A BRIGHT, cloudless sky greets our early wake-up in Lisbon. Arrival at the airport there from Heathrow two years earlier had been such a lengthy customs trauma, we are determined to be there the suggested two hours prior to departure.

Car check-in is as simple and personable as renting the Peugeot 305 station wagon had been six days earlier. The main terminal leading to the second-floor check-in is another story. Uncontrolled chaos.

Are we in Europe or been transplanted to the roof of the embassy where the last US helicopter is about to lift off from Vietnam with screaming, pleading, desperate refugees wanting out?

Great clusters of travellers en route back to former Portuguese colonies have created a massive logjam and it seems like a riot is about to erupt between the man trying to control entry and those attempting to forcefully push through. It all seems so totally disorganised and unnecessary. The whole idea is to get through this bottleneck and upstairs to departure.

This one, simple, out-of-control incident clearly illustrates how victims are trampled to death at overseas football matches . . . people pushing, shoving heavily loaded luggage carts against each other . . . total bedlam of a type one witnesses in places like Nepal, India, Zimbabwe, Tibet and Third World airports where people are sometimes actually left behind when planes depart.

With great relief, we are let through and proceed upstairs. Along one wall, literally hundreds of passengers are lined up in a long, snaking procession leading to rock-bottom priced airlines unknown outside Europe . . . the "See Mallorca for $29 variety".

Opposite, two solitary travellers stand at the quiet Iberia counter and we breathe a sigh of relief. I step up to First Class check-in and show my tickets and expired platinum frequent flyer membership card. (As a perk of such frequent flyer memberships, travellers on many airlines are welcome to use that check-in, even when not flying first class.) My brother Jim with his gold membership card is beside me.

The young man is absolutely charming, check-in effortless and security the same. Happily, vermin of the neighbour type I mentioned last week who made their ill-gotten fortune off the backs of unfortunates fleeing Hitler's Europe have been appropriately fumigated. Is this possible . . . our fourth airport and no one has asked us to remove our shoes, wanded us or asked that anything be opened? Very encouraging.

Don't misunderstand. I am certainly not making light of security or the need for watchfulness. I'm all for it, in fact I am at the point where the lack of it is beginning to make me nervous. Are we so innocent-looking, surveillance has decided there's no threat? And like just about everyone travelling today, I begin to look around eyeballing fellow passengers.

"Doesn't that man over there look like the person on the FBI's person-of-interest list?" says a querulous voice behind me, obviously suffering airport traumatic stress syndrome.

The arrival at Madrid, less than an hour's flight distant, is my least favourite way to approach a First World airport. With a long row of empty jetways available, we park as far away as possible on the tarmac, haul our now very heavy and breakable Portuguese tile carry-on down steep steps, board a bus and into the terminal.

they save money not using the jetway, but burdening passengers hauling carry-on down those awful steps? "The airline assured me this wouldn't happen," said a young English woman struggling with a baby, carry-on, purse and second young child in tow. "I won't fly here again if this is part of the routine."

In transit to Frankfurt, we were told staying in that area meant no further security. Wrong. And as Jim's bag went through X-ray, there was a three-man red alert. But quite understandably and expectedly so. We wondered why it had taken so long.

We had discovered two really rare museum quality pieces in terrific mint condition for our military collection. One was an officer's "periscope" from World War One used to look out over the trenches and avoid getting your head blown off. Quite a find, it was still in its original carrying case. The second piece was something similar from World War Two, a sighting periscope used on artillery.

Just as two years earlier in Barcelona when some "Trench Art" showed up going through security, three military inspectors descended on us in a high state of excitement which gave way to fascination and amazement when the items were unwrapped.

"They should be in a museum," said the youngest. "They will be some day when we donate our collection," we responded.

we were off again. Effortlessly, this time from a jetway, happily not stairs. But not before enjoying delights of shopping in Madrid airport's extensive free port and purchasing a bottle of Mateus Rose for $4.20 plus two boxes of deliciously decadent Spanish sweets to nibble that evening in the comfort of Frankfurt's Sheraton Airport Hotel.

With Remembrance Day approaching, bad memories of Hitler's Third Reich are again in the news as our World War Two veterans receive much-deserved appreciation for saving up from that regime.

