Tag Archives: Europe Experiences

Mansion

A large foot comes stomping down on my own little feet. The delicate flats now have a dark, dusty footprint stained on the purple suede. I whip my head around to glare at the rude person who ruined my new ballet flats but when I already have my mean face painted on, and I have turned to see them… They’re gone. I sigh and lean down to brush off the mark. Just as my fingertips have touched the suede, another person–no, boulder, comes knocking into my shoulder. The force sends me toppling over, and with identical dirty spots on my brand-new jeans. I shoot up from the musty old floor, prepared to explode in the person’s face. My blood is boiling over–my head is bubbling with flame–my face is bursting with fresh rage. I quickly locate my target and I start to storm towards them, creating rough clouds of dust behind me when BLAM! One, two, three men come hurtling in my direction. I shriek just as one crashes into my side, the next shoves me aside sharply against the left shoulder, and the third… He elbows me in the ribs and I’m left behind, gasping for air, like a fish out of water, in a clutter of people and a wispy swirl of dust. I desperately cough and claw at the ground, my voice is a ragged rasp, hacking and coughing hideously. Finally I let out one last harsh cough and stand up.

Dad thumps me on the back, “you okay girl?” He asks.
“Floating to heaven on cloud nine.” I grouch sarcastically.
“Then you’re just perfect!” Dad jokes. I just slap my palm to my forehead and wince. Ouch. Got a bruise or two… Or three… The crowd that has gathered begins to gradually trickle away, leaving me, my family, my pain, and my misery. I grumble and dust off my clothes and shove my hands into my pockets, only I realized to late that the pockets in my jeans are fake, and end up scratching myself on a button instead. Mom is gaping at my clothes and she immediately come racing up to brush me off. I have a very thorough pat down session that goes on for three minutes, with an extremely embarrassing scene of having your mom dust off the seat of your jeans.
“Moooooom!” I whine through gritted teeth, “People are staring again!”
“Well I won’t have my daughter walk through Spain looking like a hobo.” Mom snaps.
“Half the people here ARE hobos!” I spat back gruffly.
Mom just continues on, the rest of my family trailing behind her like a mother duck and her ducklings.

I’m the last in the line.

We arrive at a fancy market: there are a bunch of huge food and candy sections. The four of us kids zip eagerly up to the candy stand, our eyes already feasting hungrily on the colorful piles of treats that we will soon be filling our tummies with. My eyes locate my favorite sweets in a spilt second. Mom allows us to select a few goodies and drop them in a bag. The cashier rings us up. He is chubby and he looks grumpy, like he didn’t get enough sleep last night. I quickly snatch the candy from him, so I don’t have to touch his squishy-looking sweaty hand. “Gracias.” He mumbles. I gaze around the room. In every spot–every corner, there is some kind of delicious food stand. The seafood, the meat, the fruit, the sweets, the smoothie station, it’s all gloriously beautiful. It’s like a food mansion, a food palace here. I flip my head around every which way, trying to thirstily drink in all the sights. There is one particularly odd stand, you could even say gross. It sold every single cow product you could imagine, the heart, the stomach, the head, the liver, even the cows BLOOD, made into coagulated blood cubes. I pretended to gag at the sight of it, my sister giggled.
“Why would anybody want to eat cow-blood? Does it taste good?” I snickered.
“No way! That stuff probably tastes disgusting!” My dad shouted with a laugh.
“Then why would people want it?” I snorted.
“Maybe it’s good to bathe in it!” My older brother chuckled.
“Ewwwwww!” I shrieked, “Ewwwww! We have enough blood on the inside! We don’t need it on the outside!”
“No kids, people eat it ’cause it’s healthy, they probably totally hate it though!” Dad guffawed. Mom joined the laughter and so did the younger kids. We were all chortling uncontrollably after that. What was in the beginning, a bad day, turned into a hilarious memorable one after that! I’m still gagging and giggling now!

A Memory. I laugh now, but not then.

I have been to Europe, twice.

