Just leaving Bolzano after three nights here for SFSCON (a small but perfectly formed FOSS conference). Passing through the tiny airport I noticed an unusual security requirement – which was being actively enforced. Despite apple strudel (that’s a delicious, giant pastry filled with spiced apple and mixed berries) being a major tourist item on sale in Bolzano, it’s banned on aircraft here.
I asked the delightfully friendly supervisor why, and she explained that it’s impossible with the x-ray machine at the security checkpoint to distinguish between cooked apple and a certain kind of explosive and so, with so many false alarms, they had to ban it…
Filed under: Travel | Tagged: Apple strudel, SFSCON |
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What did you do? I hope you ate it all!
Fortunately I didn’t have any strudel with me. The guy with the huge panettone had no problems though, clearly they don’t look like weapons despite the bomb-like shape 🙂
Check-in was still quite a performance though – they are very keen to enforce all baggage restrictions precisely. Knowing where you work, it might be worth the tourist authority asking if the airport they can be a little more flexible. For example, because it’s a small plane all the hand-luggage goes in the same hold as the checked luggage and is loaded by the same staff, yet there is a tiny 8kg limit on hand-luggage that is quite an inconvenience for a business traveller with connecting flights on different airlines (means there has to be an extra hour to collect baggage and recheck it at the connecting airport, even though the baggage in question counts as hand luggage on all other airlines).
Let me see, they fill the wings and part of the fuselage with highly flammable jet fuel, attach 2 or 4 engines that can ignite or explode in an uncontained manner, but the largest concern is the the apple strudel – although you can put it in your suitcase. I think the evolution of air travel has evolved too much in the wrong direction when they want apple strudel put in your suitcase with your clothes while everyone jams into something that would be best described as a large bomb. Lost tribes in Africa or beings from outer space would be truly perplexed.
More simply, we can put a man on the moon, splice DNA, create microprocessors, but we can’t tell the difference between apple strudel and high explosives.
[…] Strudel Considered Harmful Just leaving Bolzano after three nights here for SFSCON (a small but perfectly formed FOSS conference). Passing through the tiny airport I noticed an unusual security requirement – which was being actively enforced. Despite apple strudel (that’s a delicious, giant pastry filled with spiced apple and mixed berries) being a major tourist item on sale in Bolzano, it’s banned on aircraft here. […]