D-Day

I made it! I am currently, actually, physically and finally in Vigo, Spain. Here's how it happened:

On Wednesday I took a cab from home to the airport, after finishing packing about 8 minutes before I had to leave. I told the cab driver that I was going to Spain. Being the sophisticated conversationalist that he is, he asked me if I was going for an "ass-vacation" (direct translation from finnish) I said no, actually I'm moving there. He was quiet for a while and then proceeded to tell me that at least it's going to "hot as hell" where I'm going, right? I was forced to tell him that Vigo is, in fact, one of the coolest (at least climate-wise) cities in Spain and that it also rains a lot there. After this the cab-driver had nothing, and we spent the remaining minutes by staring at the road and feeling mildly awkward.

Once at the airport, things went surpringly smoothly up to the point when I was supposed to board the plane. Because, for a reason unknown to me, half the population of Japan had simultaneously (pronounced saimultanaieiousli in Finnish) decided that it was impervious for them to fly to Madrid at once, preferably in a huge lump of cameras, badly dyed hair and sumimasens. Fortunately however, I was laughing my ass off listening to Dane Cook on my mp-3 player (NO, not an i-pod), while he (Dane) explained how he likes the girl to have a "good situation" "down there", so I didn't really mind the japaneesu. This was until one of them, midway to Madrid, decided to use my seat as a target to his hourly mawashigiri-kick practice. I tried to jump up, but 2 things happened that made me change my mind, 1: I realized that there was absolutely no way that, despite my uncanny vocab-skillz, I would be able to communicate to him that I didn't particularly care for his martial art moves, without beating him senseless that is, which would not have been cool. And 2: my seat belt was fastened, so instead of being able to stand up, I rocked the chair, dropped my book, and looked stupid. Later I wondered if I should have asked the elderly flight attendant to move me to an another seat, but I was too busy betting against myself on whether or not her bones would crumble and turn to dust before we land, so I dropped it.

In Madrid a lady, who was standing beside a very curious looking machine, asked me in Spanish if I would like for her to wrap my skis is plastic. Obviously I was not in possession of any kind of skis, whatsoever, so instead of saying "no thank you" I stared at her for about 10 seconds (bet it felt like 5 minutes to her) with a confused look on my face, and moved on. After 8 escalators, an intra-terminal metro (WHAT?), a bad sandwich, and a surprisingly uneventful flight, I was, to my amazement, in Vigo. Of course, my partner in crime Katja was also there, but she was less amazed. To get to the hotel, we took a cab whose driver, while giving us some random information about the area, ran a couple of red lights in a very casual manner, without even taking his hand off my shoulder. The hotel Husa Bahia de Vigo turned out to be slightly less than what the information on the internet said (shocking). According to them, it was a four star hotel, according to me, two and a half, but you know. Having checked in effortlessly we proceeded to the elevators that, we thought, would take us to the 12th floor where our room was. Unfortunately the button with the highest number on it was 9, so I thought:"that's not right". My next idea was to press 1 and 2, until I realized that there was no number 1 either. Well. We went for 9 and decided to play it by ear. The ninth floor was nice. The rooms were named after famous composers. (908: Sibelius, YEY!!) However, our room was nowhere to be found. After a careful recon I spotted a small staircase and headed up. The 10th floor had an elevator, which we happily took after dragging our luggage (weighing in at a respectable total of 73 kilos) up the rather narrow stairs. 12! We'll take it! But why the two sets of elevators? I'll tell you why: the first two go from the lobby to the 9th floor, and the second from a small corridor behind the reception area to floors B,3,10,11,12,13 etc. See the logic? Neither did we.

And so we slept like babies. The next morning we had a big (pretty good) breakfast, and headed out to the Docks, but that's another story...