Traveling during the holidays. The logic behind it is simple – you want to spend this time with your family, your significant other or your friends. Or perhaps you´re heading home for a few weeks for some much needed comfort and relaxation. Better yet, you´re going on a trip, hopefully somewhere warm, while the kids are on break from school. The reality is, however, that traveling during the holidays was, for me, and so many others, just like Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.
It was my first time travelling during this time and it was a good taste of what is to come if I continue to pursue a life abroad or in another part of the US. The flight itinerary seemed simple, Madrid to London, London to Chicago, and then, home. A four letter word that seems to have more significance during this time of year. At least it does for me, especially this year, as I am so far away from it. Little did I know, I was bound to be even farther from home during this past holiday season, given the locura of my holiday travel realities.
64 hours later, one sleepless night at the airport, 3 cancelled flights, $500 less in my checking account due to U.S. domestic flight costs, and an updated flight itinerary (Madrid to London, London to Miami, Miami to Chicago, Chicago to Milwaukee). Let´s just say that Heathrow Airport was my home away from home 24 hours before Christmas Eve.
Despite the bad luck, frustration, and anxiety of holiday travel, I can´t help but think about the great conversations I had at the strangest hours with other fellow travellers who, believe it or not, often had worse luck. Making ourselves comfortable on the hard leather couches of Heathrow´s Café Nero where we spent the night, I met a college student from Wake Forest. He was studying abroad in London last semester, went to Egypt after his studies, lost his passport in Cairo, missed his flight back to London, and was trying to make it home to Ohio before the 25th. Then there was the older South African gent, about 60 or so, who was currently living in Nassau on a boat. No job, no plans. "I've travelled to 70 countries ... Thailand is my favorite." He knew the cleaning schedule of Café Nero like the back of his hand, and even had his own couch staked out, as he had been at the airport for three days, without enough money to get back to the Bahamas.
Not only the great conversations, but the people you see during travel make the journey interesting. My grandmother once told me, as we were sitting in a Florida airport, returning to cold Wisconsin after a beautiful Caribbean cruise, that she loved to people watch in airports. ¨You see so many different kinds of people.¨ I remember seeing the mob of young college girls from different parts of the Midwest heading to Sevilla for their semester abroad. Or the old German man with a heather green cap helping his wife with her oversized luggage.
Words are never spoken, names are never asked, and everyone goes on their way, hoping to make it home, wherever that may be.
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