Drained, tired, frustrated, lack of sleep combined with the feeling of my eyes rebelling against treasured sight! Fingers feel dry and cold. Mind slowly refreshed from warm shower at 9am. No food in the house and this country shuts down on Sunday for a reason even God wouldn’t agree with. Back to the grind of a useless existence in Eastern Europe where education is disregarded for a drink in a midnight club! Need to unpack and reclaim a lost room that dust has layered with a mark of interest. Starting reading The Source by James A. Michener while waiting for 4 hours in a Paris Airport gathering hole. Further thoughts on a new life reentering the Holy Land come March. Empty glasses reveal an empty room, devoid of care and ready to be lived in with a silent house. Only food that I’ve consumed in 2 days is airplane disgrace, granola bars and two slices of Slovenian pizza, which put my exhaustion over the edge, forcing sleep at 8pm and an unwanted wake-up at 5am this morning! Ready to collapse and again the feeling of isolation in a gray city returns to balance.
Plane ride wasn’t too painful. Sat next to two old women who decided to see if no one would take the middle seat, the one from Jersey talked at high speeds and sound levels that annoyed surrounding passengers as well as my ear drums. Talked about her daughter and past travels around the globe while I listened and chimed in when I could with my own accounts of places, sights and world people. Saw two movies that remind me of why Hollywood exists and gives what it can. The Town and The Social Network. It may be said many times over but Ben Affleck is back with a fury of creative art and talent, taking the screen to new heights of moviemaking and I for one am grateful and anticipating more. Social Network was a fine piece if story telling, giving me personal insight to Mark Zuckerberg and how Facebook came to dominate over other social networks as well as our daily lives!
Plane touched down and then took over 20 minutes to get to the gate, actual time I fell asleep on the plane. Thought I was lost for a few minutes once I stepped out of the gate. The guy who was seated in front of me told me “Is it just me or does that woman talk way too loud!” I said yeah man with a tired grin on my face and he picked up right away on my emotion from that plane ride. He said “I feel for ya brotha”, with a big laugh as he moved past me and I returned that laugh one of my own and a final nod to a fellow American traveler abroad. Took me a while to find where I was going and how to gain access to 2G. Those two symbols became my obsession while my eyes searched for any signs of where they might be and how to get there. The Paris Airport is a human monstrosity and it was beginning to conquer my drained flesh until at last I saw a sign leading out of my current dilemma and terminal and headed for the open air. Once outside I found a group of people who didn’t speak a word of English or French for that matter and decided to wait and see if a bus would come since I had over four hours to burn. A lady from Scandinavia then asked me if this was where to pick up the bus for 2G and I said I thought so and that was that, she didn’t want to talk past my yes to her question. She was on the brink of missing her flight so I let the attitude pass through me and suddenly a bus came. No help for me though because from all corners of that outside waiting area, places I hadn’t even noticed when I first left the terminal entrance, hordes of people rushed the three bus entrances and me with my bags were left without room to spare. A true twist of fate would have it that one of the few others that were cast aside to wait was another American from my flight and he happened to be from Pittsburgh. After gathering his name to be David, a fellow admirer of American football, we started talking teams and then he hit me with it, he was heading back to Spain where he teaches English!!
Thinking to myself that the universe sets things in motion for reasons and they become harder to ignore as the years continue I began asking him questions. He told me he was in Santiago (spelling?) in the north of the country, a good gig, not too stressful and the only problem was that his girlfriend was teaching in another city. He said he was planning to pick up stops; she would do the same and find another city to teach in where they would both live. He said it was not that hard to get into the teaching English arena in Spain and the fact that a tall American, familiar with the language and was going there, I should look into it. After a bit of that we went back to sports and weather and travels, all this while after catching another bus to 2G, which crossed its way over the airport landscape that the French call their own. After finally arriving at 2G David and I were split up, with him going in the shorter security line and that was that but I thanked him and the universe for the advice. After 20 minutes standing in line for a security check I made it to the waiting area and since I was way too early for my flight to be on the board yet I waited in a chair for the inevitable. Reading and then listening to music, with occasional head DROP into sleep, the time came and the gate number appeared. I went down and prepared myself for the last flight of the trip and one that would be experienced in tight spaces with a plane that truly made me out to be a Northern Giant. I walk out of the terminal, hand off my second carry-on bag because the plane is too small to bring both on board and then I walk up and in. Take my seat and then the next second a Spanish girl I know named Mercedes, love her fucking name, comes in and takes the two seats next to me. Next few hours consist of us catching up while missing a lot because my American confuses her and I struggle with her deep Spanish accent. We finally land and wait to gather our luggage, mine come, hers don’t.
Turns out the Paris airport never put anyone’s luggage coming from Spain to Paris onto the plane, creating a chaotic headache for the seven Spanish travelers, four who came all the way from the Canary Islands! I wait with Mercedes until she arranges with the airline people her information in order to get her luggage once it arrives after the fact and then we search for a method of transportation to take us back to our Slovenian capital. We get onto a bus, so much cheaper than a taxi, and head off for Ljubljana with a gray sky getting darker and signs of heavy rainfall in the air and on the ground. Talk and exchange travel plans, hopes and realities for a while, bout 45 minutes and then part ways, she gets off near her dorm and I head alone towards the train station/final bus stop. By this point the mind and body have both rebelled and complete tiredness is settling in for the long haul. I decide not to waste money on a taxi ride and take my luggage in hand and walk back along the streets I know all too well in the direction of the castle and my room. The streets are practically empty, anyone on the street stares at me, a man who is dragging his bags on watered streets and also a man who had decided to give up the comfort of an easy taxi journey and opted for a loud and long path into the old part of the capital city. Reached the Three Bridges and stopped for a minute to experience the Xmas Lights and their artistic displays and designs. Then it was on to my neighborhood and then finally the door to the house and then to the room. Relaxed for a while, was about to go to sleep at 6 something and decided to get some food. Bakery didn’t have anything worth putting in my empty and tired form so I walked on and after a while of closed disappointments I went back to the pizza place that has rarely failed me and got two slices of no meat pizza. Got back to the room, devoured the slices while watching How I Met Your Mother and Scrubs and finally succumbed to the need for sleep. Unfortunately it was at 8pm, forced a 5am wake up. Listened to audio books, showered and now wrote! The Travel Life!
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