the trip part 1 july 30

July 30

Woke up at 5:25, got ready, finished The Girls of Riyadh and left Marianne and Luis' apartment – no one to send me off. It was quiet and dark and really weird. I´m still not sure I didn´t forget something. (stay tuned to find out what it was)

I made it to Avenida de América relatively easily and found my bus. Had time to buy some 3€ tampons, the smallest I´ve ever seen from a vending machine as, inevitably, I started my period. Got on the bus and pulled out at exactly 0700 hours. As drove away from Madrid, I could see the sun rising on the city, a perfect reminder that, even though I'm leaving, life in Madrid will continue on and the people whose lives we've shared in will continue to grow and change without us. Aww.

After about an hour on the bus, we came to a stop by the side of the road. I didn´t really notice - well I did, but I was so tired it didn´t seem to matter for about half an hour. Turns out some sort of alcohol delivery truck had flipped over and burst into flames. We could see the fire from about 2 kilometers away. We ended up waiting there for around an hour and a half. Of course everything can´t go perfectly when you are traveling, but God has gotten me this far, I knew he would take care of the rest.

Somehow I got stuck next to the most annoying person on the bus: listening to hip-hop music in his headphones loud enough for the whole bus to hear, sniffing like he was about to haulk a lugee (sp?), coughing without covering his mouth, letting his excessively loud cell phone ring incessantly without answering, then when he did answer it, talking over everyone in the bus. (I´ll leave the demographic info to your imagination)

We arrived in Barcelona not too late after we were due and I actually was able to get off at Barcelona Sants station instead of having to take a couple metros back to it from the Nord station. After a couple encounters with some typically rude and ignorant station employees, I got a ticket to the airport and off I went. I arrived pretty early for my 8:15 flight, but ended up standing in line next to a sweet Russian girl chatting the whole time. She was so impressed that I was going to Russia all by myself. She said my life sounded like one big vacation. I´m not so sure about that. I also ran into some Serbians...I understood so much of what they were saying that I thought it was Russian. Maybe I won´t fall flat on my face after all.

I bade farewell to Barcelona and the Mediterranean Sea as the sun was setting over the hills. We arrived on schedule in Koln-Bonn around 22:30 and I got my bag and said good by to Anya. I just finished my gigantic calzone and now I´m sitting here on an extremely uncomfortable metal bench across from the only shop open in the entire airport, eating a bag of giant Haribo gummy bears and typing this up. I have to admit I almost started crying after wading through the lines of people picking up their loved ones, being forced to exit the security area, walking around my terminal and only finding one other soul: a man at the desk who didn´t speak a word of English. Maybe I will fall flat on my face after all.