Spanish Steps

We have Spained (not sprained - much). 

Full disclosure that will shock approximately none of you: I am a terrible traveler. I WANT to travel, and immerse myself in other cultures and learn about how people live in other places and be open to new experiences. But I am so anxious and awkward. I always think I'm doing everything wrong. It is such a terrible, inconvenient thing having a body while traveling, particularly one that is crooked and reacts badly to changes in routine. 

 That is all okay. I said to Matt at one point that we spend a lot of money on traveling so it's easy to fall into the thinking that it should all be perfect and beautiful and if it isn't we're doing it wrong. But i think a very important element of travel IS being uncomfortable, physically and mentally. It's good to shake up a comfortable routine, and it's good to really feel what it's like to be somewhere where you don't speak or understand the language and everything is confusing and frightening. It gives us not just sympathy but empathy for the people who come to our countries from somewhere else and don't speak or understand the language. I'm always afraid I'm going to come across like a stupid tourist but whatever, I AM a stupid tourist, most people are nice about it. 

 I started my other-language immersion in the Uber on the way to the airport (because my husband was already in Malaga, having gone to Paris the week before, and I am alone with my terrible sense of direction, remember). A lovely man named Behezagire who spoke mostly French was driving me. We managed to have a nice conversation with his bit of English and my very bad French. I told him I was going to meet my husband in Spain to celebrate our 30th anniversary and he said he had also been married 30 years, and asked me how many kids we had. He said they had four kids (three boys and a girl) but it was because they had the kids when they still lived in Africa (Burundi). He said it would be a little crazy to have four kids living in Canada, which made me laugh. 

We had worked through almost a dozen scenarios getting me from Ottawa to Malaga, mostly because we booked the flight later than would have been ideal. In the end I flew Air France from Ottawa to Paris, then KLM from Paris to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Malaga. I fully acknowledge that I was traveling with the highest level of privilege in the top level of comfort, but that is still a lot of flights over a lot of hours. Two days before I left Matt told me he had paid a couple hundred dollars for a 'concierge' to help me at Charles de Gaulle Airport. I said, a tiny bit indignantly, "you got me a babysitter?" You guys, without this lovely woman Lina, I would have disappeared somewhere in CDG airport never to be seen again. It is BIG, and confusing, and it was the middle of the night and I would have been utterly and completely screwed. In addition to knowing exactly where I had to go, she was allowed to bypass some long lines and enter some no-entry-looking entrances. The most surreal part of the long walk through the airport was a series of like twenty tv screens, all showing Julia Roberts being radiant and being pelted with cherries in some perfume ad - just what you want to see when you are limping along feeling greasy and gross and desperate for a decontamination shower. 

CDG airport looked like a total throwback. It seemed weird that it wasn't wreathed in clouds of smoke. I went to my gate and instead of an announcement for who should board when, the attendant just sort of looked around at people and gave a Gallic little shrug, and then I walked up and showed my boarding pass and he waved me through graciously. I went, but I was still baffled by the process. 

I got to Amsterdam and sat in the lounge at a table, surrounded by weirdly enormous chairs, staring at nothing for two hours. After the last flight I got off and found the baggage claim where the flight was listed. We waited, and some bags came out, and then there was nothing, and there were a bunch of us still waiting. I was firmly at the 'why does anyone travel voluntarily' stage of grief when a woman who had sent her husband ahead to get the rental car announced to us that he had called and told her that those of us not coming from the European Union had to go find a mysterious second baggage carousel - we were supposed to intuit this telepathically, I guess? My incandescent rage at the stupidity was outweighed by my relief at being able to grab my suitcase and meet Matt outside finally.

The hotel was only about a twenty-minute drive from the airport. I had the best shower of my life and was about to sleep for ten hours. Then Matt said "everyone's going out for dinner in an hour and you're invited." And I said "....okay". I am a fan of the group tapas dinners. Plates and plates came around and you could just grab a bite or two of everything rather than a big whack of one thing. I was sitting with Camille, Matt's colleague who I really like, and when I said no to wine she said "oh, so you don't fall asleep at the table?" and I said "yep, I haven't slept or eaten for fifteen hours and two countries". They are a good interesting, funny group and I got through on adrenaline. Dinner started at 8:30 and took a long time, and when we came out the area was still bustling. We had a nice walk back to the hotel and then I thoroughly and comprehensively crashed.