put this one, for small items and documents.
The wide corridor or elongated hall, into which numerous boarding passages opened, was filled mostly with civilians. Judging by the column marching along the airfield, the boarding terminals were not for soldiers. Baggage logistics worked quite well, and soon Zavirdyaev slung his "main" bag over his shoulder.
Little by little, the air began to acquire a characteristic tobacco tint. - Here it begins, - Zavirdyaev thought irritably and not without some anxiety, throwing the not-so-weightless bag over his other shoulder.
Finally, the escalator, standing in a row with several others, led down to the waiting room. It seemed possible to bypass this room, but Zavirdyaev did not think that the picture would be so depressing.
Having stepped back from the escalator about ten steps, he saw the first cigarette butts. About ninety percent of the people in the huge room were soldiers. Some had just been mobilized, some, quite possibly, were returning from vacation, although these vacationers flew back and forth regardless of the beginning or end of the mobilization campaigns.
The machine, in which at one time, however, quite recently, there had been some edible trifles, now stood broken and empty. The same was true for the coffee shop, and while you could get something from the pastry shop, the coffee shop with its water tank and powders was useless in this regard.
At the waist-high wall that fenced off the descent further down, there was a pile of backpacks and bags that looked like civilian ones. Nearby, sprawled right on the floor, a soldier was snoring with his belly exposed. Obviously, he was drunk, into-shit-drunked.
Then Zavirdyaev noticed a policeman walking towards him, Zavirdyaev. The law enforcement officer looked like a beaten dog. A fighter was walking behind the policeman, quite casually, seemingly in some kind of gear, but with an unbuttoned jacket and generally an extremely sloppy, yet dashing appearance. Even in the Superfederant you had to look hard to find such bandits. Two more were walking behind the fighter, well, maybe they were a little less defiant looking. One of them was holding a cigarette in his clenched teeth, which he was constantly smoking to the sides. It all looked as if these two had decided to support their comrade who had done something crazy during his conversation with the policeman. One of the soldiers, the one with the cigarette, cast an unkind, almost contemptuous, glance at Zavirdyaev and, drawing level, doused him with a stream of tobacco smoke.
- At least they weren't given weapons, - flashed through his head.
Zavirdyaev took a few more steps and turned his head, wanting to look at what was happening on the right side, in the hall.
The seats were completely occupied by soldiers. Some of them were climbing up on the backs for some reason, putting their feet on the places for butts. Someone, luckier than the one lying near the pile of things, was snoring, stretched out on the same rows of metal chairs. There were quite a few of them. Where the officers had disappeared to, one could only guess. Apparently, they didn't give a damn about what their soldiers had done at the airport.
Having passed the hall without further incident, Zavirdyaev came out to the escalator descent, leading to a wide underground corridor filled with shops, leading to the railway platform. Most of the shops were closed.
Compared to the waiting room he had seen, the covered platform looked like a rather calm and comfortable place. It was hard to judge whether the soldiers had been here in their time - there seemed to be nothing that could be broken here, and the cigarette butts could have been swept away long ago.
Still, after wandering around the platform, Zavirdyaev found another vending machine that bore traces of impact - this time the glass was surprisingly in order, but the metal of the case was dented on the side. There were also clear marks from soldiers' boots on the side of the machine.
On the distant track there was an electric train, which could jokingly be called an armored train - the locomotive's windows were equipped with hanging bars. In some places, the same devices were installed on the windows of passenger cars, but not everywhere. On some of the glass there were white marks from something hitting it, maybe even stones. Judging by the fact that the glass was not broken, they were protected by some kind of film. Everything pointed to the fact that the train had been vandalized during some kind of riots - no one would be surprised by this - neither a direct witness nor a TV viewer located in any corner of the world. Calm, mourning with black flags on the streets, riots, calm again - this was the usual routine for most European and not only countries. Russia with its demarche in some sense went its own special way, but there, too, political crises gave life an unhealthy dynamism.
Lately, however, something new has appeared - the celebration of "small final victories" - unbridled celebrations disproportionate to the event on the occasion of the defeat of "@enemy" in the so-called localized escalation. Walking back and forth along the platform, observing the depressing surrounding picture, Zavirdyaev at some point wondered how everything here was transformed or could be transformed when a great mourning or, on the contrary, a celebration occurred, if it happened again. The answer to the question, a video answer, of course, could be found on the Internet if desired, but Zavirdyaev would not waste time on such nonsense, on satisfying idle curiosity.