Slight Delay

I do not go to the Germans for laughs. I do not go to the Germans for the warmth of a human's touch.

I go to the Germans for scheduling.

That's why I didn't flinch when I saw that Lufthansa had decently priced tickets to Valencia. My only concern was how soft my pretzel would be.

We arrived in Frankfurt the morning of Jaime's birthday, April 20th, tired but excited he'd get to spend the afternoon and evening with his parents.

There was a slight delay before we could board for Valencia, and we cracked the same joke. Wouldn't it be hilarious if the Germans got us there late, and all the Spaniards were like, "Jesus, get your shit together guys, time is of the utmost, chippity chop!"?

And I believe it was this slightly offensive ^^^FORESHADOWING^^^ that fucked us.

The flight was uneventful, but while making our descent, the captain announced we had to turn around and land in Barcelona.

It was windy, our plane was small, and even though it would have been hilarious for our tombstones to read that we died on 4/20, I preferred to live on that day.

Like always, I got teary eyed as the sea got closer to my window and Montjuic came into view over Barcelona. My heart almost burst as the Catalan air traffic controller with the most frighteningly aggressive mullet (typical of the city) welcomed us to our second home.

The nostalgic feelings were short lived, however, as the crew informed us that the airline had decided our best option was to return to Germany and try for a later flight. Of course, they couldn't force us to remain on the plane, and we were welcome to find our own way to Valencia from the tarmac.

Pretty much every passenger told anyone in a Lufthansa uniform to gah fuck themselves, and the race was on to get to Sants Estacio for the 4:00 train. We split the cab fare with a nice couple from Stockholm going to visit their daughter and ordered our tickets in a group of four, so we could get the comfortable seats with a table in the middle even though it was only a three hour trip.

A three hour trip. A three hour train ride. A three hour tour. A.Three.Hour.Tour.

The Swedish man who was actually British bought us some Heinekens and crisps (which are chips but not fries) as both a thank you and happy birthday gift to Jaime who really had been the champion of the day while cooling everyone's tits.

About an hour and a half into the trip, just past Tarragona but far enough to be in the middle of nowhere, the train lit up like everyone who wasn't traveling on 4/20.

The same wind that had fucked us before had fucked us again by blowing out the electric cable on our line from the North of Spain to the South stranding two thousand people.

But we didn't know that yet, nor would we know anything for quite a while because we were in the hands of Spaniards, and Spaniards would be very proud of their constant not giving of any fucks if they ever gave a fuck, but they never do.

Over the course of the next 7 1/2 hours, we got to know our companions very well (just not their names) over several more Heinekens near the village of Mont Roig. A place I hope to never see or hear pronounced ever again.

To be fair, Renfe, the train company, did give us one free drink with our ticket about 5 hours into the hostage situation, which further pissed everyone off except for me because Jaime ordered a tea, which prompted the only nice thing he's ever said about the United States.

"It's the size of a fecking thimble!" Is what he would have said if he could have remembered the word for thimble. He admitted he missed the size of American drinks and free water.

I don't know what Europe has up its much smaller butt than America's giant butt about drinks, but really fuck the size and price of their drinks.

I didn't share that with our friends, though, because I knew gosh darn well that had we been stuck on a train for this long with a bunch of Americans, everyone's head would have been shaved and each train car that wasn't on fire would have a different gang color and flag.

Not long after midnight, on a day that wasn't Jaime's birthday, two charter buses pulled up to the small stop at Mont Roig. There weren't enough seats, but that sounded like a problem for the elderly and the invalid.

We secured a couple near the back and wondered what horrible thing was going to happen to this mode of transportation. I wished I'd peed on the train one last time as we pulled away.

I'm not even going to try to explain how we got wedged into a one way street in a different small village even though Valencia is a straight shot on the highway, but it was just after that that we borrowed yet another phone to call Jaime's parents and tell them for the final time to go home. We would get a taxi from the bus station.

Time no longer had any meaning when we finally pulled into Estacio Nord in Valencia. I let Jaime worry about how we were going to beat the crowd to a cab while I looked out onto the street. I caught a glimpse of a tiny familiar face trying to see through the heavily tinted windows. It was my mother-in-law Carmen who had been at the airport at noon, the train station at 7 p.m. and the bus station at 2 a.m.

Always on time and never giving up and going home when it comes to her 34 year-old baby boy.





4/20 Babies be like...