The part wherein I travel

Whelp, I’ve been awake for a solid 30 hours now, and am cozily tucked into my bed in the kibbutz, chatting with my new roommates while we all wrestle with the slow internet. Let me just give you the harrowing story of my travels today.

First of all, a piece of advice – don’t pack the night before you’re set to leave for a month-long trip. Yeah yeah, seems obvious. In my defense, I did have all my stuff laid out and arranged in (mostly) neat piles, for days in advance. Packing is just one of those things I don’t do well. I didn’t know HOW to get the bloody things into my suitcase. So I didn’t go to bed until 2:15 last night, which in hindsight – and even at the time – was a pretty poor life decision. (Never fear, everything I needed did end up packed.) Also, I was stricken with a particularly serious case of the bad feels last night. The six hours of sleep I got didn’t improve my condition or my mood. In fact, I felt pretty terrible, and my poor parents had to deal with me not being able to make decisions, answer questions, or really do anything more than walk around like a zombie on the verge of completely breaking down. Somehow we got out of the house and to the airport, and I dragged myself through security and onto a plane. It was my first time (that I remember) being on a plane with two aisles. I had a window seat and only one seat beside me, and the flight was pretty short. I did some reading and half-dozed against the window, though I did notice that the woman beside me drank a fair amount of alcohol and began painting her nails until the flight attendant asked her to stop. 

At Washington, D.C., I got a sandwich which was delicious primarily because I didn’t make it, washed it down with a heavy dose of ibuprofen, then boarded my flight to Munich. I must say, I was impressed by United’s entertainment system – I hadn’t expected such a large selection of movies, shows, and music. Over the almost-9-hour flight, I watched a New Girl episode, a 30 Rock episode, and Oz: the Great and Powerful, and listened to some classical music while reading. I got a quarter of the way through The Ball and the Cross by G.K. Chesterton (which I’d begun reading a while ago but never finished) on my boyfriend's Kindle, then stopped when my head started spinning from the complexity of the theological arguments. I started on a book I’d purchased for the trip – The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis. I’d started it maybe a year ago, but hadn’t gotten very far, so I was determined this time to complete it. C.S. Lewis is such a fascinating author. I like his style. Anyways. This flight, I was again only seated beside one person, but I was in the aisle seat, so I had no obliging window or wall against which to lean my head. This was a pickle, as I’d planned on sleeping several hours during this flight. When the lights were turned off, I turned my ipod on, leaned my seat back, snuggled into my blanket…..and didn’t sleep the entire freaking time. Sure, there were periods when my consciousness got foggy for a few minutes at a time, but my body hurt from sitting for a solid third of the day, and wouldn’t let me be comfortable, and my head kept jerking awake every time I even sort of dozed. The seats didn't lean back very far, and not sitting beside a window was awful. My hazy restlessness finally just gave up when I jolted out of another half-snooze with the realization that my stomach was killing me. Since you’re reading this, you probably know me, and thus you probably know that my digestive system isn’t worth peanuts (which is fine, ‘cause I don’t like peanuts anyways). Now, I hadn’t had a stomach ache since I left school last week, so this discovery was particularly unpleasant. I hoped the breakfast they gave me would alleviate the pain, but alas – my lot in life is a bitter one. It didn't go away for the rest of the day.

