There’s something profoundly unsettling about being in an airport. They’re often large, easy to get lost in, and everybody seems to be coming or going in a hurry. Flying can be stressful at the best of times, but it certainly doesn’t help when the place you’re flying from seems tailor-made to be as unwelcoming as possible. 

Redditor u/ornryactor recounted one such strange experience. Responding to an r/worldnews story about international flying sanctions being placed on Belarus, they described passing through its main airport in 2019. Full of sinister back corridors and bizarre staffing procedures, other users likened it to a particularly mundane video game side mission.

As (some of) the world begins to open up again to international travel, we can only hope that most passengers manage to avoid these liminal space detours. Then again, it makes for a good story.