4.3.07

written a month later, smack in the midst of a post-trip reality check leading to the conclusion that life, relatively speaking, is not any good whatsoever just now. a month ago, though, was full up to the brim.

portland -> bratislava

standing behind the heavy door to my apartment building, watching snow swirl through the glass. freshly showered, packframe making me rock back and forth on my bootheels for balance. waiting for the cab. it's the worst snow storm we've had all winter. the cars on the street are already buried at 8 am. mine is safely tucked at the back of our driveway; neighbors will move it when the plow guy comes.

the cab arrives, precisely on time and the warmest kind of welcoming. the driver is some kind of ex-military who drove an 18-wheeler for a twenty years. he talked about his time in japan as we fishtailed down the impossibly steep decline of walnut street onto roads in bayside i'd never been on. we drove to the airport on a route i'd never taken, the crown vic churning and flailing through slush, snow, and ice. we reached the airport in surprisingly little time. i tipped him well.

there was a new guy behind the ticket counter. he had to get two women to help him with checking me through to slovakia. two other chattering, happy middle aged women were in front of my, trying to make their way to tuscon. everyone was friendly, helpful, and fatalistically looking out the windows. they managed to check me all the way through and it was just me with my one shoulder bag, setting out across the empty, pepto-bismol-pink of the portland airport (jetport!) at 8.00 am.

then, sitting. sitting and waiting at my gate, the one in the corner by security with the new coke machine. you couldn't even see the end of the boarding tunnels right outside the plate glass windows for all the sleet and snow. businessmen accumulated around me, moving with the resigned sloth of those who know they'll be delayed eventually. men with mullets and navy blue maintenance uniforms strode authoritatively around the empty gates, telling each other how bad it was outside and what they were going to do about it on their walkie-talkies. i watched fat snowflakes hit the windows in front of me, melting on impact and skittering down like mercury in a pachinko machine, building dribbled snow sandcastles on the bottom of the window frame. the little spires never grew taller than a foot.

strangely, our flight wasn't delayed. men with mullets were going to get us off the ground. the businessmen talked of buying lottery tickets. everyone rose and stretched with the elated sense of the miraculous. we boarded the plane, de-iced with fluorescent green and orange, and then:

chicago. chicago, where i didn't know that my gate wouldn't be posted until two hours before my flight. where i wandered around, almost lost for a half hour, then walking to learn the place. i walked all over terminals 1 and 2, switching back and forth between them to kill time and maximize use of the better bathrooms in terminal 2. i called my parents while my phone still worked. i read my book and ate clementines, watching a group of chinese men arrange and rearrange their presents, purchased in japan. i sat at the gate and didn't lean back in the seat due to its compromised integrity (this happened at every airport). then:

the plane to munich. aisle seat, an empty space next to me. a comforting-looking midwestern man in red flannel the only other person in my section. a long flight with bad sleep, wadding my scarf up under my chin like a violin to try and keep my head from nodding. part of the media on united is a real-time map of the world as your plane flies over it. i loved it. i slept through the part where there was nothing but blue ocean.

arrival at munich was a balm for my ocd-prone soul. clean lines, stainless steel, intuitive design, and helpful employees standing at ease, ready to help. i didn't have to think; i just walked, and ended up where i needed to be. i sat in the gate to bratislava with two nuns who'd been with me since chicago and a simmering russian-looking blonde. later, a crew of what i think were us army engineers showed up and complained loudly about the lack of things american in these parts. i said nothing and pretended to be foreign. it worked. three other people at the gate tried to speak to me in at least two different slavic languages.

a blue and yellow flight on lufthansa and we arrive in bratislava. from where my plane landed, the bratislava airport looked to be no larger than the portland airport and a great deal more communist. it was a featureless block, bruised different shades of gray with a few commuter jets parked around it in an apparently haphazard fashion. i floated into the tiny arrivals hall and waited for my luggage, by far and away the only english-speaker. my edges were blunted enough that the appearance of my bag only registered as singularly unprecedented for scant moments. then, i was moving again, walking through customs that were even more non-existent than scotland's. no niki in the arrivals hall. i englished my way through getting some slovak koruna (which, at the time, i inexplicably and frustratedly thought were useless euros) and waited outside.

the wait was a strange period. i was standing by a line of cabs operated by what were clearly, as far as i could tell, members of the russian mafia. i looked at billboards i couldn't read and breathed open air for the first time in 22 hours. my eyes felt hard and tight inside my head. i tried not to get overbalanced by my bag in front of the mafia. my body was so shut down i wasn't even panicking about the fact that niki wasn't there and i couldn't find a phone to call her, even with all the information she'd left me for just this eventuality. thought process moving at drunk-speed, i told myself i'd wait fifteen minutes before allowing panic to set in. it was the most successful i've even been at such an exercise. genjokoan by transatlantic bludgeoning.

after awhile i turned to my left so as not to make too much eye contact with the mafia. barreling towards me was a little nut-brown hawaiian. her nicole-voice was yelling "lucy!" and her arms were actually outstretched. i'm not sure if anyone's ever ran towards me with arms outstretched before. my transatlantic zen state accepted this as the perfectly expected state of affairs, and, in fact, never recognized that things would be otherwise.

after standing at a bus stop for awhile, niki realized it was a better idea to take my tight eyes and overbalanced bag home in a cab. i heard her speak slovak for the first time and jarringly realized what a strange turn reality had taken.

we coasted through the edges of bratislava into the downtown, passing more unreadable billboards and blocky buildings niki excitedly pointed out would soon be ikeas and h & ms. ten minutes later, i tumbled out of the car at the foot of a gray, grafittied monolith of a building that put the airport to shame. it reared up out of the ground and bore zero relationship to the organic planes of the landscape.

we negotiated the heavy iron doors into her apartment building and entered the scariest elevator i will ever experience. before i even had time to think, she said, "don't worry, i promise we won't die," and hit the button. the car clanked and wiggled its way up the shaft, the multi-colored layers of cement passing in front of us, a different color for each floor. no door.

she was right. i didn't die.