Let me just say this – the airport at Munich is WAY cooler than any American airport I’ve ever seen. There’s a stretch of it that’s basically a mall, with swanky stores, not just those sunglasses stations or duty-free shops. They also have a sleep lounge, which is the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen, and I don’t know why every airport doesn’t have them. I wanted to go in and nap, but I had a connecting flight in less than an hour, so that was unfortunate. I also wanted to take a picture, but then I didn’t want to be that foreign tourist creepily taking pictures of rooms where people sleep. The Munich airport was great. I loved it. It just felt like Europe, and it got my mind off the pain in my midsection. The coffee shops and restaurants had their menus chalked in German, and there were other interesting things but I can’t remember them right now because everything from the past gazillion hours of being awake is now running together in my head. Oh. Here’s another thing about the Munich airport, but not one I particularly loved. After passport checks and security by my gate (which by the way, was interesting because the man who waved the magic wand thing over people to detect metal wouldn’t let me come through until he had given the wand to a woman and stepped back. I thought that was cool…and also convenient because the woman was not afraid to get up close and personal with that metal detector stick), we boarded the plane to Tel Aviv. However, we didn’t board the way we board in the U.S., where people board by group number and there is almost an entire hour scheduled between boarding time and takeoff. In Munich, first class passengers were invited to board, and then suddenly everyone got up and packed into a clump. Boarding time was only 25 minutes before takeoff, but with the mass of everyone lining up at the same time, it took 45. The line to check our boarding passes and the line to get onto the plane were both very, very slow and crowded, and the plane left 25 minutes late. 

On this flight, I had a window seat, so I fully intended to sleep through the four hours. However, after I crawled exhaustedly into my seat beside an elderly couple who seemed like quiet people, and gratefully leaned my head against the oh-so-friendly wall on my other side, the stewardess spoke to me, asked if I spoke German, then asked in English if I would mind switching my seat with the woman with whom my elderly neighbors were traveling. It was an aisle seat. I know what a bummer it is to travel alone, or not be able to sit with your loved ones on flights, so of course I said yes, and nearly burst into hysterical weeping as I waited to be escorted to my new seat. The couple seemed very grateful, as did the woman who took my seat, so that was nice. However, my aisle seat was now in close proximity to three small children, and would not let me look out at Germany, the Balkans, or a corner of the Mediterranean Sea. It was so hard to not just melt into a shuddering puddle of tears, but maybe at this point I was just too tired. The flight attendants were young, blonde, and pretty, and extremely pleasant and accommodating despite all the numerous requests everyone around me seemed to be making about switching seats, etc. They impressed me. Also unlike in America, people were walking around the cabin even as we taxied toward the runway, and only sat down and buckled up a couple of minutes before takeoff. We were fed a pretty large breakfast – scrambled eggs (which were hot, even though they looked more like chopped-up bow tie pasta and tasted pretty questionable), cubed potatoes and spinach, a croissant, a roll, a little bowl with sliced cheese/sliced meat/mound of cream cheese, a container I’m guessing held yogurt, and jam and butter. I ate most of it, then my stomach began to hate me again, so I stretched out as much as I could, wrapped up in my blanket (which was thicker and softer than United blankets), and tried to catch a few winks. It was incredibly difficult, and didn’t really happen, what with not having a pillow, people walking around and making noise, the stewardesses rolling by with their carts, and the people beside me wanting to get out of their seats. I dozed off a few times, but was constantly startled awake by noise, so it was a pretty useless endeavor. I had a moment – when the plane touched down and we were taxiing into the gate and people were getting up – that I realized I felt worse than I ever had in my entire life. I felt like I couldn’t move, like every single fiber in my body hated me, and like there was no foreseeable end to this pain of existence. It was one of those moments I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Somehow I staggered off the plane, wasn’t questioned by the security people standing outside, and made my way to passport security, where I stood in line for a good half hour behind some very obnoxious American students before being interrogated by a very unpleasant lady in the booth. 

Finally, with lots of miscommunication about where I was supposed to meet the group, I finally met up with my people, and we sat around for another hour or so before piling onto the bus and leaving. We got to the kibbutz after dark and met the folks who were already there. There was assigning of people to rooms, there was food, there was mingling, there was a glorious shower in a bathroom that doesn't have shower walls, and there is finally a warm bed and an actual room. Tomorrow we swim in the Sea of Galilee, so that'll be fun. Also, I love it here. The people are really nice, the kibbutz is neato, and I'm in Israel.

Also, I'll probably never be this bitter again for the remainder of this trip, so hopefully my next post won't be this abominably long.

Final note: it has come to my attention that Josh is also blogging. I promise I'm not copying his idea. I wrote the majority of this post in the Ben-Gurion airport, and just now saw his blog.