I remember once I was riding a train for maybe eight hours. My family and I had been seated comfortably, sipping lemon and orange sodas, and reading. I was cozy, my chair leaned back with a book perched on my knees and a soft biscuit placed on a printed plate settled in my lap. The orange soda can was in my hands and we heard a voice over the intercom speak in a nasally voice. “This is the Venezia maestre stop, we repeat, Venezia maestre.” Venice was my stop and Venezia meant Venice so at that sound my ears perked up and my hands dropped the empty soda can on the table and began to pack up my belongings. We rushed off the train exhilarated by the thrill of being in Venice. But I didn’t see any water taxis, or the grand canal. We saw cars, there are no cars in Venice. An Italian man was wheeling his bike into a port. My mother asked him the directions to the Vaporetto, the place where you get a water taxi. He said, ” The Vaporetto? You are not in Venice ma’am.” Her face paled. Where were we and where’s the water? My dad checked a nearby sign. It read Venezia Maestre. My dad smirked. “Guess you’re right asking where’s the water! We are not in Venice! We hopped off a stop early!” He stated brightly. The man with the bike smiled. He looped the chain around the bike’s handlebars and strapped it to the metal port. Then he gave the lock a twist and a whirl. I heard a click and again I remembered we were thirty minutes away from our destination and didn’t have a clue as how to get there. I glanced briefly at the man and sighed. Mom clenched her hands into hard fists. She formed her lips into a tight line and raised her eyebrows. With a quick look at bike guy she added, “Is there any way that you could possibly catch a taxi from here? The man’s face made a question mark. He shrugged. I sucked in a short burst of breath sharply. We sort of just all thanked the man who introduced himself but I wasn’t listening and headed into the train station. “Let’s see the train listings. Maybe we could catch the next one to Venice. It doesn’t matter what seats we get. At least we will go!” My brother suggested. I mumbled that I agreed. The rest of my family nodded solemnly. What could happen?

Okay rephrase. What couldn’t happen? Nothing couldn’t have. We dragged heavy bags up and down like twelve flights of stairs, chased and missed like thirty trains, our bags bumped and bruised our legs, and our arms felt like boiled noodles after we stopped to regain our strength. Mom was fuming, her eyes were glazed with exhaustion and pain, and her face was pink with fury. Her eyes snapped but still sparkled. She stormed towards customer service to tell them our “difficult situation” as they called it. I called it our agonizing day of torment. She stopped in front of two people in uniform coats. “Excuse me, but we got off our train one stop early, could you please direct us to the nearest train to Venice?” The man exchanged looks with his female co-worker. He took a moment to inhale and sigh loudly and rudely. “You must have a ticket for the next train in…” He glanced at his watch and peered at us from under his hat with a bored look on his face. “Five minutes.” He continued slowly. The woman nudged the man and pasted a fake cheery look on her face. “I could show you to the ticket stand. Perhaps your family would like to aboard the train now while you buy the ticket? You would probably make your train just in time.” Five minutes? We would never make it! Mom’s eyes clouded for a moment and cleared. Run! Her eyes flashed. See you soon, just… go!

I turned on my heel and skipped a step which almost caused me to trip. I swayed dangerously, on the verge of collapsing. I caught myself and bounded down the stairs. My huge purple suitcase banged my leg. Pound! Pound! Pound! Pound! To the beat of my footsteps. My shoes clicked against the linoleum which began to get slippery. I skidded to check on the rest of the group. With them bustling on behind me, I decided to press on. I felt like the hour hand of the clocks whirled around a thousand times. Three more minutes and around half way there. I jumped the last couple steps and smashed onto the floor, heels digging into the hard surface to not slip. I slide along the hallway, my purple suitcase rolling behind. Lagging, it clicked and hit some bumps but I pushed on. Two minutes to get up the steps and across the platform. I skittered to a halt and steered my bag in a wide circle, it narrowly misses my toes. I whipped my head around and avert my gaze to see the rest of my family crashing into each other and yanking along banging bags to keep up. I tugged my bag which gets stuck on the edge of the step and with a burst of effort the wheels rolled, and come loose from the stairs. I keep tugging and hurtling up. We race from the top step and flash across the platform. The train is still in. I drag myself along to get on and finally I am. We sink into our seats. One minute. I remember mom, still buying tickets. I worry for her. I am pouring sweat and I clutch the table so hard my knuckles are white. Thirty seconds. Mom leaps on, her eyes wild and falls into her seat. I cough. Then swallow. Mom holds up a triumphant handful of red rimmed tickets glinting in the light. Dad chuckles, he chortles and we all join in giggling. Soon we are all engulfed in fits of big gulping laughter. “Hey that lady was right!” Dad snorts.
“What?” I ask breathlessly.
“She said we probably would make it just in time! And we definitely did!” The train jolts to confirm. We pull out of the station a little fuzzy and sore but otherwise, we were perfectly fine.

Do you have any interesting memories to share that you laugh about now and didn’t then?