If you thought Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film The Terminal sounded pretty far fetched – think again. A similar tale has just played out in real life.
In the film, Viktor Navorski (played by Tom Hanks) arrived at New York’s John F Kennedy airport from the fictional country Krakozhia, and found himself stranded in the airport after US authorities cut diplomatic ties with his troubled homeland.
In the real-life case, Robert Wladyslaw Parzelski, 44, a Polish-born car electrician living in London travelled from London to São Paulo. He arrived in São Paulo on 17 June without any money or a word of Portuguese. When his friend never arrived to collect him, he got “lost” inside the terminal for 18 days. Airport cleaners started bringing him cigarettes, food and water – and then the newspapers got wind of the story.
The story came out – Parzelski had been given a one-way ticket by a friend who asked him to return to London with two Brazilian telephones. He was not sure why – and nor was anybody else. With the curious case still unclear, he returned to London, with the help of the Polish consulate in São Paulo.
The Folha de São Paulo newspaper reported, “Smiling, he bade us farewell, with a little wave of the hand.”
