August 24, 2014 - Brussels, Belgium

In about ten minutes I will have been awake and on the move for twenty-four hours.  I got up at 3:30 AM to head to the airport and depart for Denver, then for Chicago, then Vienna, Austria.

That was the plan anyway.  What ended up happening was the flight from Pasco to Denver ended up delayed, and so I had to haul my butt across the span of 40 gates in 5 minutes to get to my connection from Denver to Chicago.  That went over fine (aside from the fact that my backpacks suddenly seemed about 50 pounds heavier than they probably are).  However, we ended up landing in the beautiful city of Peoria rather than Chicago, due to the fact that Mother Nature had decided to blow a massive storm in over Chicago and cause ground delays airport-wide.

About an hour later we got into Chicago and I went immediately to customer service because I had looked at the display board and it hadn’t said anything about a Vienna flight, so I just assumed that it had departed already. Ahead of me was a couple speaking in German; they asked where Austrian Airlines were of the associate at the desk, and took off for Terminal 5 looking for the flight.  I was really tempted to follow them, but by then there was a huge line behind me and I was near the front of it, so I decided not to chance it and just wait patiently in line.

Turns out I really should have considered following them like the lost little puppy I feel like I am.  I think the plane got delayed the same amount of time I was delayed for, because when I got to the counter, the associate told me that the flight was just in the runway and now I was going to be rescheduled to Brussels.

Okay, so maybe my geography isn’t so great, but I definitely had to pull out my phone and do a google search for what country Brussels was in.  (Belgium, by the way.)

Off I went on a flight to Brussels, where I was seated next to a Chinese man from Peoria and a Iranian-Swedish photographer from the south bit (he said the name, but I can’t remember it to save my life).  We had a rather pleasant, odd, but slightly disjointed conversation about physics, the space-time continuum, the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, photography and Canon lenses (which he swears to), communications versus science, he showed me a bunch of gorgeous photos of Sweden and told me to come visit this semester, and then we took off and it ended up being a pretty silent flight.

I thought it was funny the Chinese man ended up watching some kind of Chinese love drama and then Need for Speed, which is a testosterone-jacked-up movie about cars and how fast they go.  I just read my book and slept alternately.

I am way too polite for my own good I think.  About midnight I really had to go to the bathroom, and I was in the window seat.  I waited about half an hour before tapping my companions hesitantly, and neither of them woke up after about five minutes of tapping.  I got nervous and called the flight attendant to ask for advice.  She seemed rather aggravated and ended up hitting the men on the shoulder pretty hard and they woke up and let me out.  I felt kind of bad, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

Speed up about three hours and we are over Dover.  I looked out the window to see if I could see the famous White Cliffs of Dover, but I didn’t spot them.  Instead I got to watch us cross the channel between England and Belgium, which had a ton of tiny little white clouds and was very beautiful.  Looking down on both countries, you could see the difference between them and the US.

Where the US cities are very planned out in squares, everything in Belgium and England looks more like little starry patches – the center of the patch of buildings spreads out in all directions and then trails off in pointy clumps and becomes fields and agricultural sections, or big puffy trees.

When our plane sunk lower it was easier to see the buildings, and they look different from ours too.  While we have lots of separate houses, I got to see my first English flats, and a lot of stacked residential areas whose buildings tended to look pretty different.

And then I showed up in Belgium and got told that I would have to wait another good four hours until I get to fly the final two hours to Austria.  I’m really tired and I want to sleep, but I also don’t want to leave my stuff sitting out with a ton of people around me.

I had to cash in 20 euros to get some water and some change for the pay phone.  A water bottle over here cost $4.75, or roughly 3 euros, which I think is kind of ridiculous.  I also had to pay two euros for the one minute phone call, because the first machine was broken and just ate my coin without working.

People here are very patient, speak English slowly, smile at me very sympathetically, and point me in the right direction with very specific instructions, like I’m a small child.  I think I look very tired and lost and I don’t mind it at all.  Specific is good when all the signs look sort of like “Ook éében das hoek negenbehrer” etc., etc.  I kid you not, I saw a word with a double “é”.  If É is supposed to be an accent, why would you have to accent the same letter twice in a row?

For example, whatever language “Ultgang” is – it makes me think more of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart than “Exit”.  I know I am decent at languages and comprehending general meanings without having learned the language at all, but even my talents are failing me at this point.

I had forgotten how well European people dress.  I feel really outclassed by a bunch of them.  You can kind of tell which ones are European before they even start talking, for the most part.  Who would want to wear such fancy clothes for an 8 hour flight, that’s what I want to know?  And why do all of them look polished and put together and I look like I got swiped through a grease machine? It’s incredibly unfair.

In the hour and a half I’ve been sitting here, I haven’t heard a single native English speaker.  However, most of the European guys that have talked to me, started off their conversations in English, so I guess I look pretty American.

The European guys were really nice.  They wanted to know why I was lugging around such a big backpack while I’m so small.  I am wondering the exact same thing.  The longer the day goes, the heavier it gets, I swear someone’s putting rocks in it. 

I saw some phone charging stations but I can’t find my converter (it must be in my suitcase) and the charging stations also make you pedal to generate power, and I am too tired and sweaty and intimidated by the goodlooking Europeans to want to submit myself to that.

Here’s to hoping nothing goes wrong from here on out...