oh, man...

...i dropped a half full bottle of wine in the metro tonight. suckfest.

oh, i never told you the story about getting to the barcelona airport. our flight left at 3:20 pm, so we figured we should get to the airport around 2 pm. to get there, we had to leave the hostel around 1230 or 1245. we ended up leaving the hostel at 1215, so we had plenty of time. mal and i were even getting excited about the great airport shopping we'd get to do (seriously, we love it). we made our way to the train station and asked the ladies at the questions booth which one was the train to the airport. she looks at us confused (because we asked in english), so we repeated, then she responded in perfectly clear english, "platform 9."

rockin, platform 9. we make it there and see that the train is coming in 2 minutes. even better. we hop on and because there are no seats, we have to sit in the front part for luggage and bikes. i made lots of jokes about the boxcar children because i'm witty. the conductor comes down and asks maddy for the tickets (in spanish). she's like uhhh do you speak english? no, he says. luckily, there's this other guy sitting by us who knows some english, so he helps us translate. we were told by the ladies at the ticket booth that we didn't need to buy tickets for the train, maddy said (and the guy translated).

you're not going to the airport on this train, the conductor/the translator said.

we just laughed, because really, what can you do? the translator guy told us we'd be able to switch at the next station about 30 minutes away, and the airport would be about 10 minutes from there. we left early and had plenty of time to get to the airport, so we weren't freaking out. actually, we quite enjoyed the ride because it took us past the sunny mediterranean so we got to see some spanish countryside.

we get off at the next stop--villanova--to change cars. we figure out which one takes us to the airport (and double check this time) and hop on. some nice old spanish ladies with a cute puppy tell us where to get off. once we got off, we looked for airplanes and find none. oh, no, those old bitches totally screwed us! no, false...we actually just had to change trains there. we asked more security guards if we were getting on the right train because now it's 2:20 and we should probably be checking in. the train to the airport will come at 2:39 and will take maybe 6 minutes, says a security guard in broken english.

at this point, the delay isn't fun anymore. none of us are laughing and we're getting tense. we started figuring that we wouldnt be able to check our bags, so we start thinking about ways to save our liquids or something.

2:39 on the dot, the train comes. on the ride over, ben lee's "catch my disease" comes on and it oddly calms me. like...there's no point in freaking out. i'm either going to the plane or i'm not, whether i'm stressed or not.

the train arrived at the airport and we sprinted to the check in counter for last minute check in. after a little tiff about paying for baggage, the woman let us put our bags on the plane free of charge (as she should). we found our gate, saw that the plane was delayed (of course) and actually calmed down.

*sigh* flying can be so difficult sometimes. only one trip left--to the US!