The banality of terror, or how I spent my European vacation

"It's an abandonedluggage theyaregoing to explode," a Charles de Gaulle Airportemployeenonchalantlytells me as I am ushered away froma wing of Terminal 2.

Ithas been, perhaps,a half-hour since I landed inParis.

Around me, I notice no stress oranxiety about the experience.

Barely two days after 84 people were killed by a truck driver on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, the primary reaction to the news thatpart of France's largest international airport is being evacuatedappears to beannoyance.

Terminal 2 at Charles deGaulleleads to trains connecting the airportto centralParis, andso shutting it down affects not only air travelers, but Parisians trying to get home as well.

You can almost read the "not again" looks of exasperation on their faces.

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Getting used to security

To me, though, this is a little foreign.Outside of layovers, I haven't been to WesternEurope since a long stay in 2005.

Suspicious luggage now, apparently,represents only a minimal risk. The majority of the airport was not evacuated, andonly minutes passed before the cordoned-off section was reopened.

But watching groups of both police officers and soldierspatrol the airportso openly was a novelty to a Canadian tourist.

I registered a slightfrissonas I walked by youngmen, who don't look old enough to shave, clutching assault rifles, which you can almost touchwhen you're squeezed by large crowds.

In the streets of Paris and other European cities, itwas much the same.

Place de la Rpublique, world-famous backdrop of so many live TV reports following the Bataclanattack last November, was patrolled bymen in armyfatigues.

They're as much a scarof the wound left by the deaths of the 129 killed as the flowers laying beneath the statue of Marianne, emblem of the republic.

"It's sad, but we're used to it now," one of my Parisian cousinssaidwhen I remarkedabout the military presence.

Latermy travels took me to Bayreuth, Germany, to visit a friend. While there, a 17-year-old teenager hoppedaboard a train and attackedpassengers with an axe in nearby Wuerzburg. ISIS claimedresponsibility.

"That's only two hours south of here," my friendcasually informedme.

A day after I left Germany and returned to France, nine people were killed when a man openedfire at a restaurant and shopping mall in Munich, where my friend had been just before we met up.

Thena man killeda woman with a machete outside a bus station in the city of Reutlingen.

Another incident occurredin Ansbach, "about 80 kilometres [from Bayreuth]" myfriend informedme over social media.
ASyrian asylum-seeker blew himself up, injuring 15. ISIS claimedresponsibility for that too.

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Five attacks in two weeks

Include Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray,near Normandy,where a priestwas killed after two men brandishing knives entered a church, and five different terror incidents unfolded over my two-week stay in Europe.

Most of my travels during the last decade were to the developing world. I receivedall types of adviceabout staying safe and not getting kidnapped there.

Yet itis the so-called first world thatseems the most dangerous.

In another French airport, this timein Biarritz, I spotted acardboard panel with the same types of stylized illustrations you usually see on airplane safety instructions.

Butinstead of pulling on oxygen masks or life jackets, the nondescriptfigures in these drawings are clambering down the sides of buildings or pushing a couch to barricade a door as they hide from a shooter.

"React in case of a terrorist attack," the panel is titled.

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By the time I'm in Basque Country in the south of France, exploring the local Fte de Bayonne with a groupof friends, the worry is replaced with the mundane for me as well.

Looking up from the sea of revellers dressed in the traditional whiteand red colours associatedwith the week-long Basque festival, I see two men in altogether different hues sitting on a rooftopoverlooking a plaza.

They're in dark police uniforms. A rifle with a long-distance scope rests next to one of them.

"Guys, check out the snipers," I point out to a couple of friends.

One responds saying he had spotted them as well, but preferred not to show the entire group. "Don't want to scare people," he said.

Canadians, perhaps, are not used to the banality of terror the same way Europeans have become.

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