from there to here
/london, madrid, travellers and uruguay/
we left london in a hurry. it didn’t matter that we knew, that we planned,that we tried to avoid certain situations. we found a tenant for our place and gave her the keys on sunday, the following day some guy tried to fix the suddenly leaking boiler. then packing, putting some stuff to storage and boom, wednesday was upon us. i’m pleased that somebody’s living in our flat. it makes our stay here similar to a home-swap in terms of accommodation costs but it did make our last days in london much more stressful.
madrid. a small, boring airport with few places to grab something to eat. opening hours vary – the restaurant we stayed in shut down one hour before its official closing time. woman at the information desk explained: “ahh, because there’s soccer”.
as usual, we tried to smuggle more than 100ml of liquids. mouthwash passed both gatwick and barajas vigilant officers. my contact lens solution, bought at gatwick by the way of complete ignorance of the rules of connecting flights, was spotted by spanish ladies. Karol politely explained that we’d just bought it, one of the women took the solution out of its box, looked at her friend and calmly announced: “es para lentes”. her colleague nodded, smiled and they let us go.
the long-haul flight. crying babies, snoring men, turbulence, airlines propaganda and bad cinema on overhead screens.
“chicken or pasta?” asked a pretty though fading blonde stewardess.
“is the pasta with meat?” – i checked, remembering there was no dietary requirements section on their website.
“yes”
“in that case no, thank you”
“but you can always…” – she stopped there. must have realized that whatever she’d say it would just sound too sarcastic.
memos:
don’t fly AirEuropa, especially if you don’t eat meat. or shop for food before. and bring your laptop. and movies. and earplugs. and toothpaste. and…
use spareroom.co.uk when renting out your property. it took us 6 days to find somebody for our place. no agencies, no fees, no time-wasters.