The pitfalls of European travel

Read Guy's column every week in the Western Morning News

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Fingerprint scans and biometric pictures add to the stress at airports

THE etiquette of airports has grown increasingly complex in recent years, and getting about in Europe is full of pitfalls. Some of these delays and inconveniences are part of the long list of hard-won freedoms that came as a result of Brexit.

To access those sunlit uplands, where once we passed with ease, we now need to have biometric pictures taken of our faces at passport control, along with scans of our fingertips.

It all takes a very long time, and you need to spend quite a while zigzagging up and down between the tapes and metal posts to achieve the desired result.

But while some of the annoyances of modern travel have been entirely of our own bureaucratic making, there are plenty of other ways in which we can be wound up to breaking point by our fellow passengers if we fail to keep calm and carry on.