Place for deep conversations: Smoking booths at airports

2024-10-25 08:34:00

A Japanese tobacconist with a business meeting in Warsaw, a German journalist who urgently needs to write an essay and an Austrian tunnel builder on the way to his family’s multigenerational home in Graz meet in an airport smoking booth . The scene sounds like the start of a Mario Barth joke that would easily win any level of Limbo, but that’s actually what happened. And me.

As I stood in the smoke-filled terrarium near Gate B 19 of Frankfurt Airport one Tuesday evening with the two men from Graz and Tokyo and asked, “Can I smoke one of the Japanese cigarettes?”, I felt dizzy from a Another question: “Why do smokers in airport smoking booths always enter into conversations so quickly and deeply?”

I met the most interesting people in the smoking booths, and each of them was happy to tell me about their life. I met a person who hunted big game and he proudly presented me with lion carcasses in a tacky presentation; a mother who admitted between two deep breaths that she found her children hateful; and businessmen willing to reveal the state of affairs of the companies they worked for (mostly badly). To this day I still have not found a satisfactory answer to the question of why I started talking to you so quickly.

Maybe it’s the cabins themselves?

Maybe it’s the cabins themselves? They have their own charm. The smoke is temporarily filtered from the air; However in reality there is always the smell of this strange mixture of stale smoke and sweat. There is rubbish everywhere that none of the travelers want to remove. And you are almost always back to back or inevitably facing each other.

The cabins are also places of tranquility.Image Alliance

As bizarre as it may seem, perhaps it is this very atmosphere that pushes people to throw all social fears overboard and start speaking out. Looking for a way to pass the time, so to speak, so as to waste as little time as possible on impressions in the cabin.

But the cabins are also places of peace. When the door slams shut behind you, the noise of the surrounding airport is swallowed up, the cacophony of screaming children, the rattling of suitcase wheels and the last call announcements for flight number 457. From the ashtrays set into the tables promising smoke comes out and quiet murmurs permeate the room. As a smoker, you know as soon as you close the door behind you: You’ve arrived and can finally indulge your habit after what seems like hours spent between checking your bags and going through security. Here it is still allowed. And perhaps it is precisely that relief that loosens our tongues.

Airports challenge social conventions

Maybe it also has to do with the locations where the cabins are located. Airports defy social conventions: they are special zones, and not just in the legal sense. Behavior that would result in strange looks outside the airport is only met with a tired smile inside the airport.

Order five light drinks at 11.30am in the Irish pub near Gate G 17 and empty them right away? No problem! After all, you may have come from a time zone where it’s the best time to go out. Taking a nap in the middle of the aisle because you missed your connecting flight? Totally normal. Washing your hair in the bathroom because you have more than 20 hours at the airport and you place a lot of importance on cleanliness? Daily life in the terminal. Maybe this exceptional situation simply makes you more sociable. If such behavior is tolerated, you can, in good conscience, engage the person next to you in the smoking room for a chat, right?

People you meet in smoking lounges are usually never seen again.Image Alliance

Furthermore, airports are also places of transit. The people you meet here are usually never seen again. Perhaps it is precisely this fleeting nature of encounters that pushes us to dialogue. We have nothing to lose, nothing to be ashamed of.

We smokers are a really strange bunch

In the cabin near Gate B 19 at Frankfurt airport I tell my theory to the Austrian tunnel builder. Hans is his name. His flight leaves in a few minutes, but he wants to take a few minutes to talk to me. He is at the airport because he wants to return to Graz to see his family. He just returned from a tunnel construction project, as he has been involved in many. He has already worked on the Elbe tunnel and also on the Brenner tunnel. Hans knows everything about the underworld. He can describe the smell that hits him hundreds of meters underground; It doesn’t smell like earth, but more like Karstadt, he says. Or talk about his passion: the heavy machines he loves to work with. But I just want to know what you think of my thesis.

Not much it seems. The tunnel builder waves his hand as if my question were an annoying fly. According to him, the fact that people start talking so quickly has less to do with the booths themselves and more to do with the people in them: the smokers. Maybe he’s right. We smokers are a strange but proud bunch indeed. If there’s one side of our addiction that we glorify, it’s our addiction-induced ability to engage in conversation. When the blanket indoor smoking ban came into force between 2007 and 2008, we were kicked out of our traditional shelters and moved to designated smoking areas. Since then, we can abandon ourselves to death in installments: in the little cubicles behind the office towers, in the station squares delimited by faded yellow lines, in the smoke-filled glass terrariums of the airport.

The smoke is temporarily filtered from the air; However, in reality it always smells like stale smoke and sweat.Image Alliance

But since we have to smoke, we have learned to make the most of the time we spend in the squares. Then we engage in a conversation. One could therefore say: because of our habit, we have been educated to behave socially, and the places where we smoke have always been for us both a space for smoking and for conversation.

We share the same vice. This builds trust

Anyone who has ever been in a smoking booth will quickly notice that smokers are not only extremely sociable, but also extremely helpful. Anyone who doesn’t have a lighter will be loaned one; Whoever has the empty box receives a cigarette, sometimes greeted with complaints. We simply won’t reveal the last one in the box. But no one even asks. We are just social creatures. And we, who sit in the smoking booths at the airport, all have something in common: we share the same habit. This builds trust.

But before I can tell Hans all this, he leaves the cabin. He has to get to the plane. Shortly after, however, the door reopens. With a beer in hand, Hans returns to the cabin. He said he missed his flight. We “chatted,” as he says with a strong Austrian accent. This doesn’t bother him. We had a great conversation and you could easily miss the plane to have a good conversation. And he thought about it again. He couldn’t even explain the smoking booths at the airport, but we were both the best proof that there was something magical about those. Then he takes a sip and starts talking again. Of the smell of the underground and his apartment building in Graz.