So as some of you know
my dear friend and pseudo-sister, Doris, was lying in a Vienna hospital with a
life-threatening, flesh-eating disease and had been flown there from Spain
where she was taken ill. The challenge was that she had left her suitcase
with all her belongings and laptop etc. in a locker somewhere in a train
station in central Madrid. Having flown to Vienna to see her (and with
the intention doing an intervention on Dr ‘not so positive’ ;-) I’m due and
already booked to fly out of Vienna next day to visit my dad and two dogs in
Spain and, by the wonders of synchronicity, my only connection happens to be
through Madrid.
Good start.
However, I land at 4 pm, the FedEx cutoff is 5 pm and I re-board at
5.15pm. Hmm, an hour and 15 to land, travel to a train station in the
middle of Madrid, pick up the case, find the FedEx cargo depot, ship it off to
Doris, back to catch my flight and land in Alicante in time for Tapas and Wine
with the family. Cool, sounds like a plan! Well, at least so I thought.
Have you ever heard the
saying ‘if you want to make God laugh then tell her your plans?’ well
apparently today She was watching the Comedy channel. Here is what
happened...
Firstly my flight out
of Vienna was delayed by twenty minutes taking my window down to 55 mins. Still doable, just more exciting! :-) So I land at Madrid and
literally sprint out of the gate from what must have been the furthest part of
the airport from the street. I ran outside panting away and jumped in the
first available taxi only to find out the answer to a question I have always
wondered about - Whatever did happen to Manwell out of Faulty Towers
after his film career ended? Well now I knew – he became a taxi driver!
Or at least this was his closest living relative.
He spoke zero English
and while my German was good in Vienna, my Spanish was limited to ‘another beer
please’ and ‘excuse me, where is the bathroom?’ none of which seemed
appropriate at this point in time. However, having just led the Japanese
team at DWD I knew first hand that words were just 7% of communication.
My strategy quickly became sign language and tonality. I thrust the
locker ticket at him with the name of the train station on it and with a big
cheesy grin said ‘train station rapido!’ I got a blank look that said
‘Que?’ I half expected the next line to be ‘But Meesta Fawlty, I from
Barceloona!’
Err, ‘Train-o Station-o
quickly-o?’ OK, this was not working; I may as well have been speaking
Japanese at this point. Oh, what the hell, ‘Whoo Whoo! Chuff Chuff!’, I
made the appropriate arm movements and thought that he’d be convinced he’d
picked up an escaped lunatic but to my relief, he looked at the ticket again
and shouted ‘Ah! Estación de tren! It sounded good, I nodded and we were
off. Forty minutes to go and FedEx cutoff in 25. Luckily his second
career was a racecar driver and we arrive at the train station in Madrid just
12 minutes later. Either that or he was just really keen to get rid of
me. I jump out of the cab and ask him to wait – ‘Que?’ I started running
backward towards the station pointing at him to stay and flashing five fingers
while pointing at my watch. Now he was sure I was crazy. Oh well, mad
dogs and Englishmen.
I run into the station
and look for the left baggage section. A minute of sprinting later I find it,
jump the barrier, find the aisle and punch in the code. I may just make
this after all. 54 Euros came to the display followed by… COINS ONLY. You gotta be
kidding. I look in my wallet to find I’m fresh out of a giant bag of
coins and ask the security guard for help. He cheerfully tells me there
is a change machine at the entrance. Great! And then he smiles and tells me
it’s out of order. Apparently, it’s Spanish sense of humor.
He tells me I need a
bank and thinks there may be one in the station. Clocks ticking, I run back in
the station to find a bank at, yep you guessed it, the furthest end away from
the locker. I get there to find at least a 15-minute line up of people.
No time to wait, I run to the front turn around and address the entire line
with total certainty speaking English with a Spanish accent, big cheesy grin in
full action. Nobody argues or even probably understands as I stride up to the
counter, hand over a 100 Euro note and ask for 55 one euro coins. 2 minutes
later I’m running back to the locker and start feeding in coins. 15
minutes to FedEx cut off and ticking. After feeding 50 coins God starts
giggling again and the machine times out and shuts down. Aw, come onnnn!
