I spent the last two weeks of June 2010 traveling through Spain and Morocco with Dennis, Dan, and Adi. I've been anticipating this trip for three years. Ever since I got back from studying abroad, I've been aching to travel again. I love being somewhere new and different, and I love to see how people live in other parts of the world. This was also my last big hurrah before going off to medical school. I don't anticipate having many opportunities to travel like this in the next few years. This trip really had a lot of personal significance.
I met Adi and Dennis at the airport for our flight to Madrid. Dan was already in Europe with his family, so we would meet him in Madrid. We hadn't really worked out the details about meeting up, but he knew our arrival time and the address of the hostel. I figured he would just show up at some point.
For some reason, all flights into and out of SFO that night were delayed. Adam's friend flew into SFO the same night, and he was delayed by several hours like we were. My mom insists that there was a terrorist attack, or at least an attempt at one.
While we were waiting for our flight, Dennis perused Adi's internet browsing history. Adi, perpetually shackled by his employer, had brought his laptop so that he could do some work during our long layover in DC. Somehow, we started talking about economics and international development and world conflicts. Adi said things that made me upset (mostly because they were unsupported, sweeping generalizations). I could tell this trip was going to be a test of our friendships. Adi has a habit of making really crazy, insupportable statements and later refining (effectively reneging) them. For example, he made the claim that there are no conflicts going on in the world anymore. Later he appended, "Between major countries," which was then modified to "between major democracies." This was, of course, only the first of many such, err, discussions, on the trip. I was surprised that we talked so much about these issues, since I don't think I had ever talked about such things with Adi before. The things you learn when you spend every waking moment with someone for two weeks...
Finally, boarding for our flight began. The flight was completely full, so the staff told us to check our carry-on bags because they didn't think there would be enough space in the cabin. Having just waited over three hours for our flight, Dennis and I were paranoid about losing our bags, especially because we have a really long layover. I went up to the counter and had roughly the following conversation:
"Hi, I don't want to check my bag to my destination. Can I just check it to DC?"
"Why don't you want to check your bag to your destination?"
"Uhh, well, I don't want to lose it."
"What? How can you lose your bag? It flies with you in the plane. You're not going to lose your bag."
Incredulous stare. (At this point I'm thinking, "Okay, so by that logic, no one in the history of commercial air travel would have ever lost any luggage. Right.")
"We have a long layover, and I don't want to lose my bag."
"Where are you going?"
"Madrid."
"Where is that, somewhere in _____?"
Bigger incredulous stare. I can't remember what goes in the blank--maybe a state, maybe a continent--but all I remember is that it was nowhere close to Madrid's actual location in the world. Yikes! Whatever naive confidence I might have had that they would deliver my bag safely to me in Madrid was completely shattered.
"Okay, let's check your bag for Washington, DC then."
"Okay great, thank you!"
At around 3 am, our flight finally departed for DC.
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