Last night’s flight over Europe and much of East Asia was extremely bumpy.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, I’d apparently picked an aisle seat far back in the cabin. When I arrived at 56C, a Danish couple roughly my age had already made themselves comfortable and were busy munching from a greasy bag of pork grinds – or something equally disgusting. As soon as I sat down, the chubby Danish fellow sitting next to me struck up a conversation.

Now, I’m a social creature on any given day of the week, but I usually prefer being quiet and if I’m lucky, even snooze for a spell, at least until we leave the ground, level off and reach cruising altitude. But once he got started and I had politely answered his first questions (where you from, where you going, how long will you stay), this dude’s rambling just wouldn’t let up. Not even when I turned my head the opposite way, flipped up my hoodie and filled my ears with bright white Airpods, was my pertinacious neighbor clued in to my need for some alone time. I had about a half dozen podcasts to catch up with, so I was anxious about zoning out.

Once the plane had reached 30k, I kindly asked one of the cabin crew if I could possibly switch seats. I’d learned during checkin at Kastrup that the flight was far from full, and during a visit to the loo I noticed that there were a dozen or so empty chairs to choose from behind me in the plane’s last few rows.

The attendant approved my request and I left the talkative Dane to his fate and me and my stuff moved downstream to seat 69A.

I forgot to ask the crew, but I’m reasonably sure that the Airbus 320 I flew to Asia on was about as old as our soon 19 year old daughter, Elle. It had been retrofitted with larger entertainment screens, but everything else, especially the seats, oozed vintage. Which is perfectly fine, as long as the aircraft’s essential equipment is in good shape (which, since I’m writing this from a hotel room, it obviously was).

I don’t remember when the turbulence started, but it could have been about an hour after our first meal service. And even if I slept through some of it (thanks to a tall glass of white wine), we seem to have flown on a flight path lined with rough air for a good two to three hours. Sitting in the far back of an old plane isn’t exactly an ideal place if you like me, get a little freaked out by persistent turbulence. It’s kind of like feeling an earthquake arriving as it reverberated down the fuselage from the Airbus’ nose to its tail.

It was during one of these many bumpy spells before finally landing, that I shot the above photo of the rear galley. Curiously, the crew were nowhere in sight. Check out my small collection of aircrafts here.