The clinical early morning shuttle from Singapore’s Changi to Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta could never match the charm of the Berlin to Frankfurt run; Tegel with it’s unique architecture, design and history, on par with the city it deserves, with the greatest number of pickpockets per capita in the world (bar Riga) while the flughafen at Frankfurt, Lufthansa’s flight base with its 50,000 employees and countless planes, dwarfs over Tegel. The urbanscape as over Berlin as planes climbed to cruising altitude was always eventful, with occasional glimpses of the Siegessäule, and Bundestag and beautifully layered during the snow-covered months.
The Singapore-Jakarta run, by contrast, is everything that Berlin-Frankfurt isn’t; Changi Airport, that consumer mall that masquerades as the region’s busiest air traffic hub, is a model of efficiency, busyness and business. It is an airport as you would expect in EveryMan’s nightmare. Take-off carries you over the eastern corner of the island nation and briskly over the straits of Singapore - there is no monumental architecture, no life; this is confirmed during the descent on the return trip. There is a feeling of returning familiarity, but only the kind of familiarity that welcomes a return to an unhappy home.
It is as if there is purpose for this particular route, in this haste: as if you are prevented from acquainting yourself with the sameness of the public tower blocks that houses the majority of its populace. Much as you wish for novelty and fascination, once, one day, someday, for one moment to be marked by wonder, you are slapped down in disappointment. This is true of every sighting of the island, and of every day in Singapore.
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