Time Travel with Me to the Morning of last Thursday

April 12th, 2012

6:29 AM

You know those mornings when you feel like the poster child for general disarray and walking chaos? I'm having one of those mornings. This wouldn't be nearly so frustrating if I didn't go to such great lengths to keep exactly this sort of a mess from happening. I'm a very organized traveler- everything has its place, its proper weight, ready to pass inspection and cross borders sin problemas. However, this morning, I was not particularly on top of my game. Mascara was not in a little baggy, earrings did not have backings, and iPods had mysteriously failed to charge overnight. Granted, overnight might be a bit of an exaggeration. I didn't actually get to sleep until 3:00 AM, which meant that my evening recoup was really more of a catnap. 5 AM wake-up call was not welcome, although it certainly did the job. Do you think they design hotel telephones to ring so abrasively? Dastardly architects of wake-up call efficiency. 

Here is the itinerary that should have been followed:

• 10:00 PM - Asleep
• 5:00 AM - Wake up call (luxuriously stretch arms and roll out of bed with perfect hair)
• 5:30 AM - Catch shuttle to airport
• 6:00 AM- Be well on my way to passing through the check-in desk with a breezy smile and relieved of my enormous bags
• 6:34 AM- Be sitting in the Louiu Airport Café awaiting my boarding gate and drinking a hot milk with Bailey's, smiling breezily out the windows at the sweet night fallen over the runways. 

One of these things happened and I'll give you a hint. It was the one that included Bailey's. If one thing was going to go right this morning it had darn well be the Bailey's. Let me provide you with a more accurate itinerary.

• 3:00 AM - Asleep
• 5:00 AM- Wake up call
• 5: 15 AM - Actually get out of bed, all aspects of physical appearance in a state of acute hot mess and severely in need of tylenol, according to the living dead status of my eyes
• 5:15-5:30- Run all over the hotel room collecting my things, think frantically on the idea of how I managed to spread out so much in the space of twelve hours.
• 5:33- Arrive downstairs for the 5:30 shuttle, which is blessedly waiting (grab breakfast while receptionist checks me out of my room. Breakfast is a stale croissant- somehow still delicious, pin it down to desperation)
• 5:40 - Arrive at airport and put on makeup using a compact. The woman sitting next to me watches with fascination without even pretending to hide it. I wonder briefly if she has ever seen eyeliner before.
• 5:45- Begin check-in process with a very nice lady who cannot seem to find my reservation in the computer
• 5:46- Discover that one of my bags is severely overweight and that flying Iberia (although I will be switching to American Airlines) I am charged for my second bag (50 EUROS! alskdjflaksjdflakjsfdlkajsdflkajsdflkajsdlfkjasldkfjalskjdfalskdjI'mokay.)
• 5:46- 6:15 - Sit on the tile floor in full sight of the entire arrivals terminal and move things from one bag to another. Try to smile at people like I'm enjoying myself and generally wait until I arrive at the airport to complete the packing process. Sit in zen position during the process to appear more convincingly calm.
• 6:15- 6:25- Require four boxes to organize my things through security. Listen to woman jokes from the two young men standing behind me, who apparently only see that my passport is American and therefore presume that I do not speak Spanish.
• 6:25- Embarrass two boys horribly. Do not feel even the tiniest bit bad about it.
• 6:29- Arrive at the Louiu café and order my drink, which is perfect in every way and look out at the runway, amazed by how calm and steady the blinking of lights can be, against a windy darkness.

Let's hope that the remainder of the journey is more straightforward. I'll cross my fingers and hope for it. But like wi-fi while airport hopping, it seems that such sweet goodnesses as simple travel, are to be savored when they happen to come along.

Post IV: The Coffee Conspiracy

*Note- written before the fact (January 18th, 11:30 AM) and updated later

I am making a goal of finding out what strange process goes into the making of coffee here in Spain. Questions will be asked, interrogations will be held. Let me let you in on why I feel so passionately about this topic. When you order a coffee at an exorbitantly high price, expect a cup of roughly the height and volume of a three-year old's fist. The punch on the other hand is a bit stronger than that of a three-year-old's fist. If you've ever been hit by a three-year-old, then you know that this is saying serious things about the oomph going into one of these cups of coffee. 

In the United States, if I drink a coffee I am a bit (more) wired (than usual). This is a coffee of about five or six times of the drink to be had here. Yet, it makes me a shaky wreck that is magically fluent in Spanish- or at least has confidence like she is. Sometimes I dance. I wish I were kidding.

Sherlock Holmes would suggest foul play and, following in the footsteps of great intercultural detectives before me, so do I. I am possessed of the opinion that when you order coffee in Spain you are actually just ordering espresso and that they find it hilarious to watch confused Americans jitter around the airport, buying everything that they twitch on.

Post III: Spanish Women... and their Shoes

*Note: Written without wireless (Jan 18, 11 AM). Updated after the fact.

Spanish women are wonderful. They start off with a saucy adolescence, mature into fun-loving, but also highly capable young women and age incredibly well, both body and soul. They have a certain something about them that makes you expect them to catch a rose between their teeth at any moment… not a stereotype. I am convinced that I have cracked the code though. The secret to the fierce dignity and flash of these women is in their shoes.

To be precise, it is not in their shoes, but beneath them- if you consider a heel part of the underpart of a shoe. Spanish women wear heels everywhere. In Madrid, in Bilbao, in Seville- it seems to be a unifying factor for mujeres of any degree of class and sophistication in this corner of the world. I walked into Terminal 4 (Domestic Flights) of Madrid's Barajas airport, where the only people that seem to speak English when you have a question are you and God, who is possibly himself still looking for your gate, and the first thing that I noticed were the shoes. Wedged lace-up black boots. Stiletto-heeled knee-high suede pieces. Everywhere, everywhere amazing shoes. And not just incredible shoes, but women that were wearing them well, like they were born to walk on these devastatingly attractive little height machines. It doesn't matter what size or make she is, I have yet to see a single woman here that does not wear heels like a complete and utter professional. Either way, it was at that moment that I was officially glad to be back in Spain.

When I first came to Spain I had brought a single pair of "sensible" heels with me (and some ankle boots that apparently want me dead, not alive). Sensible is a word that American women use when they've given up on wearing amazing shoes and have decided that the definition of a heel should be no longer than one's thumb-nail. British women use it to describe more or less everything, I discovered in London. Westminster Abbey? A sensible piece of architecture. Phantom of the Opera? A sensible bit of a play. Anyway, I fell into the American "sensible" trap and that was a serious mistake. Sensible is not part of the fashion vocabulary for women in Spain (not just because they speak a different language). Fifty-year old women show up to pick up their children from school wearing perfectly tailored blazers, well-fit skinny jeans, and Lou-Vuitton knock-offs. I didn't think it to be much of an important part of my temporary identity though, until I legitimately had a student ask me if I had a problem with my legs, was that why I couldn't wear big girl shoes? A six year old picked up on my cultural fashion inadequacies. That's a low blow- no pun intended. 

Either way, I bought a couple of pairs of presentable heels. Now, the only one's left screaming to me are a completely ridiculous, where-will-I ever-wear-these-things pair of low-calf, red suede, leather-striped wedge boots. Every time I see them in the store in my size I quickly recommend them to the closest woman with likely looking feet, who promptly pins my alarming behavior to my apparent American-ness, and hope that she decides she loves them too. If she's Spanish, they'll have a good home.