The last time I left the country, it was for Greece, and I ended up proposing to Janice there (at the Temple of Poseidon, on a cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea, no less). This trip would not be as personally life-changing, but that did not make it any less enjoyable.
These are field notes, compiled for the Bunker Staff, and they may not reflect to complete and total experience of being on the other side of the world—and this is something I would urge all of you to attempt, at least once in your life, if at all possible. Leave your home continent. You won’t regret it.
Further commentary can be found in the weekly report, located here, for those of you who aren’t subscribed: https://ntab.substack.com.
Day 1
I think the worst thing about traveling is the traveling, meaning the Getting There. There are few things more miserable in the 21st century than flying on commercial airlines. Even people in first class looked miserable. And Iberia air was not interested in making it easy for any of us, either. I’m in a group of six: me, Janice, and her family, including her brother, her niece, her cousin, and her mother. Veteran world travelers, all. They like to sit together, as you might well expect, but Iberia Air was wise to this cunning ruse, and thoughtfully scattered us like grouse across the seating chart, regardless of preference or predilection. In their defense, it wasn’t just us; everyone was assigned, seemingly at random, whatever seat they felt like giving us. Their motto, evidently, is “You’ll take what we give you and you’ll like it.” Burger King, they are not.
Janice and I thought we were being clever, by giving up the seats we were in so other people could sit next to strangers, and we took the two seats at the back of the plane. We were so very, very wrong. Those seats aren’t meant for us. I’m not even sure why they bother with them. Maybe there’s a group of very thin, waif-like elven people who routinely fly from DF/W to Spain and they use these stupid seats. They are the opposite of exit rows; half the size of the normal, uncomfortable seats, no way to rock back in your chair, and about six inches narrower than the average airline seat, which means it’s about like sitting on a sick of Doublemint gum.
Since putting me in the window seat would have been like stuffing a marshmallow into a coin slot, I took the aisle seat, and was rewarded by getting slapped in the face with every single Spanish ass available to me on the flight. Every single flight attendant did it to me, coming and going, so much so that I wondered if this was some kind of local greeting. “In Spain, it’s considered polite to slam your skull into the buttocks of the person in front of you.” Janice assured me this was not the case.
I cannot fathom the logistics of trying to get twenty people on the same plane at the same time, and to meet up with two more groups, bringing the total to 51 people, who would then be moving together like a circus troupe through Spain on a giant bus. But that’s how it went down, and with not much of a hitch, either…well, almost. Our guide, who met us at the baggage claim, needed a minute or two to figure out where the bus was, before she led us on a merry hike back though the full length of Madrid’s airport.
About that. Madrid-Barajas International Airport is modeled closely on the map of hell from Dante’s Inferno. For those of you who aren’t literarily inclined, do this: Take Chicago-O’Hare International Airport, and stack it up so that there are three levels above ground and three levels below ground. Connect them vertically with a series of stairs, escalators, elevators, moving sidewalks, and moving ramps—you read that right, moving ramps—and then put all of the incoming international flights at the last gate at the end of the airport. Now place the tourist transportation, the big-ass bus, as far away as you can from the gate while still being on airport property.
Welcome to Madrid.
I got off the plane, and schlepped my happy ass up three ascending ramps, and down a couple of long and winding corridors, to customs. They cleared me and then sent me back down three flights of escalators again, to catch a train, that ran underground for five minutes like the Runaway Mine Car ride at Six Flags, to the baggage claim. Once there, we all grabbed suitcases in excess of fifty pounds, and then the guide moved us all the way back up three levels on the aforementioned moving ramps to the farthest parking garage available. I walked so much, the rings on my Apple watch were spinning like hula hoops. I guess it wouldn’t have been so bad, if we hadn’t been on the plane for eight hours, and in my case, folded up like pocketknives the whole time.
The bus drove us to downtown Madrid, where we got off and walked some more, seemingly for another mile, to one of the many plazas that make up the city. From there, we met our other two traveling groups, and they walked us over to another plaza for shopping opportunities, and then back to the starting plaza again. If you’re thinking it felt like we were being hazed, you’re not wrong.
There’s a good reason why they do this, of course: it’s to keep us awake through what would be our night and their day, so we can sleep on their schedule the first night at acclimate to the time change. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s brutal on anyone who isn’t a teenager.
Dinner our first night was at a restaurant where, it seemed, they’d forgotten they were going to have fiftysomething American tourists taking over their restaurant. It wasn’t combative, but they appeared to be quite put out, and this makes my defenses go up. I try very hard not to be an Ugly American, so much so that my first instinct was to say, “No problem, we’ll go somewhere else, sorry to bother you.” When we got to eat, the food was…honestly, I don’t remember. It was good, it wasn’t weird, you know. I was so tired, they could have fed me a roasted gym sock and I would have eaten it without batting an eye.
The hotel was nice, very modern, like a sexy IKEA. We fell asleep so fast, I might have pulled a muscle.
Up Next: DAY 2