Love and other drugs: Winter Break, part 1

I found myself growing anxious. I almost felt nauseous, and I was nervous in a strange way. The bus to the airport had not arrived yet, but I kept my focus on The Glass Castle to keep from staring at the clock that hangs over the bus stop.

After over four months of being apart, my Christopher Guevara was coming to visit me.

My heart skipped. I looked at the clock. I continued reading. My stomach turned.

The excitement of knowing he was coming had kept me up all night and now, along with having not slept, my stomach was doing backflips.

It was after 11 when the bus came. He was scheduled to land around 1.

Just as I got on and paid, I got a text.

''Cancelled! I will try to use a payfone as soon as I get to the front of this helpdesk line and they give me some info! Sorry, love!''

My heart sank. I sat on the bus, waiting. Helpless. I started trying to think of the name of the metro stop where the bus station was (Méndez Álvaro? Of the... circle line... what was the number...?), trying to put together detailed instructions, when my phone rang.

He got on another flight. It would land at 5.

I wasn't particularly fond of the idea of waiting in an airport for 6 hours without even needing to take a flight, but I was less fond of the idea of spending 6€ extra to go back to town and go back to the airport. I'd only gain an hour or so anyway. So I stayed put on the bus. And I waited.

My stomach calmed down and I bought a sandwich. I stared out the window and read. I'd waited longer in the past. 6 hours wasn't too bad. And I had a book.

I watched other families say their goodbyes and their hellos. I wondered what ours would be like. It was a little unreal, and I couldn't believe he was coming.

I stared at the arrivals board. It was approaching 4 p.m. My heart skipped.

Then I saw the arrivals board change. Next to Chris's flight was the one word I was dreading. DELAYED.

I wanted to cry. The expected landing time was around 6.

I flopped into a chair, defeated, and continued reading.

But when I checked the arrivals board again, the flight was now scheduled to land at 5:25. Still a delay. But I'd take 25 minutes over 55 minutes anyday.

I felt overwhelmed. I wanted to cry and scream and cheer and run and throw up... All at the same time.

I stood at the window for about 10 mintues until I saw his plane landing.

I watched him get off and walk across the blacktop towards the airport.

I waved. He smiled and waved back.

Yes! He saw me!

I felt tears welling up in my eyes, but I ignored them as I RAN to the other side of the airport. Towards arrivals.

Neither of us could cross the line into or out of the baggage claim, since he didn't have his luggage and being in the carossel room without waiting for your own personal luggage was forbidden, but we stood at the line and stared.

We kissed through the door.

He went to wait for his luggage and I waited on the other side of the door oh so very impatiently.

His luggage didn't come. We had to go tell the people at the information desk.

By the time we had finished, the bus had already left and it would be another hour or so before the next one came.

We didn't care. We were finally together. We talked about nothing and everything. We kissed. It was so strange having him there, as though he had never not been there, but it had been so long...

It was magical and surreal. I love him so much.

We spent the first week of his visit in Granada. Naturally, I simply HAD to bring him to the Alhambra. Since I don't have class on Tuesday, we made a day of it. We packed ourselves a picnic lunch of salami and cheese sandwiches and fruit and went up to the carmen that is right across from the Alhambra. I showed him my favorite views of Granada and told him a bit about whatever we saw. Whatever I could remember from our days in the ILP. It was so fun and so nice to spend the time with him. I had missed him so much.




And I was pleased to see that he also enjoyed the Alhambra. Not quite as much as I did when I first went. But it was still fun.

I wish he had had a better opportunity to meet my friends and stuff here, but unfortunately we had just four days before we were off to London!

The flight there was no problem. We bought our tickets for the train to Liverpool Station in central London and we were off.

Or so we thought.

See, we made it to the airport just around 11pm or so. Which meant that we made it in time for the last train to Liverpool, but when we got to Liverpool, the underground had just closed.

Our directions from Liverpool required the underground. We had other directions, but we had to be across town for them to make sense.

We were stuck. It was the middle of the night. And it was COLD.

By 4 a.m., nearly frozen through, we found our hostel. We had been outside in freezing temperatures for over four hours. But we had made it. We collapsed in our beds and laid there shivvering. Somehow, I managed to fall asleep. It was not long enough before my alarm went off for check out.

We had only gotten this hostel for one night since it was a little pricy. We had to book another that morning. So we booked and got on the underground (after buying our Oyster cards!) and checked into our new hostel. It was out of town, but it had a functioning kitchen and great breakfast and was cheap.

We hung out in the hostel for a couple of hours resting up and dreading the cold and the snow after the night before.

Luckily we were indoors during the storm.

I had never seen so much snow fall in my life. It was amazing and beautiful and it really felt like Christmas.

However, it practically shut London down. We were stuck in the hostel until about 6 at night, when it had definitely grown dark, and then we just got on a double decker bus to see the town from up top.

