European Trip Story, Part 1

so, i am thinking of writing a story about this whole trep; sort of a short story, i guess. i don't know if that will be achieved, but i have started. here is the rough draft of the first page or so, unedited, so probably full of errors. perhaps it will make you want to read more? i hope...
dan


The current setting: I have just stepped off a Berlin subway, where I was surrounded by eight loud British college students, a 70-year old ex-sailor who was muttering something to himself while violently rubbing his hands together, and a 60-year old German man in a Bob Marley beanie; he was obviously a bit warm, so he had unzipped his jacket…and unbuttoned his shirt… …ALL THE WAY DOWN, revealing a forest of a chest that was almost completely hiding a gold necklace.

After the subway, I walked one block: there were three separate late-night food counters, right on the street, offering six or seven types of beer. I turned right, down a dark hallway, bicycles tied up on both sides, got buzzed in to an apartment complex whose walls are covered in graffiti, and am now inside the apartment, starting this story.

Unfortunately, I have not had time to start writing until now, so I may forget some of the more entertaining details, and will hopefully forget the less entertaining ones. My trip started four days ago in San Francisco. Well, almost…

My flight was set to leave at 10:45am, so I arrived at the airport at 9:45…in Oakland. I have no idea how this happened. Needless to say, I missed my flight, had it rescheduled, and headed to San Francisco. Once inside the terminal, I left my bags with a girl about my age, just for a moment, and got some coffee. When I returned, I began talking with her, and she was very funny. If you have ever met someone that reminds you almost 100% of someone else—not in terms of looks, but personality, or more specifically, sense of humor—then you know how I felt, as she was a female version of another friend of mine. This made it easy to be friendly with her, and we arranged our seats so that we could share the long trip to New York City, via Charlotte. Her name was Laura.

I soon learned that it was Laura’s birthday. She was spending it on a 7-hour flight, followed by a 1-hour layover, and another 90-minute flight. We did not have to leave the plane during the layover, as it was the same plane that was headed to New York. We were the only passengers on board while the United Off-Flight Crew did their touch-up work, replete with intercom jokes from the “cabin” to the “crew” that so-and-so’s Gay Life Partner was waiting for them in the lavatory. But the way in which Laura was spending her birthday was not NEARLY as bad as the way she has spent much of the previous week.

Laura’s travel story is one of those classically tragic tales. What was supposed to be a two-hour layover in Denver turned into a two-DAY layover when the entire airport shut down. She spent two nights sleeping underneath a phone booth, sharing a small blanket with a boy she met in the terminal. She and her new friend had been passed over by the Red Cross workers, who had supplied full-sized blankets to the hundreds of would-be passengers that were stuck inside. After two days, she phoned her boss back in New York, who was able to find some employees within the company to pick her up and drive her to the Denver Greyhound bus station.

This, however, was far from salvation. Greyhound, in their great wisdom, had decided to overbook each bus leaving the city, and to a ridiculous degree: almost 200 tickets for a bus that held about 100. Laura had a ticket, but of course, that wasn’t enough. She found a man about her age who appeared to be close to the front of the line, and, in her words, “Started talking with him so people would think I was his girlfriend; so if he got on, I would have to go with him.” She spent the 15-hour bus ride to Las Vegas with her new friend.

From Las Vegas, she bought a plane ticket to Ontario, CA, where her father picked her up. She was supposed to spend a week with her parents in Palm Springs, but only got three days. Before our plane took off, she received a text message from a friend saying that the Denver airport was still closed – she could have been hunkering beneath a phone booth for a whole week had she not weaseled her way onto that bus!

We had a pleasant flight: watched Elf, got too many Coke’s with extra ice, and laughed a good deal. But as we arrived in New York, her bag was still in Charlotte.


...to be continued...