June 2009
After several decisions, we ended up traveling to Europe. I traveled on June 24 of 2009. My future advisor (I came to Germany to pursue a PHD) kindly offered himself to pick me up at the main train station in Aachen. So apparently it was easy, arrive to the airport and then take the train to Aachen. My plan was to arrive to Madrid airport and 2 hours later to get out of there to Dusseldorf airport. The first problem was in Bogota's airport... My bag was to heavy, so my brother got me a new one, and in the middle of the airport I had to transfer things from one bag to the other, which means that I was not sure what I had in each bag... Then I forgot to ask for the second boarding pass, and the girl in the counter forgot to give it to me... So I went in to the flight very exited, it was my first over-seas flight! -I should point that everyone in my family was very worried, since just a few weeks before my trip, an Air France airplane had crashed when going from Brasil to France... :D-
So I arrived in Madrid, and I went to the counter in the gates to get my new boarding pass, this was hell! There was a really long line and the movement was very slow, since people with problems like mine where combined in the same line with people with bigger problems, like losing a transfer flight or so. It was time to get my other flight and I was still only getting the pass. If you know Madrid's airport, you will understand why I was worried: it takes something like 20 minutes to go from the customs agents to the doors. Gladly my plane was delayed, so I got to the door just in time to board -yet I was worried about my advisor waiting for me...-
So I managed to get to Dusseldorf. Once there I found out that one of my bags was missing. Since my german was pretty much patetic at that point, I got in the wrong line, and after 1 hour they told me that lost baggage for my airline was elsewhere... so I went there and they asked me for a phone number, for when they found my bag - I HAD NO PHONE!!! It was my first day there.. so no phone, only an address for where I was supposed to live...
Then I run to see how to get the train. We don't have a train system in my country, and I've never taken a train between cities before this day, so I had no idea how this worked, or where to take the connecting train, or where to read, where to get the connecting train, I had a really heavy big bag (thank God they misplaced the other one) and a hand bag, a jacket, a purse... I was stressed, and I even had a wrong pair of shoes (clogs, that kept flying away on every stair). Finally a nice man helped me, he explained to me how to read the train charts (yes, I could have figure that out on my own, if I wasn't as stressed as I was) and then he pointed the platform that I should reach. I asked for an elevator, he said there was none (he probably didn't knew there is an elevator in each platform of Dusseldorf's main station) so I went down stairs and back again with all my things, I was dying. My advisor was waiting for me at 8 pm. It was 10 and I was just taking the train. At midnight, I arrived to Aachen. I was alone, really stressed and did not know what to do next. So I sat in the station, next to a blond man -the other bench had a homeless guy, so easy choice- I took my laptop and I used my credit card to pay for internet, I started writing to my boyfriend in windows live msn, since I know this program records messages even when the other person is not connected -he wasn't connected, none of my friends or family was- and I wrote something like:
"I'm alone, it's very late, Iberia lost one of my bags, I think there no one here waiting for me anymore"
My next line would have been: I will wait here for a while and I will look for a hotel online, then I will take a cab and go to a hotel... BUUUT I realized that they may close the station, since it was very late and we were the only ones there... so I asked the blond guy, if he knew what time did they closed the station, he answered he believed they didn't -of course the conversation went by in English-. Then he asked me 'are you Sonia Vivas?' my Colombian instinct was crying: 'he saw your credit card! run! you are dead! did you saw the movie The Hostal ? that is you!', yet I behaved like a not crazy person and I answered yes, he showed me the picture of me he had (a black and white photocopy of my Toefl test results, which is probably the worst picture of myself until today) and of course he did not look at all like the picture I had... but anyways we trusted each other, I closed my laptop without further writing, and he took me to my room. He had to lend me sheets and a pillow, since my sheets were in the other bag, and of course I did not had a pillow with me.
The next day he picked me up (yes, I know, he is a great person, and a great advisor), and I meet Malak, who lived in the same building as me, and taught me about the bus lines and about the phone cards. I'll go to Malak again, since she became a very important part of my life. But first, phone calls... For my family, a day and a half had past without any news of me. In any other family this may seem normal, but not in mine. We are all really connected, and they were all screaming and crying, they made Sergio send an email to my advisor in Colombia (Rodrigo, another excellent man), who of course didn't knew anything about me either. The only information they had was my pathetic "I'm alone..." message, you can imagine how they felt.
So I called them, they yelled at me, and yelled, and yelled... but then they were happy I was alive. They were fantastic new days, and in the whole process getting to start a new live, there was a lot of fun.
Thanks to Malak, I found my way very easily in the town, and I had a lot of fun with her. A month later we both moved out to a building closer to our office, where we live next to each other, and share a balcony. I believe she is an amazing person and an important piece in my life.
