Flying to Europe is always hard. You leave one day, arrive the next, lose track of time, arrive exhausted, draw all the wrong conclusions, and require a good nights sleep just to clear your head. None of this difficulty is free, either. You pay out the ass for the opportunity. Reporting on the inevitable difficulty of such things is an exercise in futility... perhaps... for what can one learn from obsessing over that which cannot be changed? Don't answer that!!!!!
My whole life revolves around such obsessive considerations. But before I even got a chance to fuss about travel woes, the trip was preempted by an abscessed tooth that raised it's ugly throbbing head that day of our journey, which was last Sunday, July 6th.
So yes... I wake up with throbbing pain in my lower left jaw, and I can't ignore it... and so we seek an emergency summit with a dentist. We get the man on the phone, but best he can do a prescription for penicillin and painkillers, which I gladly take. Hopefully I can knock out the infection and deal with this when I get back. Nice plan. Thank god our flight doesn't leave till 6:30pm, as that gives me plenty of time to take care of this crap.
Our neighbor Troy drives us to the airport, saving us time and money. My codeine and Advil are kicked in, so I'm ok for the moment. Our most excellent seats are on the exit row. But since we board first, we must suffer EVERY OTHER passenger walking in front of us with their luggage banging around my knees. On top of this, the air conditioning system in the plane is pumping super cold air right onto my head. I'm only dressed in shorts and t-shirt, so now I'm freezing my ass off, with a dull toothache, while people slam my knees with luggage. I put on the tiny airplane blanket that is provided each passenger, and clutch the tiny pillow to my torso to further insulate my vital organs.
The flight attendant stands before us, greeting passengers. She observes my discomfort and offers up two more blankets. I put on of them over my head like a tent, and exhale hot breath in order to simulate a warm environment. The passengers continue to board in front of my strange exhibitionism, as Margaret spreads the other blanket over my legs. A mood begins to spread all about me that I am a pathetic loser who isn't man enough to stay warm on his own, and that I risk scaring the boarding passengers. The blanket on my legs suggests Franklin Roosevelt's crippled limbs, but since I cannot be photographed only from the waist up, I am known for what I am. Weak.
This terrible mood of weakness is cleverly disguised by the pseudo-concerned voice of the flight attendant, as she repeatedly asks if I am cold. Yeah lady, I'm cold. Not only am I cold... I am freezing my ass off... and once you get chilled like that, you can't get warm again. And of course, I have an abscessed tooth I'm trying to live through. So this moment isn't so great. And then there's the other flight attendant... less skilled at hiding her disgust. She gives me that phony smile the hides her true feelings. An old man boards in front of me and seems frightened by my hooded, grim-reaper-esque appearance. He mumbles something like... "amortie"... which I took to be a Portugese word describing death, or the plague, or something really bad. I pull the blanket off and laugh to ease his fears. He laughs and taps me on the head with his ticket.
Did I mention that we have a five hour layover in Lisbon, Portugal.
We do.
The airport in Lisbon looks like an abstract architectural project for a utopian city. Gigantic open spaces stretch in all directions. Conveyor belt sidewalks propel you at super-pedestrian speeds to... to... to (oddly enough)... long expanses where there is no conveyor belt sidewalks. Poor signage masquerading as abstract graphic design invites one to get lost... and we gladly accept. We finally reorient to the correct terminal, but all indications are that there is no known departure gate in our immediate future. This necessitates spending time eating a meal in the so-called "food court".
I have to say... Europeans can't do food-courts AT ALL. Food courts require the following.
One Taco Bell, one McDonalds, a Burger King, a Chinese places that serves Bourbon Chicken, a Sbarro or other Pizza place... a place that sells deli sandwhiches, and friend chicken establishment. Plus, each place must sell Coke and Pepsi. But this is Portugal... so Noooooooo... none of that. The Portuguese food court has one place that sells flat bread sandwiches and orange juice... another that sells pieces of fruit and small bottles of seltzer... and places that sell similarly non-useful food that nobody wants. And the reason I say nobody wants it... is that their is a McDonalds stuck in the corner, and there are 50,000 people in line for it. I wait in line there for a while, but I abandon after I realize that the Europeans customers view McDonalds NOT as a fast food place, but as a place where they can place complex orders, and they are (in a sense) invited to do so by a menu structure that promises great variety. Ughhh. It's so.... so.... WRONG!!!
I manage to find a place that sells a Fanta orange soda for less than the cost of a car tire. I find my way back to Margaret, who has hooked me up with an egg and sausage plate. The scrambled egg is orange in color, and weird in texture. The sausage that looks exactly like a dirty-water hot dog from a Philly street vendor. It tastes ok... and I'm starving... so I tell myself it is completely different than the dirty-water hot dog... but I'm not so sure. But it all tastes ok to a starving man... and thank god too for my Fanta orange soda... which saved my life.
Then we wander around the terminal until I insist we plop my tired butt in any available seat. Which I do. And then we wait. I put the airplane blanket BACK over my head, and proceed to startle the passengers in the terminal. Screw 'em. I'm just trying to survive.
The flight to Rome is three hours long. Fortunately we carried on our luggage and are thus able to grab a cab quickly after deplaning. The driver goes fast... Italian style... careening from lane to lane... we wind our way into central Rome. To our right we suddenly see ruins from the Roman Forum, and get a glimpse of the Circus Maximus. Then we're quickly into the tangle of cobbled, narrow, gothic streets that define the historic center of Rome. The cab actually goes up tiny streets that you'd assume were pedestrian walkways, and finally onto the Campo di Fiori itself, where we pay the kings ransom and drag out luggage to the apartment. The real estate girl meets us at the apartment to show us how everything works. Later we'll find out that everything does not work... but by that time she is long gone and phone calls go unanswered. That's the way it goes when renting an apartment, it seems.
We head out into the night to walk the neighborhood. There is a dank, dark, old-world quality to it all. A heaviness hangs in the buildings, in the narrow streets, in the black cobblestones worn shiny and slick through the years... their uneven surfaces oddly comforting under your footfall, but simultaneously demanding focus in how you walk... and over time they somewhat exhaust ankles more accustomed to perfectly flat American sidewalks. But until such exhaustion hits... and then after such exhaustion is transcended in time... one glides through perfectly natural settings attuned to human tendencies you never knew you had, because you never experienced them... because you only experience one's environmental nature via one's environment. And like all foreign places, one is forced to engage oneself anew.
But we tire easily this night. We go to a small supermarket and buy some stuff to eat, and lug it home. Then we crash hard and wake up late.
This is how it always is.
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