As my plane touched down in Kiev, all of the Ukrainians began to clap. And it wasn’t just several people who had managed to get those around them to clap too either, like dickheads during a superhero movie; the whole plane simultaneously started to clap without any prompt, clearly as a tradition of some kind in these parts. As far as landings go, it could’ve been a lot worse, but I wouldn’t say it was exactly clap-able. Had the pilot successfully dodged every ice patch on the runaway and I was just too sheltered to be thankful for this? Are there statistics out there about Ukrainian pilots that would’ve made me terrified to board my flight if I’d known beforehand, and they all appreciated just how lucky we were to have touched ground smoothly? Had it been because our rickshaw airplane’s landing gear had functioned properly in the most crashable moment of the flight? All jokes aside, I’d sat there grinning, sheepishly looking left and right as the Ukrainians around me clapped with no expression. It had taken me completely off guard. Just another reminder of why I travel.

You’d have a deadpan expression too if you’d flown like this for 8 hours