Madrid Airport Sucks...

Written: Tuesday, May 30, 2011
 

I was so surprised…we wandered around the Madrid Barajas Airport for literally three hours.

Yeah, not a shining moment in our trip, for sure. Caroline, in fact, says, “It didn’t happen.”

Basically what happened was: first, we had a terrible 2 ½ hour flight from Amsterdam to Madrid. The plane was tiny, we were exhausted and cranky, and there was a group of six very obnoxious Dutch women (yes, women, as in forties) on board. They laughed and talked in their annoying, German-like language, making a ridiculous amount of noise the entire time.

After that fun trip, we got lost in this stupid airport. We knew we had to be in Terminal 1 to hop on our little bus to Salamanca, so we traversed the plains searching for it. We walked and walked, and easily found it. Then came the real fun. We had no idea where to meet Dr. Schairer or the bus. I knew she was going to be at some restaurant, but the name was just not coming back to me. I knew it seemed like three random letters thrown together, but strangely that was not helpful.

Neither were the Spaniards. Never, ever ask Spaniards for help. Ever. At least not at the airport. They really could not care less if you figure out your problems. Sure, there are some really nice people, of course, but as a whole, they were extremely unhelpful and sometimes just plain mean about it.

There’s really no need to delve into all the sad details of us wandering up and down Terminal 1, asking for help and being pointed to Terminal 4 (which is apparently located in Timbuktu), scurrying back to T1, and finally shelling out some euros for internet to get the emergency T&E (the program we’re using for this adventure) number and for the phone calls. Oh, and the new bus tickets. What it all boils down to is: today, Monday, May 30 sucks. Besides Amsterdam, I’ve hated this day.

So in order to prevent more tragedies (I told Caroline that penny would give us bad luck today!), we are now camped out by the door nearest the bus stop waiting for it to come for us.

I really, really hope nothing else goes wrong today. I know Caroline and I will be crying if anything does. On the positive side, we get to meet our host family in just a few hours…or not...