Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter One
Philadelphia to Antwerp
O
N a muggy Friday afternoon in early August, we catch a commuter train headed south out of downtown
Philadelphia along the shore of the Delaware River. The train is crowded, filled with office workers clocking
out early for the weekend. We lift our backpacks onto an overhead rack and find seats next to a napping,
pant-suited woman. A half hour later, we hop off at an empty platform in a town called Eddystone.
It's a quiet, suburban neighborhood. On one side of the tracks are small, shingled houses and neat green
lawns. American flags flap above front doors, and a warbling ice cream truck trawls the streets. On the oth-
er side of the tracks, a few hundred yards away, we can see ugly, rusty buildings lining the banks of the
Delaware. That is where we need to be. We hoist on our packs and mosey down the weedy sidewalk.
Within a few blocks the landscape changes. We find ourselves in an industrial, waterfront wasteland.
There are broken-window warehouses here and signs for a chemical company called Foamex. No other ped-
estrians in sight. The few vehicles rumbling by are eighteen-wheelers with faded paint. It's a species of place
the average person will never have reason to set foot in and will recognize only from the climactic shoot-out
scenes of low-budget action movies.
Before we reach the river, the street dead-ends at the gated entrance to a shipping terminal. As we ap-
proach, an elderly customs agent leans out of his lonely little booth and asks us for our passports. He has us
unzip our backpacks and takes a cursory glance inside them before waving us through.
“How long will you be traveling for?” he asks out of polite curiosity as we walk away.
“Not exactly sure,” I say over my shoulder, pondering the question. “As long as it takes to get around the
world.”
“No kidding!” He chuckles. “You've got less stuff than my wife takes with her for a long weekend.”
This is the extent of our check-in. It's like the anti-airport: no departure lounge, no food court, no duty-
free shopping. This terminal is designed for moving freight, not coddling passengers. As for security, the
place is guarded by a chain-link fence and this solitary man—who seems neither equipped nor inclined to
put up a great deal of resistance. There's no metal detector for us to pass through. We needn't take off our
shoes and belts. Nobody confiscates our contact lens solution. It's a delightful contrast to the rampant civil
liberties violations going on at your average air hub these days.
(Of course, there's a flip side to the lax protections. I'm pretty sure it would be easy to smuggle seventy
pounds of ecstasy through this port. Or a few suitcase nukes.)
From the customs booth we walk toward the water, across an acre of crumbly asphalt littered with metal
chains and shackles. We can see the jets taking off from Philadelphia's nearby international airport. A jumbo
Lufthansa is currently screaming through the sky above our heads. It's no doubt headed across the ocean,
just like us. But this plane and its passengers will get to Europe in less time than it will take our freighter to
work its way out to the mouth of the Delaware River and into the open Atlantic. It occurs to me that, as a
newly avowed surface traveler, I will need to dramatically rejigger my conceptions of speed and distance.
