June 30, 2007

6/30/07
Madrid Airport
9:00 AM

Well, I'm on my own again.  Gina has gone on her way home.  I managed to catch an early flight to Madrid, but this proved to be a mistake.  Normally it is not difficult to shift a booking forward one or a few days if you are willing to stand by in the airport and wait.  Unfortunately...it requires the services of a ticket office.  And the ticket office at the Madrid airport--only for British Airways, as it turns out--is on strike.

Whistles, drums, a megaphone, an air horn & siren, marching workers & banners, posters, everything.  This is a full-out riot.  Everything they can do to disrupt the airport, they are doing.  I have picked the very wrong day to try and travel through Madrid.  There's not much for it, I guess.  I'll wait here today and read, and write, and try to email someone.  Maybe I can catch a metro into town and get to an internet cafe.  Hmm.

Well, I can fairly say I wish this weren't happening, but in all honesty it's not a terrible time or place for it to happen.  If need be I can sleep here pretty safely.  Maybe I can find a quiet corner to spend the night.  Hopefully I can deposit luggage somewhere.  We shall see.

Time with Gina was wonderful.  The first day we spent in a park together, talking and enjoying being together again.  She took me downtown to an Irish pub and we ate.  It was great.  That night I went to my hostel to find two folks sleeping in my bunk--I took the other, which was empty, and figured if they wanted it I could ask for mine back.  The night passed without incident, though.  The next day we met between her school & my room, and went for coffee at a small bakery.  They seem to be everywhere in Valencia.  I don't really like Spanish culture--they seem an excitable, party crowd, and that's not so much my personality.

--Aha, some Spanish police have showed up.  They're standing in a little bunch and not doing much.  Mostly everyone looks bored, except the people in the line, who look frustrated, and the Spanish people trying to work the desk, who look frazzled and stressed beyond belief.  Man, I'm glad I'm not catching a flight today...

Back to my first full day in Valencia.  Gina & I went out with some of her friends from school, to a place where they make an interesting creamy drink.  I forget the name of it.  That night we visited her home--her host mother is named Magda--and then went down to the beach for dinner.  We took a walk on the beach, and Gina had planned ahead and had a friend put together a towel on the sand with candles and a picnic.  It was incredible!  For a while we stayed at the beach and watched the sunset over the Mediterranean (amazing feeling, knowing I was on the shore of those history-steeped waters), and dozed off together.  We woke up in the middle of the night, drowsy and happy, and took a taxi home.  I'd gotten lost walking to the hostel from Magda's the night before; this time I'd mapped out an easier way home and got there quickly.  There was nobody in my bed, either.

The next day Gina met me at the hostel, we went to Magda's and packed, and then it was off to the airport.  Everything went smoothly, except the flight was delayed for three hours because a bird had hit the plane.  So we waited for a long time, and eventually made it into Brussels/Charleroi.  That airport is apparently much smaller than the real Brussels airport.  Because it was so much later than we anticipated, we decided to spend a night in Charleroi.  We got a room through the tourist office at the airport, and took a bus there.

I've looked it up, and apparently Charleroi is a little post-industrial town that dates to the medieval ages (doesn't everything in Europe?) & is important for having some bridges over a significant river that runs South & East of Brussels.  The industrial history shows in the structure of the town, and in the river.  The drab concrete riverbed, cut through quaint village atmospheres and soviet-era statues, seems to define the town.  It's like a smaller Pittsburgh set in Eastern Europe.  We explored a little bit that night and found most of the restaurants closed.  All the chocolate places were closed, too, unfortunately.  We ate at a ritzy place just outside the touristy side of town, which is where I found my coarse-mouthed French waiter.

The whistles are still going.  It's distressing.  Hopefully soon I can go ask about my flight.  I think I will now.  More on Charleroi & Luxembourg (which was our next destination) when I get back.