Back to the Old World

We made it to Spain!  It took us 24 hours door to door, and lots of coordination and patience. We basically just kept counting:  6 suitcases, 6 pieces of hand luggage, our daughter’s pink little suit case, 1 portable crib, 1 kennel with dog, 2 car seats, 2 kids, 1 stroller, 2 over sized packages. The only thing we lost was the stroller, but it returned the following day.

First off, I am so grateful for all those friends who gave us physical and emotional support these last weeks in Seattle.  I asked myself many times if we were doing the right thing, and too many times I passed all that burden on to listening friends – who most of the times probably didn’t even get why I was panicking so much since “honey, Barcelona is a wonderful city!” And I agree, but the thought of moving out of the states and leaving our “American life” behind would send cold shivers up and down my spine. We are permanent residents in the US but once we leave the US we will have one year to return, one short year, or we will lose our Green Card privileges. We have lived in the US for 7 years, I had a professional career in the US, both my daughters were born there, I discovered yoga and raw food living in the US, and we lived in Hawaii for one year. We have become different people over these past 7 years, this country has formed us, and now we were to leave all these memories behind! I have better memories of my life in the US than of my life in Spain. And we had given it some serious thought, we had decided to move back because we wanted our daughters to grow up in Europe, and we were home sick and wanted to be closer to family. However, the thought of that seriousness of our move was still very stressful for me. At one point, there would be no return for us. It felt like breaking up with a beloved boyfriend that you know you cannot be with, but you also know it will break your heart to leave him. This was it for me, at least this is what it felt these last weeks – a pure decision in my head, and my heart was hurting.

Anyways, the only thing that seemed to keep my emotions under control was to plan our move to the detail. We had lists over lists that needed to be done, and lists that organized the lists, and so on.  Surprisingly, the day of the move arrived without us going crazy, and on Monday morning around 10am, the SUV limo was being loaded.  

It looks less than it actually was

Our entire luggage fit in there, except for the kids!  So C took off with the cab and I had to return the rental car. While driving, L shared with me that every time we go on a trip she was so excited! How sweet! Returning the car at Hertz at the airport I found myself with two kids, a diaper back, a purse and two car seats.  Too much to carry to the next cart, so I asked the Hertz employee for help and he decided to just drive me to the terminal, which really blew me away.  This was setting the bar very high, and no way would customer service in Europe be up to that standard, I thought.  At the terminal, C was already standing in line for check-in.  He had managed to find a porter and to get him to help in weighing all our suit cases and moving things around, partly unpacking, in order to get every single suit case under the weight limit. That nice guy was also hiding our way too heavy hand luggage – while everybody else’s hand luggage in line was being weighed by the Lufthansa employees, something I had never seen before.  Good for us, because I don’t know what we would have done if they had told us we couldn’t take our small suit case full with documents like birth certificates, family books, etc., or C's backpack with our computers! We also lucked out with the person who checked us in since he only charged half of what we expected to pay for the dog and for the oversized items. 
We made it through security in time for a quick sandwich right before boarding started.  The flight was as smooth as a 10-hour-flight with two kids can be, with us sitting in the front row and S snoring away for some time in a little baby bassinet. Unfortunately, our baby stroller wasn’t at the gate when we got out in Frankfurt. No stroller, one airline employee there told us, so it must have gone to Barcelona already and not to worry. The thing is, my German fellows seem to be nice and organized and hardworking, but they don’t really care about it, often enough they have no passion for what they do. In his defense, I am pretty sure he just told us what he thought was right, but didn’t really want to deal with it or double-check. Oh well, customer service is something we will painfully miss in Europe.

Anyways, we got to Barcelona airport, were both amazed at the architecture of the new terminal, and I realized that I hadn’t been there for 3 years. Waiting for our luggage, I met a nice German mom who had only good words about L’s future school here in Barcelona. And our entire checked-in luggage had made it, including a very upset dog!  Of course the stroller had never left Frankfurt – why wasn’t I surprised?

An almost perfect start into our new life, you would think, right? It did get a little comical when we were standing there with our four (4!) luggage carts full of luggage, that we alone were unable to push to the exit that was about 500 meters away, and nobody was there to help us for 5 minutes.  And it’s not that everybody was too busy, there were at least 10 airport employees – wearing bright orange or yellow jackets – standing around and chatting. When I asked them for help, they looked at me as if I had just insulted them. They were really nice and explained to me in length what I should do or, better, should have done, but still no one wanted to lend a hand for only 5 minutes. Turns out that in order to get a porter here in Barcelona you need to hire one in advance before you even board your plane. Since we hadn’t done that, we were told to go to the office in front of luggage belt number 6 and place a request with the company that was in charge of that work. Of course, at that moment, we were next to belt number 2, the exit was next to number 5, so getting to number 6 seemed even more of an effort – especially with 4 carts that were going in all different directions and could not be pushed two at a time. If it wasn’t that comical, it would almost be sad!

We somehow made it to the exit and my husband’s family was waiting there. Of course, after the first excitement, we still had to decide what was the plan, what was next, who would get our rental, where we needed to go, how we would meet after – an endless process of decision-making in a family of many strong opinions! And I really love my family-in-law but they can be overwhelming at times! 

We finally got to our rental car and were on the way to our new home. Dinner was prepared for us (thanks, family!), everybody got acquainted with the new baby and around 7pm we were alone and able to get some rest. Of course, both kids were wide awake again around midnight, but hey, it will only take about two weeks to get over the jetlag!