An Incredibly Long, Very Cold Trip

I first want to say what a success 16 things has been. Thanks to his lady, my cousin, my long lost sorority sister and bf and my south beach friend have also included the fun post to their blogs! Awesome!
Now, I will tell you all about my whereabouts over the last few days. Joan and I were assigned to go to Bratislava to start the training course there for Cabin Crews. This was work I was excited about but dreading at the same time. We left Girona in the early morning hours and were in Milan by lunch. Originally we planned to see the city, seeing as we had six hours to kill in an airport but, plans, as always changed. When we saw the massive amount of snow on the streets we had second thoughts. What if the bus was stuck in the city because of the ice or snow and missed our flight to Bratislava? We couldn't risk it. Besides, I had the beginnings of a serious cold and didn't want to make it worse. We did go outside the airport so I could officially say I was in Italy. We took pictures in the snow and hurried back inside for some Italian food. Joan asked a cabin crew where the best place in the airport was to eat, there weren't many places so we found the restaraunt easy.
"Bonjourno!" the waitress asked us and I told her the same in my best Italian accent. "What can I..do you want?" she said in her best English. "Pasta alla Pesto" with a Coke. Joan spoke up and said, "Pasta Bolognesa" "Pasta lasange" said the waitress, "Pardon me if I'm wrong but on the sign there it says Pasta Bolognesa". "pasta lasange" she said again. "Ok, ok...I guess I'll have the pasta lasange then, with coke." "Pasta lasange" she said again and walked away. Note that we were also sitting with strangers as the seating was limited and everyone kind of crammed together. The group with us had ordered coffee's and orange juice-their bill was 16.00€-Italy is expensive I guess. The waitress came up to our table after the other group had left us alone and said "Few minutes for hot dishes." and two minutes later the hot dishes appeared. Mine was excellent, even pasta pesto in an airport in Italy is great. Joan also loved his pasta lasange more than he thought. Win win.

After a great lunch we wanted to sit and rest somewhere, not possible in a small airport with hardly anychairs. We manged to find some but they were situated in front of the doors so every two minutes someone would walk in and we would get a blast of cold air. The rest of the airport trip went like this, sitting in random chairs, the floor, abandoned check in desks, luggage carts etc until we decided to get a coffee. A delicious, creamy, perfectly foamy cup of delicious hot love. You haven't had coffee until you've had one in Italy.

Our plane ended up being dealyed two hours, we had already passed through security and everything was closing in the airport. Joan bought us two cans of Pringles, four different kinds of Italian chocolate, water and a coke. We now had rations. I watched two episodes of The Office on our Ipod touch, I had already seen them but "Frame Toby" and "Business Trip" were still hilaroious. I slept and played four games of air hockey via the ipod with Joan and won three of the matches. go me.

Our plane left to Bratislava a few hours later and luckily Joan was able to call the hotel and they were going to pick us up from the airport. We got into the plane, sat in the same seats we always do and watched gleefully has passanger after passenger skipped our row. It wasn't until the last minute when a father and his small child sat next to Joan. The baby was a little less than a year old and cried a lot. Poor Joan.

We landed at 11:30 on Tuesday evening, greeted by a sign that read "Mr.Planet". Stepping out into Bratislava was exciting for me, but it was masked by the frigid temperatures, minus 11. At this point my cold was at an all time high, watery eyes, congested, headaches. There was no medicine in the airport and I needed some bad. We asked our ride to stop by a pharmacy but he didnt know which one was open and sure enough the one on the way was closed. We decided to just go to the hotel, I thought some sleep would cure me instead. Our one bedroom apartment was great. It was in the old part of the city, close to restaraunts, clubs, bars and the U.S. Embassy! We slept great that night but awoke to six alarms the next morning at 6 a.m. We got ready, reluctantly and made our way to the city center to find a pharmacy. We found one and we found a McDonalds. This was the only place open that served breakfast and boy was I thrilled when I saw they had hashbrowns. They don't serve those here in Spain and that has always been my favorite thing at McDonalds. I had two with Orange Juice and was ready for the day.

