An Eventful Beginning

I am finally in Spain!!! It seems like it has been days since I hugged Mom good-bye in Detroit but really it has only been a few days – a few days of one disaster after another! The whole process of flying freaked me out. I had to triple check that I had everything and even so I was so anxious about forgetting something especially because I waited until the last minute to pack! Before going to the airport, I ate lunch at my all-time favorite restaurant (Border Cantina) with Dad, Mom, and Kyle. Everything was going smoothly up until that point, but then the first minor hiccup in the plan occurred. Apparently my backpack that I stuffed to the rim didn’t fit airline carry-on regulations. FREAKOUT! After a mad dash to Target with the family, all was well because mom bought me a new carry-on and I managed to cram almost everything in it on the drive to the airport.

The flight from Detroit to Frankfurt went by faster than I thought it would; although, that isn’t saying much as I had built it up to be this big horrible nightmare! The fattest baby I have ever seen spent most of the flight screaming in the seat in front of me but headphones work wonders. At Frankfurt, we just barely made our connection, after being delayed in Detroit because of de-icing procedures. We were literally the last people on the bus to take us to the airplane, but we made it just in time. I slept the entire flight, managing to skip the meal they offered. That excitement aside, we finally landed in Madrid ready to start our Spanish adventure, or so we thought.

The Frankfurt airport managed to misplace 9 bags and a Gayle… How is that even possible?! We waited for hours and hours at the airport for Gayle’s flight to arrive and prayed that our baggage would come with it – all in vain. In our desperate search for somebody – anybody – that could give us some sort of concrete information we managed to make three trips to different baggage claims, three between terminal 1 and terminal 2, multiple trips to Spanair and Lufthansa service desks, and two illegal attempts to sneak into other restricted areas only to be yelled at by fat security guards. Our entire marathon through the airport managed to yield the meager info that Gayle’s plane was delayed 6 hours and that our baggage would arrive at midnight. How lovely!

Exhausted and stressed to the max, we checked into our hostel and waited for Gayle to find us. The hostel provided a much needed comedic relief as the walls were plastered in ‘artistic’ hand drawn porn. Only in Europe…


By 1 AM, everyone and everything was accounted for and we managed to snag a few hours of much needed sleep before catching our train in the morning.

The train ride went smoothly and after discovering that some taxi drivers in Sevilla can be downright assholes (made us take 4 cabs with our luggage even though we managed to cram into 2 on the way to the train station in Madrid!), we finally made it to Hotel Becquer – home for the next few days!! We survived our international trip from Hell!!!!!

Part of me still can't believe that I'm actually here, in Spain, about to only speak Spanish for the next five and a half months. And if the beginning of this trip has any indication as to how the rest will follow, I can only say that it is going to be an adventure.