We just happened to get on a bus that brought us down the very Christmas-y Oxford street.



The next day, the tube was running, but with delays and such. So we used the tube to get into town and tried to stick to buses to get around town.

We saw all the sights, of course.








We made a squirrel friend, thanks to a nearby photographer who was giving them food (they thought we'd be so kind...).

We were silly.



We kept each other warm.

And overall, just enjoyed one another's company.

We also went to the London Transport Museum, which was fun in its own way.

And we ate fish and chips... London was a great trip, but it inevitably had to come to an end.

Our flight to Amsterdam was to leave at 7 am, and it would take over an hour to get to the Stansted airport. Rather than pay for a hostel and catch a bus at 4 am, we opted to take a bus at 9 pm and spend the night in the airport, which wasn't too bad with some company. But it would have been better if we had gotten chairs. We spread our coats on the floor and snuggled until we were both half asleep, which was about as close to asleep as Chris got. I would fall asleep, but wake up every hour.

We had bought little apple turnovers for breakfast, and around 5ish, maybe sooner, I don't really remember, we decided to wake up a bit and eat them. Then we checked in with Easyjet and went through security.

We were able to board the plane on time, but once we were on, we were delayed an hour. We were expecting as much. According to the daily newspapers (which are free in England. And in English. Which was awesome), the London airports had been backed up by three days worth of flights that never were. Stansted was the most operative, lucky for us, but we had been expecting our flight to be delayed. We watched the guys come out and de-ice the plane, which I thought was cool, but was kind of old news for Chris. I fell asleep somewhere in there. But I woke up for take-off, which I was glad for. Even though I know exactly what to expect, I still think it's fun.

It was only a 45 minute flight before we landed in Amsterdam. This time, we landed in the morning, so right as the day was starting, so naturally we had no trouble getting around town or to our hostel, although Chris was a little nervous about it. We had made it and checked in and took a bit of a nap before going outside.

In a word, Holland was COLD.




We had to get Chris a hat and scarf. He was freezing!

There were lots of swans and crooked houses.



I wondered if the swans would ever get stuck in the ice, but they seemed to be doing okay in the icy canals.

There was lots of cheese.

...and pancakes.


And, no offense to any Dutch people that may be reading this, but their language is funny.


...and their shoes.


We went to the Heineken brewery, just because.


WEWEREsterdam

And we saw two movies. On Christmas, we opted for Catfish, since it was in English and fit into our schedule, if we had one. Our last night, out of things to do, really, we found a theatre playing Little Fockers. It was nice to go on dates. And going to the movies is an American thing to do on Christmas, right?

Our Christmas dinner was pizza.

It was tasty, but I missed good ol' home cookin'. Our second hostel in Holland didn't have a kitchen, so we couldn't cook a feast for ourselves, which I was hoping to do.

We saw Anne Frank's house from the outside, but since we were over there on Christmas, decided not to go in. What a terrible time to be depressed. On our free walking tour, we found out that Amsterdam was the first location of a non-Jewish outward Nazi resistance. The whole idea that Amsterdam and it's laws work on is that if you're not hurting or dangerous to anyone, no matter who you are or what you stand for, you'll be accepted. So, the non-Jews saw what the Nazis were doing to them during some raid of the Jewish quarter and they stood up for them.

I think it's kind of sad that a place with such a remarkable history (which if you go back to the creation of Amsterdam, which should be underwater but isn't thanks to canals, the Dutch East India Trading Company, through their responses in WWII, to cheese and tulips and windmills, etc.) gets overshadowed by the fact that marijuana and prostitution are both legal. Once again, if you're not hurting or dangerous to anyone, your actions will probably be tolerated.

Our last day in Amsterdam we spent at the Science Center. Chris was like a kid in a candy store, and he was so excited to explain all the things he knew about the displays, what they were trying to show, how to work them, etc. It was nice because the signs were in Dutch. Chris was proud that he couldn't even cheat to explain them and that he really just knew it (such a dork)... but there usually was English available around the displays, just in a much less obvious spot than the Dutch. We watched a 3D movie about cells in Dutch. It was funny.

Chris put himself in a bubble.


And again, our days in Amsterdam drew to a close and we headed off to Madrid. We were landing fairly late, not so late as to worry about public transport, but late enough that we weren't going to want to take a bus right then to Granada, so we opted for a hostel for one night (one with breakfast, which we really missed at our second hostel in Holland) and to spend the day in Madrid.

We were both happy to be back in Spain. It was dry. It was warm. And everyone spoke Spanish, which is much easier to understand that Dutch.

We walked a LOT in Madrid. They have an effecient metro, but it's a bit pricy and we were feeling low on cash after the long trip. But we saw the changing of the Royal Guard.


