Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Running in airports

And then like a scene from one of those movies, I ran and hopped on the stairs to the plan just right as soon as they were closing the doors, almost missing my flight. I felt like Jim Carrey during that scene from "Liar Liar" only I actually made it to the flight.

So here's what happened: I brought a regulation sized carry on, but when I got to the gate for my flight in Munich, the flight attendant at the door was stacking bags with wheels. She blabbed something fast as lightening in German, which I could only come to understand meant: "Ein Bier Prost wie alt bist du Gazundheit tschuss". AKA I had no clue what she said, I just did what I always do in language barrier situations like these and what is probably not what you should do; I follow suit and pray for the best. I gave her my bag and boarded the plane.

As soon as the same flight attendant began giving the safety speech in perfect English, I knew I was screwed. I should have just told her to let me carry the bag on. To top it off, a baby was hollering and our flight was delayed. I knew it was about time something went horribly wrong and I closed my eyes as they iced down the plane and I tried to convince myself the worst that would happen would only be a cost of about 100 euro and our plane wasn't going to crash and I wasn't going to end by fire, combustion or any other cause of death in an airplane accident. I started at this point to crave a specific date situation in which Nick and I went to Applebees on a date and then got so homesick on top of my stress that a tear leaked out of my eye. I then mentally noted to schedule a good cry for when I landed in Paris in some secluded bathroom or something before getting on the metro to meet Blair.

When the male flight attendant came around to serve drinks, I asked for a coke. As if by some miracle he not only responded in English, but he responded to ask me if I wanted ice cubes in my Coke. ICE CUBES!!!!!!!!!!! (Side note about my excitement: No one anywhere puts ice in soda ever in Europe and I have inherited from my mother the habit of overloading all of my drinks with ice, so this is why I was so excited.) The ice fairy visited me and bestowed a great gift upon me that day. After this it was now certain that something bad would need to happen to even the playing field.

I got off the plane at 6:15 and asked the woman flight attendant from before if they checked my bag at the gate, how were they going to know that I was going to Paris? She said I should have told her because she let the people going to Paris carry on their luggage. She told me to go up the ramp and tell the girl in the yellow coat so there wouldn't be a delay. I walked up and there was no such woman in sight. I found a man in yellow, but he didn't speak much English. He did manage to give me directions to my gate, however, which came in handy later. Finally the luggage started coming up and literally mine was the 7th to last to come up. I grabbed it, saw ten minutes until my flight was scheduled to leave and started sprinting to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TERMINAL. Of freaking course. As people stared, I sprinted by like a cheetah (because of my coat, not my speed). The duty free jager shot I bought in Germany fell out of my pocket and had to be left behind. The weakest link never survives, right? I had to go through security AGAIN, so I suppose it was a blessing in disguise that the jager fell out.

I made it to the gate and a man ran me out to the plane and said, "Where ya been girl??" If I had been thinking right I would have said: "Just robbed a bank and barely made it out alive, duh." But alas I did not. As the French would say: L'esprit de l'escalier.

As a reward for my marathon running, I was greeted with a beautiful bird's eye view of Berlin as we flew off into the sunset.

Ciao for now!




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