Things I Have Learned Flying to Spain
1. My Spanish isn’t worth squat. That said, Spain from above seems plenty beautiful to merit learning the language - plains with gullies etched across them, razor-jagged ridges dusted with snow, red earth giving way to lush green.
2. Priority tags in rare instances don’t mean anything. In Philly, they were plain ignored; in Bilbao, it turned out a little differently. I was one of very few passengers waiting for luggage, and since the airport is smaller than the airport in Basel, it takes almost no time to get the baggage to the belt. In a few minutes the belt had emptied, but just to be certain, I waited a little bit, until a Spanish lady buenas tarded up to me and asked if I was waiting for my baggage. I said yes, and she asked me where I had checked in. Switzerland, I replied. Oh, Switzerland must be non-Schengen (”no, we’re Schengen”) or non-EU (”that we are”) and might my baggage be the lone item circling the belt over there past the glass? When I shrugged in an affirmative sort of way, she took me through glass sliding doors and into the other part of the hall. “Your bag is over here because you need to take it through customs,” she said. I picked up my bag, turned around, and found that the “nothing to declare” lane at customs took me right back out the glass doors through which we had come in. Nobody there, nobody to care.
3. Spanair operates like a US airline: everything at cost. Fresh from the lounge and its unhealthy delights, that didn’t bother me much on a 40-minute flight. I also learned that although I thought of saying “I’m a Senator, I don’t pay for food,” I didn’t, or rather, couldn’t.
4. Spanair also flies an old MD-83 on that stretch - not exactly a confidence-builder after their crash last summer in Madrid.
5. The Spanair flight isn’t tightly timed for the bus to San Sebastian. The wait is three-quarters of an hour - but on the bright side, I got to eat a little soft cheese/ham/jam sandwich.
6. San Sebastian must not be a wildly popular destination right now - I’m the only person on the bus. The highway runs along steep valleys, but in the dark I can only see that they are lined with a surprising number of multi-storey buildings and car plants. The topography quite feels like home. Oh, and for those who were wondering why I’m on a one-hour bus ride: the train takes at least twice as long and requires changing in some out-of-the-way town.
Februar 3rd, 2010 at 13:07
Thanks for the update. I love you!