We met the guy from the Personnel Agency, the one helping organize the training course for us in front of the Bratislava National Theatre. He was somewhat tall, dark hair, thin, your normal Eastern European guy I suppose. We arrived to the training center which was being held in an old communist building, ugly and cold. Martin helped me up the icy stairs when I slipped and slided due to my heels. (bad idea). We set up everything and I felt prepared, my cold medicine had started to work and I was in good spirits.

Forward to a few hours later:::::::::miserable city. The pills were wearing off and in the middle of speaking with a student I had to leave, my eyes were watering so bad I couldnt see, my nose had this burning sensation like I had to sneeze and I had a coughing attack. In front of 40 people. great, right? Joan was able to take over while I collected myself in the bathroom. A cold is not flattering, my hair was a mess, my make-up dissolved into thin air it seemed, my lips were bright red and my skin was dry. I did what I could and finished the day, luckily it was almost lunch time but we first had to stop in and say hello to the owner of the building, a Joseph something or other. He told Joan and I he wasn an old communist and showed him his memorabilia etc. He then offered us "The Slovak Special" of shots of some type of alcohol. We insited no and told him we had to eat first. "Maybe next time" he said in rough English. Creepy. We had lunch at a local pizza parlor, where a whole pizza set us back 5€. Just a few days before the Slovakian currency, the Koronas, switched to euros. Everything was so cheap. I had a pasta dish that was only 3€. Joan and I ate with Martin (luckily because the menu was in Slovak and the waiter didnt speak English) and the whole bill was 21€ including beer. Amazing!

At the end of the night, Martin took us back to our hotel where we changed and then met up with him and the Ryanair Instructor, Cristopher, a over thirty rock star wannabe who also is the base supervisor in Italy. We met them at this bar called The Dubliner, a really cool place. We talked about all sorts of things, mainly work until the Ryanair Direct Instructor arrived. She flew in from Dublin to teach the first two days of the course to the students. Of all places we go she said, we picked the Irish pub. Martin had been drinking so Joan drove all of us to the UFO in Bratislava. A very upscale bar, restraunt and club. It was incredibly gorgeous. To see Bratislava at night is unbelieveable. We had wine at the bar, overlooking the city. Warm candles glowed from around the room and light music played in the background. The whole place was very chic. Joan, the Irish Instructor and I had Slovakian Red Wine, the Italian instructor and Marin had Sambuka. We stayed an hour there, talking and discussing work. It was an out of body experience in a way because for a moment, I saw myself from the outside looking in-watching this 21 year old girl from Florida sitting in this very posh place in Bratislava, Slovakia-a place I never dreamed I would go-talking business with high-up people, people who have worked in the company for years. It was my first business outing. I think I aged even more in that hour I was there.

Joan and I made it back to the hotel later and despretley needed to eat something. We found a Mexican/Asian restraunt and tried our luck there. If a Mexican restaraunt, like Chipotle and A Chinese restaraunt like Panda Express had a baby, this would be it. It was decorated appropriately but had all kinds of things on the menu. Joan and I had cokes, nachos and salsa, spinach and cheese quesadillas and he got a baked potato with four chicken skewers with thai sauce. It was amazingly good.

I can say this about Bratislava, it suprised me. The city is beautiful, at least the old town which is being renovated and is similar to the one where we live in Girona. The buildings are gorgous but you can definetly see the Communist influence. I wish we would have had more time but it is a place we will definetly visit again-either for work or pleasure. From there we can go to Budapest and Vienna. Also, we really want to go to Prague. I believe Joan and I will accomplish all that this year and more.

We worked Friday and it was a very busy/stressful day. I'm glad it's the weekend. I only have tomorrow, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday left and then I'm off to America! I still have to pack but Joan and I are going to be hitting up the sales tomorrow at H&M!

Thanks for reading my incredibly long post!
As they say in Slovakian...Ciao Ciao.