You thought it was all over, the Gestapo just a bad nightmare never to be seen again? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Their successors are alive and well, in training at Frankfurt Airport security. Sometimes I'm in and out of this airport three times a year, but unless the bad memory of this experience fades fast, it will be avoided in future.

Granted, we're always carrying something a bit unusual and announce it up front. Over the past 20 years, we've got to know staff at both Lufthansa and American, as well as Thai. They're Germanically efficient, sometimes a bit on the stern side, but usually loose up and let the side of their personality emerge.

Whew . . . there must have been a full-scale nuclear alert out the day we flew from there to Dallas, so much so that the Admiral's Club announced a suggestion very early on that passengers proceed to security. And off we rushed, only to wait, wait, wait. Again, a bottleneck of major proportions. People piling in with nowhere to go, and when the wheel of my carry-on was pushed over the yellow line by someone pushing me from behind, a security man of an age to have been a Hitler youth yelled at me as though I was in violation of a major crime against humanity.

The day had started out so well . . . overnight at the always convenient Sheraton connected by overhead walkway to the airport terminal. A great rate of 139 euros for two that included an elaborate buffet breakfast, quite incredible and unexpected.

American's very efficient Lead Security Agent Mark Rowland asked all the necessary questions at business class check-in. But with the very obvious attitude that it was your safety that was his concern.

One hundred feet away German security took over . . . like Hitler marching into Poland, in September 1939, rule of the day was "take no prisoners". As someone who watched their previously lax security in action for years, I was stunned by the openly hostile attitude.

Just months after Lockerbie, I had flown Pan Am out of Frankfurt (where it was thought the bomb went aboard that brought that plane down), momentarily turned to say goodbye to a friend, and two large, ominous Gurkha knives sailed through X-ray while two adult security men chatted over the screen.

They were bought at an antique shop en route to the airport and there was no room in my suitcase and my intent was to turn them over to the pilot for safekeeping, as was permissible at that time. A terrorist so inclined could have lopped a few heads off with them before being stopped.

Amazed, I showed them to the purser and captain once on board.

Both confided Frankfurt had a reputation for being interested in confiscating only smuggled money and drugs. They planned on leaving the airline business with regret because such careless security made them feel unsafe.

Now the airport had gone far overboard in the other direction, scrutinising everything short of dental fillings. Frankly, I have never seen anything like the chaos of this Gestapo-like operation in a lifetime of travel. Yes, we need intense security. But the two men and one woman searching our line designated for first and business class passengers could have been cloned from Auschwitz guards (a site I've incidentally visited twice.)

steely, abrasive woman especially could definitely have given the order to turn on the gas. And the deliberate slowdown was so obvious. Why now, why with such a chilling and open attitude that you were despised and the searchers dripped ice cubes?

"This American flight is going to Texas, home state of President Bush," theorised one passenger. "You know German President Helmut Schroeder won his election based on anti-Americanism." Interesting theory . . . and their lack of affection for those with any British affiliation isn't far behind.

A group of grandmothers on tour together were near tears, left sitting shoeless nearly half an hour while security watched them stew in rising tension, afraid the flight would leave without them. And unfortunately there was no one on hand from American Airlines to say they wouldn't. It was tense.

Plane departure time came and went. Passengers came running onto the plane with shoelaces dragging, some in near panic. Finally, an hour later everyone had been cleared and we finally took off. But the openly hostile attitude left such a bad taste, passengers were still talking about it when we landed in Dallas.

Those with connecting fights had to leave Dallas-Fort Worth customs arrival hall and proceed through yet another security check. But what an exceptional difference in attitude. Again we encountered the same kind of good humour and friendly welcoming attitude we'd encountered all over Europe ? except for Frankfurt Airport.

When the magnatometer went off because Jim forgot to remove his belt buckle, he was asked to take off his shoes. The personable smiling inspector exclaimed with enthusiasm: "Wow, are those fabulous socks!" I'd bought them for him in Alaska, thick sporty hiking ones with elaborate embroidered eagles.

Several packages of Portuguese tiles obviously created a dark mass in my carry-on, and the inspector who asked me about them couldn't have been more pleasant. What a difference a smile makes!

One very happy note . . . all those last-minute second inspections chosen at random just before boarding were now a part of the past everywhere.

One of World War Two's enduring memories