Did the movie Contagion freak your scat out? Me too. In fact, I was initially barred from seeing the movie because my friends weren’t sure I could handle it. You see, I have what logical people will recognize as a perfectly normal and healthy awareness of the cascading festival of germs on various surfaces. My friends view this as a hilarious eccentricity. What my filthy, disgusting friends don’t seem to understand is that starting a global pandemic is as easy as one exceptionally diseased person sneezing on your hand, then you picking out an eye booger with that hand just before boarding a 747 to Tokyo. It’s science, people. That said, I am also a world traveller. I know that travelling is akin to taking a bacteria bath with a urine rinse all day long and there is nothing that can be done about it. So, when I leave on a trip, I go into my head and I say ‘Head, you are going to be exposed to 244 squillion germs in the next few weeks and it’s totally out of your control. So, let’s flip the germ awareness switch off in the meantime and make everyone’s life easier, OK?’ Because this is a topic I know well, I have been tasked with providing a list of the grossest things you will touch while traveling. And since I’m logical (hence, correct), I will follow that information up with comforting reality checks. 1. Airplane bathrooms