I met Don Quixote.

Chris and I took a rowboat out on a monument in a park.


He even let me try... although I wasn't very good. We didn't really move. At all. But it was fun.

We ended our day with a hearty meal of, you guessed it, McDonald's. I swear, I see more of them in Europe than I do in the US. And we were hungry after all that walking and rowing.

Then we got our stuff from the hostel and headed to the bus station. 5 hours later, we had made it to Granada. We slept SO well after all that time in hostels with people coming in and out in the middle of the night.

We got some all-you-can-eat revolving Asian buffet for lunch the next day. We ate our hearts out. It was fun and delicious. I liked that it was revolving because with fresh plates being put on the belt, you weren't just taking from a big tub of whatever. There was sushi and noodles and cream puffs and all sorts of food. We ate until we struggled to stand. It was glorious.

Chris had a fun game on his computer. We played a lot.

We didn't sleep much.

We were in denial about the fact that he was going to leave. At least I was.

We spent New Years Eve together in my quiet apartment. We cooked a bit of dinner and got to talking about anything and everything and missed the countdown. We didn't do our 12 Spanish grapes. We then continued to talk and eat and play games until it was after 3 a.m. and we hadn't packed.

Realization caught up to me and I cried. Chris held me close and I didn't want him to ever let go. I could have sat like that forever... but we needed to pack. Chris had to pack all of his stuff. I had to prepare for my upcoming travels through Italy.

I pulled myself together. We packed and went outside.

We had to catch the bus that left it's original stop at 5:20 (our stop by 5:30) to make sure Chris had enough time to check in and stuff for his 7 a.m. flight to Madrid. We were at our stop by 5:10.

We sat in silence mostly. We talked a little. We joked about the Gulliver's Travels poster on the bus stop. But 5:45 rolled around and the bus still hadn't shown up. We figured it was about time we got a cab.

Before 6 a.m. on New Years Day... I don't know why I hadn't thought about it before that moment. It would be impossible to catch a cab. There was a line at my normal cab corner. The guy in front had been waiting for over an hour.

We panicked.

Chris and I both had flights that day out of the Granada airport. Chris to Madrid. Me to Bologna. If Chris missed his flight, that's about $600 down the drain plus he'd have to wait about 3 days to catch another that would take him back to San Diego, at least, according to Expedia. I would be in Italy. He would have nowhere to go and I would be nervous about what happened to him.

I started thinking about how he could get to Madrid by 12 for his flight to Chicago, but there was just no way. I didn't know how to get to the Madrid airport from the train station, and a bus would take too long.

Right around 6:10, we got a cab. Barely. We had to wrestle it from about 3 drunk girls, but we were there first and they knew it. Chris ran for it and I took his stuff, since he is faster. He jumped in the cab right as they were reaching for the handle, and I tried to be as polite as I could in my frenzy (and in Spanish) to explain that he HAD to catch this plane. I also asked the driver to go as fast as possible.

We got to the airport right before 6:30. I paid the fare and Chris bolted for the check-in... but there was still a line.

The Granada airport is about the size of my fingernail. Only one flight left at 7, and the next one was at 7:50. The queue hadn't started for the next flight yet. This line was for people leaving to Madrid at 7, and only those people.

Chris had made it. He wasn't even the last one in line. I could finally breathe normally.

We didn't have much time, however, for a goodbye. Perhaps that was for the best. He checked in, went through security, and he was out of my reach.

I stood at the same window I had waited at to see him land as he boarded the plane. I felt myself choke up as he got on the stairs. Right at the top he turned around and waved at me. I waved back at him and completely lost my composure.

I stood at that window until the flight took off. Me and one other man. His eyes were also watering. He was blowing kisses. I heard him whisper ''Adios... buen viaje,'' as the plane took off. Someone came up behind him and said something to the effect of ''Don't worry, she'll be back soon,'' in Spanish. In a weird way, I was glad to not be the only one sad on that day.

There is something beautiful about separation and reunion. I truly got to experience that this Christmas. As I experienced the biggest wave of homesickness I have ever felt in my life. I felt so guilty one day when Chris finally held me close and said, ''Natalie... I love you too...'' while I was busy crying over not being home for Christmas.

There is something beautiful about love. In that moment, choking on my own tears alone in the airport, I came to appreciate it, and was so glad that I had it. I tried to be glad that he came instead of sad that he left. In the end, I wouldn't have traded those three weeks with him for anything, so I decided I needed to pull myself together.

I saw an open line of chairs. I went to it and tried to read, since I hadn't since Chris's arrival. When that failed, I laid down across them and slept for about 3 hours.

I had about 2 hours until my flight to Bologna. I bought a sandwich, checked in, and continued reading.

I was about to go to Italy! It was time to stop being sad and start getting excited.

TO BE CONTINUED...