how we got from poland to spain. otherwise known as, “yeah….about that…” (part 2)

the first problem (however minor) we faced:  there was no direct flight from wroclaw, poland (our departure city) to granada, spain (our destination).  because of this little issue, caroline, who planned this particular trip, booked us a flight from wroclaw to frankfurt, germany and then another, separate, flight from frankfurt to alicante, spain.  alicante is still pretty far from granada, but that was as close as we could get by plane.  we figured we would either a) ask sergio and roman (the spanish friends we were visiting) to make a little road trip to alicante and pick us up, b) take a train from alicante to granada or c) take a bus from alicante to granada.  upon hearing these options, sergio and roman wasted no time whatsoever informing us that ‘option a’ was impossible because, “don’t you know that spanish people are lazy?  we are not driving all the way to alicante to pick you girls up”.  so after discovering that there were no trains running from alicante to granada, we were left with no other option than ‘bus’. 

we attempted to order our bus tickets online, only to discover the bus ticket website was down.  of course it was down.  why wouldn’t it be down? this prevented us from securing a spot on the bus, which made me nervous. although we were told we could easily buy them the night of, at the bus station, i still felt uneasy but we had no other choice.  we headed to the wroclaw airport, where we’d board our plane to frankfurt.  we made it through security with no problems and walked to our gate, commenting on how small and charming the wroclaw airport is.  a few seconds later, i heard someone running after me and felt a hand on my shoulder.  half expecting it to be someone i knew, i turned around and saw a stranger -- a middle-aged polish man -- holding…..my ipod.  i had secured my ipod in its own little pocket of my computer bag before sending it through on the security conveyor belt but somehow, it had come dislodged and this nice angel of man chased me down to return it to me.  after thanking him 7 times, caroline and i flew to frankfurt with no problems….until we arrived at the check-in desk to re-check our bags.

when we got to the counter and placed our bags on the scale to be weighed, the airline employee informed us that we had only checked a bag for our first flight (wroclaw –> frankfurt) and not our second flight (frankfurt –> alicante).  therefore, we had to pay a very inconvenient baggage fee to check our bags last minute.  i was not happy about this, clearly, but caroline hadn’t meant to make this mistake and my being upset over it would do not good.  after a few minutes of silently assessing the situation, i said, “caroline, it’s fine.  this just means that we can’t do or see as much in spain because my budget just got a lot smaller.  but we’ll make it work”.  and then i bought a krapfen (seen in the above photo – don’t we look so happy in those photos?).  after an 8 hour layover (i actually love long layovers and find them really relaxing – is that weird?),  we boarded our next flight and landed in alicante on time, at midnight.  and luckily for you, alicante just happens to be where our plans started to unravel in the worst way possible.

{to be continued}