Mad Fumble Across the Globe

"When we last left you, Sean was just about to hop a plane to Germany and he forgot his restless legs meds.  Will this be the end of the line for our intrepid traveler?  Can he stave off insomnia and insanity?  Can he make it through the night?  Stay tuned….”

Ok, yeah, I know that you all are not really reading this thing for me.  But at the moment, it is all about what happens to me.  Wow, this is rather self-centered.  Maybe I should rather write this thing in third person to avoid stroking my ego.  It’ll read like a novel….yeah check it out, this is what it would be like:

Sean walked down the bridge that led to his vessel to overseas.  Every few seconds he would look down at the ticket in his hand.  38F.  All of a sudden, like it was like the I-285.  A traffic jam appeared.  Slowly the line of humanity made its way onto the plane.

38F.  Is that a window seat?  As Sean walked down one of the aisles he noticed the letter assignments.  F is smack dab in the middle; flanked by strangers.  Sean exhaled in resignation.  Boy is this going to be a long night.

Sean managed to make it to his seat on the 38^th row right in the middle of the plane.  What is this?  A pillow, a blanket, and what probably looks like headphones.  Oh that’s nice.  Well, Sean, being as suave as he is, decided that he could do without the headphones and proceeded to knock them into the foot space of his neighbor.  Even if he wanted to watch a movie or listen to that smooth jazz station, there is no way that he could get those headphones cause his neighbors feet were occupying that space.

Sean settled in and took out some reading for the flight: “Road to Gandolfo” by Robert Ludlum and “Rome Sweet Home” by Scott Hahn.  Once everyone was buckled in, the plane took off into the sky, off to the magical land of chocolate: Germany.

 After a couple of hours, the smell of dinner came wafting through the cabin.  Sean’s stomach began to grumble.

“Would you like the Chicken or the Alfredo?” the attendant asked.

“Chicken, please,” Sean replied.

A tray filled with portions of the most miniature sizes landed in front of him.  There were some utensils on the tray as well.  Sean, being the master of suave, apparently didn’t need his knife.  So, he dropped it into the foot space of his other neighbor.  It very well might have been a bottomless pit because even if he had second guessed on the knife, there was no way that he could get it.

After a surprisingly filling dinner, some wine and a Bailey’s night cap (the alcohol really flows on these Euro flights), Sean settled in to attempt the impossible: sleep.  The cabin lights were turned down so that everyone could get the idea that it would be time to sleep.  He gently reclined his chair and tossed and turned for the next 5-6 hours, sleeping in spells of 45 minutes to 1.5 hours at a time.  Not bad.

Where is everyone?  At least the camera is working now.

At about 2 hours remaining of the flight, the lights came back on and the breakfast service commenced.  There would be no choices on this one, a tray of pure carbohydrates landed in front of Sean.  A muffin, a granola bar and a fruit cup.  Oh, and a spoon to eat the fruit, which apparently was attracted to the headphones in Sean’s neighbors foot space.  Away went the spoon into the bottomless pit.  Sean was not one to use superfluous instruments.

Sean had about six hours to kill in the Munich airport before he flew to Sofia, so he decided to try to find a place to rest his computer and write.  Or study.  Or e-mail.  Just something with him and the computer.  He wandered around the terminal until he found this strange “establishment” alongside one of the many moving sidewalks in the terminal.  It was mint green and had wavy looking walls so that you couldn’t look into it.  Chocolate colored writing on the wall advertised, “Work.  Rest.  Sleep,” and other wonderful words.  Curious as Sean was, he checked it out.

Ah ha!  He found an international refugee camp.  Folks were all sprawled out on the floor and on these sun chairs that would never see sun.  There were some nice looking fake trees that gave a good vibe to the place, but they could not outdo the raw disorganized humanity.  

In the corner was a desk with two chairs and a power outlet access for both seats.  Under one chair was a sleeping dude, so Sean sat in the other chair.  For the next hour or so, Sean and the compy communed (more importantly, he knocked out his morning prayers on the Universalis website).

Around 13:00, it was time for lunch.  Considering that it was Germany, Sean wanted to partake of some of the local cuisine if he could.  And only now as he writes this blog post does he remember, he did not see a McDonald’s at all in Munich, which makes him smile on the inside.

Anyway, the Sean at 13:00 on September 3 walked around aimlessly surveying restaurants, trying to find a place to eat.  Most places were terribly expensive, but he managed to find someplace that did not cost an arm and a leg.  Only his big toes.

“I’ll have the special,” Sean requested of the dude behind the counter.

Blank stare.

“The three sausage special that I saw back there”

Blank stare.

“You know the one for twelve…”

“Eighty,” said the lady who was beside the dude and doing fifteen other things at the same time.

“Yeah, that one.”  Having had water recently and considering the price, he didn’t want to ask about a drink.

“Do you want white or a lager?”  The dude awoken from a state of comatose enquired of our traveler.

Blank stare.

“Do you want a white wheat beer or a lager?”

Not knowing much about beer except that it makes things a little more amusing, Sean replied, ”Uhhhmm, lager.”  Isn’t Budweiser a lager?  That’ll do, I’m sure, Sean thought.

Not only did the meal come with a drink, but apparently it was imperative that it was a beer!  That’s Germany for you!

Then the dude sprung to life pouring a pint of lager, pulling three sausages out of a crazy-looking container that holds sausages and putting them into a ceramic pot, and adding a large pretzel.  The lady poured some hot water in with the sausages and covered with a plate.  Some mustard packets (nice, NICE, mustard packets mind you) got added to the jumble on the tray before it was presented to the king of suave.  Or swooft.

Hello Sofia!

The flight to Sofia was rather uneventful.  Except for the announcement that there was white smoke coming from somewhere that had everyone’s undies in a bunch.  The captain later explained that it had to do with the air conditioning and that there was nothing to worry about.  Although the captain said nothing about the gremlins chewing on the wings of the plane.

Sean deplaned and proceeded to acquire all of the luggage that followed him to Sofia.  As he walked towards the exit, he expected to see his new best bud, Yavor, to pick him up.  Sean was all ready to riff on him if he was holding a sign with Sean’s name.  

But that would not be.  There was some guy from the hotel, the BudaPest, with a sign, “Sean Patrick Bailey.”  Yavor must show up later in the story.  The flight to Sofia was severely delayed which might have had something to do with it.

Once back at the hotel, it was time to settle in, eat some tarator and head to bed.  Sean had a long ride ahead of him the following day to the town that still held his little boy.  The one who is the purpose of this entire trip.  The missing piece of this guy’s family.  Not long now until little Soshko would be home.

OK, so it was probably a little more muddled than I expected.  There are just so many little things that are different, but I just can’t write them ALL down.

Anyway, thank you to all of the folks who have been praying, I can feel that God is looking after us.  Oh, and unfortunately, the camera that I have is not that terribly great and I’ve had a couple of problems with getting it to work.  The fantastic and large camera from last go around stayed safely at home to take pictures of that adorable Mr. Sweet, Leo.  [Pssst….Sam, put a picture of “Mr. Sweet” in the blog S’il vous plait!].  So I don’t have many pictures at the moment, but I have the camera working now and we will have some nice Bulgarian pictures soon.

St. Christopher, pray for us

God bless,

Sean