Vacation starting in the Airport!?!

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So here's what happened...

Kristin got to the Sevilla airport at 1145 on Thursday and I went by bus to pick her up between my three classses after being up since 7 am. Then i got to help her lug her luggage around for a 15 minute walk back to the school where she stayed while I was at class (lucky to have someone help with luggage.. other people, LIKE ME (with two full suitcases, a backpack, laptop and purse) and the rest of the students didn't get that luxury!) Afterwards we had lunch and Rosa (my senora) even gave her a plate of food to try as well, which is not to be expected, so that was very nice! Then later that night we went out for a few drinks, the bartender gave us one on him 😊 and we "toured" Sevilla, because I kind of got confused on how to get back to the Hostel we were staying at! I stayed with Kristin since it was the first night and the hostel was pretty nice! The next day we slept in because we were both tired and Kristin had some jet-leg. During the day we shopped, ate, the normal stuff! Then we got ready to go to the bus station and left at 1:00 AM for our six hour bus trip to Madrid. We almost didn't catch that bus because we must have thought that the bus would come and pick us up right where we were sitting (we didn't think about looking for the bus terminal). The trip was fine and when we got to Madrid we decided that we would not need to get a place to stay that night because our flight left early in the morning (6:15) so we needed to be at the airport at 4:15 AM, so to avoid the 30 Euro ($45) taxi we thought we would take the metro before it stopped running at 1:30 in the morning and just hang out/sleep at the airport for a few hours...

What was supposed to be our first and only day in Madrid was very fun with a lot to see and do. We até at the Museo de Jamon (Ham museum), paid for a double decker open air tour through Madrid, mosied through some shops, and then went to the ____________ Museum with a TON of Picasso and Dali. We saw the very famous "Guerrnica" which was larger than life and so interesting well worth seeing! We also saw a beautiful view of the city when we stopped at one of the spots on the bus tour and some ruins that were just off the road. We didn't want to carry our luggage around all day so we checked it into some lockers at the train station. Little did we know that when the worker lady told us that we had 24 hours to keep our luggage there that the train station did in fact close and we would not have access to our luggage at any time. We got back to the train station at midnight so that we could catch the metro to find that the station was closing.. We went to customer service to ask about how to get to the luggage lockers and they said they had been closed. They then called the security guard and the head of the station to see if we could get it. The answer was yes and we were thrilled and laughing because we had almost gotten into BIG trouble and would have ended up missing our flights.. Little did we know that when the security guard came to get us he actually came to tell us the bad news, that all of the security in the station was connected and there was no way to get to the luggage until 530 or 600 the next morning. The problem you see being that our flight was at 615 with a check in at least 40 minutes before and the airport being 30 minutes away with a direct taxi ride. So we stayed in the Train station for a few hours and met a guy from Gambia, Africa who we tried to talk to a little but he did not know very much English so we just hung out. He asked us if he could help him get to New York by inviting him to come. I don´t know how that would have worked out, but maybe someday we will see him around again!

We left the station in the middle of the night to go to the airport and see what we could work out with the not so AMAZING ¨Ryan air¨company. We would have had to pay 70 Euros to switch the ticket and kristin put up a big fight for hours which led us to being too late to buy tickets for the next day anyways. So to try to make this long story a little bit shorter we got on the phone and Doug found us some cheap tickets that were even cheaper when i booked them with a different company to avoid the ryan air fiascos. We were very excited to have everything figured out and we went back to Madrid found and amazing hostel and slept from 1:00 in the afternoon until 12 midnight (my alarm was set for 700 am instead of 700 pm to get us up for dinner) so we just hung out watched tv and caught up on some more of our sleep! The next morning we got up and went to the botanical gardens in Madrid and took a bunch of pictures and then hopped on the metro back to the hostel to check out and back on the metro to get to the airport for our flight. I had been saying that we should get going because we are supposed to get to the airport two hours before boarding but we seemed to be taking longer on our journey... When we got to the airport 55 minutes before the flight it was a little bit discouraging to hear that the gate was in fact closed an hour before the flight and that we had just done it again! I will go with my instinct from now on.. uh hmm! haha

So instead of going back to Madrid and to avoid being late we spent St. Patrick´s Day in the Madrid Barajas airport (mostly in termial 2 and 4) We made the best of it all. Had a buffet lunch with all you could eat on ONE PLATE so we stacked that up and sat in the restaurant with a view of the runway which was pretty awesome! I did some homework because exams were the week right after we got back from our trip. We then got some beers from a side store in the airport for our fun st patty´s day festivities by the pay phone later that night. We got on the last tram to terminal 4 because it looked like it had the comfiest spot to sleep.. We toasted while talking to Doug at home and then we got comfy on the floor and chairs with arms so you couldn´t lay down and tried to sleep tight.. Need-less-to-say my body hurt a little bit the next day! But we did indeed catch this flight that was made with Ryan Air once again and went on our way to Frankfurt Hahn, Germany!


So we spent 4 hours in the FRA HAHN airport and had Doner Kepabs with saurkraut, peppers, lettuce, garlic sauce, tomatoes, onions and a turkey/beef meat mix and a soda for 4.90 euros and it was YUMMY! (they looke like big pita breads or rolls with everything inside, kinda like a gyro) Then we looked around at some shops, saw some bier steins and figured they were going to be a little overpriced since they are in an airport and all... Then we discovered that phone cards to the US don't really work, at least the one they tried to sell us, then we grabbed a pink frosted donut and a "cola beer" which was interesting to say the least.. beer taste with a cherry cola aftertaste?.. We then checked in for our plane to avoid any problems :P At the airport store two 1 liter bottles of jameson whiskey was only 29.50 euros.. about $45, I think that is a good price so I wanted to mention that! haha Then we boarded the plane mexico/bodyguard style (our second one without problems!)

When we got off the plane in Bratislava we got on a bus that took us about a minute down the road to the aiport, we could have walked faster! When we got inside we wnet through passport control and got our passports stamped! We saw that the tourist information desk was closed and decided since we didn't know much about the town that we would hop on the bus transportation we saw advertised a bunch to vienna austria (we were planning on a day in Austria in the beginning) for 14 Euro round trip. I found a few fellow travelers studying in Germany (Kristina from Finland who could speak 5 languages, russian, enlgish, sweddish, finnish, and germany, and Junior from South Korea) and we ended up buddying up with them and staying at an AWESOME hostel for only 18 Euros! We were in a room with two guys from Brasil so it was fun to talk to them and hear about other cultures and lifestyles! The next day we went on a walking tour of Vienna with a cool tour guide who had long hair and liked metal music and knew a TON of information about the city. The tour was incredible! We tried to take in as much as we could and stopped for a coffee break after half the tour and ended up a very old restaurant winery that was underground.... and i had a meal that reminded me of home and of my Gramma, pork roast with a big round ball of dumplings and saerkraut with a glass of wine! It was a great day, we learned a lot saw an amazing chruch named st. stephen´s where I lit a candle for Andy (which i´ve been trying to do throughout Europe)!

to be continued

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