The security guard who
was watching comes over and informs me he has to radio the maintenance man to
come with the master key. At this point, I’m convinced I’m staying the
night in Madrid. Three minutes later the guy arrives and after paying him the
extra 4 euros he unlocks the door. Finally! I grab the case and run
back to find Manwell. I jump in the cab, smile and say ‘airport, cargo!’
Nothing. ‘Areo porto!! Rapido!!’ he asks ‘Donde Terminal?’ I reply
‘Cargo Terminal, FedEx!’ Nope, not understanding that. I say slowly ‘Federral
Expresss?’
‘Que?’
Surely I don’t have to
do my dam busters impression here, that would be just wrong. I point at
the case and make a flying gesture – he looks puzzled and then a big smile
comes as he says ‘Ah Consignmento!’ Yes! That must be it, it sounds kind
of cargo-ish I cheer and give him thumbs up – he cheers and we’re off! I
think he’s getting into this whole race thing. 12 minutes to cut off.
We speed into the airport and at exactly 5 o’clock pull up at a sign that
says ‘consignment’ which turns out to be left luggage. He looks really
pleased and tries to match my former cheesy grin, until he sees the look on my
face. ‘No mate! This not it! Cargo, cargo’ – I saw a sign back there and simply
point straight and say GO! Now he must think I’m on day release. He
follows the sign and at eight minutes past five we pull up at the cargo
terminal FedEx depot. I jump out and point at my watch, and now HE gives me the
5 fingers and smiles. Who needs language? :-)
OK so we’re nearly 10
minutes past the cutoff time, I need an influencing strategy. Hmm,
massive rapport, hapless tourist, enrolment or my sad puppy dog eyes…? I
run into the office with the case as most of the staff are leaving and find one
stern macho looking guy behind the counter. I guess puppy dog is out.
Luckily he speaks English so I go for rapport and enrolment and within a
minute he feels he is the key to making this whole amazing race work. He buys
it and goes to find a supervisor to OK the deal! He comes back with an
airway bill and tells me they’ll do it this once if I have a FedEx account
number. Yes, I do. I fill in the paperwork aware that my flight is now boarding
two terminals away. Paperwork done I shake hands and run back to Manwell
who was waiting with a big smile. ‘Terminal 2 Rapido!’ I shout ‘No Problemo!’
he shouts back.
Damn, we’re getting
good, and he races out of the cargo terminal Schumacher style. I think he’s
really starting to enjoy this. Five minutes later we pull up at
departures and before I know it I’ve said ‘arigato gozhiamas!’ (Thank you in
Japanese) he looks puzzled until he sees the tip, then we shake hands, exchange
thumbs up and I race inside. I dash through the terminal and start taking
off my belt to get ready for security unaware at the time that I must have
looked like a potential streaker but hey, time was everything here. I
jumped the line with cheesy grin and certainty in tow (no time for fine tuning
here) and I’m convinced some were the same people from the bank. I sprint
to my gate to just make final call while holding up my pants with one hand and
my carry-on in the other, dripping with sweat. All in all, it had been a
wild hour and a half but with all outcomes accomplished I sat back on the plane
and smiled. It was going to be a BIG glass of wine when I landed, not to
mention a toast or two to my awesome cabby.
To Doris - Sweetheart,
all I can say is thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this, I haven’t
had that much fun since the last Trainer stretch where they fed us to the
sharks in Kona and the important thing is that you had certainty about getting
your things. I also know you’d do it for me in a heartbeat so please just
relax and allow us to love you. Your body is amazing, it always knows exactly
and precisely what to do and as we knew it would, it healed fast. All you
needed to do was relax and feel the love that is coming from all over the world
to you and continues to do even in this moment. I love you sis, keep
smiling and I’ll see you soon. Peter Sage
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