9/11

Where were you ten years ago today? What did you do? I bet you can remember.

Nathan and I were down in Tunisia. He was leased out for a month together with an aircraft from his then employer Sterling, to Tunis Air. This particular day we were down at the beach with a bunch of the other crew, reading, chatting and hanging out - as usual.

Suddenly one of the locals came running down the beach shouting that "The shit has hit the fan!" and tried to tell us in very bad english that an airplane had hit one of the Twin Towers. At first we didn't make much of that, he didn't seem to know what he was talking about and he had probably misunderstood the news, or we him. Why on earth would an airplane fly into the Twin Towers anyway?
But little by little we all got a bit uneasy and all made our way back up to the hotel, just to check it out. We ended up gathering in one of the rooms, since all the news we could get were in French, and I was the only one who could translate.

It didn't matter much in the end though, because we just sat there quietly together for the rest of the day, watching the same images rolling over the screen over and over again. The images of the airplanes flying into the towers, the towers collapsing, the dust, the chaos, the horror...

Little did we know that day how much these happenings would affect us all, not just on a global plan but even Nathan and I both on a personal level. Nathan was forced on part-time and I eventually even lost my job (and we had to leave Denmark and move to the UK) because of cut-backs... because of downsizing... because of the decline in airline travel... because of this...
Always remember, eleventh of September.