S M F G · A Counter-Clockwise Trip Around The World

So this is it. After more than two years I finally made it home. I rushed it a little bit, just to make it on time for my mom’s seventieth birthday—without telling her—, but any way I felt like I was done with this trip.

With the complicity of my aunt—who also wanted to make a surprise birthday gift to her sister—I bought my ticket while in Montréal, and I found out that it was cheaper to fly from New York. This is basically the reason that brought me in the Big Apple, otherwise I would have stayed longer. But my short stay there was great, thanks to the great CouchSurfing community.

The adventure—though—was not finished yet: I reached the JFK airport in the afternoon, just to discover that my 6:30pm flight to Brussels was six hours late! Meaning that in no way I was going to get the connecting flight to Venice. Apparently, there was a strike going on in Belgium. Welcome to Europe! :-)

You know, during the last two years I was hardly worried by things like this: waiting in the middle of nowhere in India for trains that are four, ten, twelve hours late is rather normal, and I have been stranded at the border between Colombia and Panama for three full days. This was a different matter: I planned the trip to get in time to my mother’s birthday, and it was not happening. Also, there was nothing I could do to change that. So I patiently waited in line for almost two hours—everybody before me had to have the trip re-scheduled—but when I eventually reached the counter, the young girl in charge of my problem was already on the verge of a nervous breakdown after the long unexpected afternoon. The only option she could find was a flight to Rome, but obviously being in Rome in the evening of the day I was supposed to be in Treviso was of no help.

Yet suddenly a black angel came in my rescue: the useless young girl redirected me to her colleague from the mother airline. She was a woman from the British Guayana in her fifties, as calm as an Indian baba. While chatting friendly all of the time she found me a very nice flight to Venice with a connection in Paris, bringing me home less than three hours late, still in time for the surprise. Me happy!

The rest is now history: my aunt and my brother picked me up at the airport, and we made our little show at my mom’s place—who was still thinking I was in New York. No heart-stroke happened, and they lived happily ever after.

~ ♥ ~

This post is filed under America, Europe, Italy, United States and tagged Birthday, Bureaucracy, Couch, Family, Transport.