Egypt? Day two...

She tells me she told me but I don’t know. Maybe she did. It’s Her style to think aloud, sorting what She’s been working on and my face probably looks attentive. It’s a learned behaviour where my inner and outer selves respond to their local stimuli. Outside someone’s talking and my head is nodding at all the right times, inside my thoughts are following their own train. And it is a logical, engaging process as one thought leads to another and rather than have my movie interrupted I say “uh huh”.

Which is probably when she told me our flight to Egypt had a connection in Madrid. We’re on our way there now, about an hour behind schedule so there’s a possibility we’ll miss the connector to Egypt. Shit, shit and more shit. She says it’s part of the adventure, I say it’s part of the pain.

The airport was its usual madness and Heathrow is one of the busiest, meanest airports in the world. It’s a humming city of stressed travellers anxiously watching the screens for their next move. It’s lining up for half an hour to buy a muffin and another twenty minutes for a magazine. It’s more people than seats, more planes than the runways and departure gates can handle. The low ceilings this low guy could touch add to the compressed, beehive feel of the place.

We’re flying Iberian airlines and oh, what a difference. So many of our flights recently have been Ryanair or some other discount airline that by necessity treats the passengers like cattle in order to offer them cheap flights. Luggage is considered a luxury as is legroom. There are no seats in the departure gate, just cattle organizers that channel the people towards the door. It opens and with elbows up it’s a mad dash for the plane to try and get 2 or 3 seats together (unless of course you’d paid extra to book actual seats).

Too weird. I wrote the last four paragraphs while on the plane and reflecting on the day to date. I’m now sitting in a hotel room in Madrid. I’m not supposed to be here. My fear that we’d miss our connector came true and my love of Iberia came to an end. I can’t blame them for the wind that delayed our departure but I can totally dislike them for their no eye contact/no concern (NENC). Easy enough for them to figure out that a couple of their passengers were connecting with other flights, easy enough to say “here’s what we’re going to do”. Didn’t happen.

What did happen was we were told to exit off the back of the plane as everyone else discharged front. Hmmm. They were mostly talking to those people going to Havana but three of us were going to Cairo and were were in the same terminal. OK, they knew we wouldn’t make our connection but what the fuck, we were off their plane and handed over. The back door people got on a bus and were carted off to a distant terminal from which Havana and Cairo and Auschwitz beckoned. But we only got NENC when we asked “where do we go now?” We found an info booth at the new terminal who gave us a gate number and we started running. The ningnong, motherfucker in a reflector jacket we found there shrugged indifference and pointed us in the wrong direction. We found the Iberia non-help desk and were told “that plane just left”. “Duh!”, I said and knew it was time to leave the area and leave Her to work her magic.

When I came back with a relieved bladder and mind, I found them in convivial conversation and directions to the Iberian customer service desk being explained. The non-help desk had provided boarding passes for the same flight tomorrow and had suggested we see the folks at he Iberian customer service desk for a voucher for a hotel for the night. They were back in the main terminal and three inquiries late we were on the train headed back to the main terminal. Deep breath. “I think he said second floor”. And there they were.

An aside here: the Madrid airport is a cavernous marbellized mausoleum that feels ten times the size of Heathrow but it’s empty. There were no lineups anywhere, not at the non-help desk, not at customer service, not anywhere. Weird.

With voucher for hotel and meals in hand and meager directions to the hotel transfer in our heads we headed for the exit. But I was feeling uneasy about our luggage. The two bags we’d checked in were supposed to magically arrive in Cairo with us but I’d been in the same clothes for two days and the wine was in our bags. We waited for fifteen minutes for our transfer when I said “Nah, we should find our bags. I’ve no faith they’ll find us”. So we trudged back into the terminal and started looking. We found a guy who pointed us to another guy who suggested we sneak back into the secure area and tell the security guard what we wanted. It worked.

We found another ‘help’ desk who said they could find the bags but it would be about 45 minutes and we’d have to check in two hours early to re-check the bags tomorrow. “Whatever” says I and we hunker down. Godblesshim the bags were out forty minutes later and we headed back to the transfer point only now there’s a ton ‘o people waiting...and waiting. No-one seemed to know when the bus was due. And it’s cold. And windy.

Ah well, we got here and since starting to write this new section (somewhere between “Didn’t happen” and “what did happen”) we’ve been for dinner (good food, 7-11 ambiance) and made plans to see the Picasso exhibit in downtown Madrid tomorrow. Life can take you anywhere...