Daily Acts of Sisu: trying to ask an older Italian woman for directions, advocating for myself and my flight in an insane throng of people at the airport
The 11th day of sisu.
Coming home.
I was relieved to leave Italy.
It had gifted me with some magical moments, some perspective, some peace.
But it had also been about one hundred times more stressful than the daily life I had been so excited to escape.
It had been a lot.
Way more than a lot.
Too much.
I was excited to sleep in my own bed, be in the comfort of my own home, not have to wash my clothes in the sink…it was going to be a good day.
But I was still worried.
I still wasn’t entirely sure if or how many flights were leaving Catania.
But I tried not to think about that.
To live in the moment and say goodbye to the things I had loved about this city.
So after one more free coffee from my hostel, I made my way out into the world.
Ready to leave, but excited to say goodbye.
There was a cafe that I sat at and loved and I speed walked my way back there.
With a view of piazza il duomo, it was perfect.
Recalling that my favorite hostel employed had strongly recommended trying arancini, I decided to order that along with my morning coffee.
I had also ecstatically devoured a calzone-looking wonder called cartocciata the other day so I ordered one of those as well.
My waiter tried to dissuade me from ordering both, saying of the arancino that “it’s big” and giving me a look to imply I shouldn’t order both.
But I am willingly hopping off the Tell Women What and How Much They Should Eat train at every opportunity so I kid you not, I replied, “GOOD. Let’s go.”
Hard to hide an eyebrow raise of disapproval, but again, not going to be told by a man (or anyone) how much food I need or should want.
Worth. Every. Moment.
Was I painfully full? Yes.
Was he maybe kind of right and perhaps even trying to help me? Maybe, but too late now.
Truly a joyous breakfast and the arancino was easily one of the best foods I’ve ever eaten in my life.
Phenomenal.
Cannot recommend enough.
I am literally always there for cheesy carbs, but this one took the cake.
Wanting to get to the airport early, I decided to find the bus stop for the airport shuttle.
Now, my favorite hostel employee had given me incredibly clear directions to the bus stop, but I have this weird and often very annoying thing where someone gives me super clear directions and my mind is all, “what if we did this different thing instead?”
So of course I did that and got completely lost.
But lo! What’s this?
In attempting to see if maybe my bus stop was down an alleyway, I attracted the attention of a lovely Italian grandmother.
Clearly seeing I had no idea where the f*ck I was going, she asked me what I can only assume was, “Are you lost?”
Naturally I told her in English that I was looking for the bus stop for the airport shuttle and she responded that she had no idea what I was saying.
Having traveled and learned languages for as long as I have, I find it quite easy and very useful to catch onto a couple of words that I think will help me.
Thus, I was able to tell her “bus stop” and “airport” in Italian along with the name of the bus company.
Ahh!!
Even in Italian she was able to give me quite clear instructions on where the bus stop was, combined with accompanying hand gestures, but to prevent any further confusion she even WALKED ME TO THE BUS STOP.
I mean come on.
Italians.
Fantastic people.
So helpful and kind.
Because after this trip I have major travel trust issues, I still asked three different bus drivers if they were going to the airport (even after looking up the schedule online and at the bus stop itself) before boarding the correct bus.
Arriving three hours early to the smallest airport I’ve ever been in would normally sound like a complete waste of time, but being met with the chaos in Catania Airport, I was glad I did.
Absolute madness.
A completely packed airport with hastily erected tents outside for the spillover, I wasn’t sure if I would be getting out of Sicily after all.
This fear grew exponentially as I watched flight after flight get delayed, diverted, or canceled, often at the last minute.
I wasn’t sure how the airlines expected someone to change flights to Palermo, a distance of over 200 kilometers, with less than an hour to spare, but I was equally sure this would happen to me.
I settled in on an unoccupied space of dirty floor and spent the next two hours alternately reading my book, trying not to get stepped on, and frantically checking the board for updates.
As the last time I had called my airline help desk the woman recognized me and identified me by my booking number before I could even ask the question, I knew better than to call to see if my flight would be canceled.
But still I worried.
My panic peaked when I decided to finally join the throng of pushing, sweaty, angry passengers queueing up for security check.
Straining my ears to listen to megaphoned announcements delivered exclusively in Italian, I tried to stifle my rising anxiety as time after time Amsterdam was not called.
I even started desperately asking the Italians around me what the airport employees were saying, but even they didn’t always know.
Luckily, in this mess I met a very kind local couple from England who lived nearby the airport.
They told me they had taken a philosophical approach to the day and planned a day trip to the beach if their flight to Lourdes got canceled.
Borrowing a bit of their calm, I tried to channel that mindset myself.
But eventually, ten minutes before the scheduled departure of my flight, I had to fight back down the bile rising in my throat and overcome my anxiety to push through layers of humans to ask what, if anything, was happening with my flight.
While I can see now how it wouldn’t have been the end of the world had my flight not taken off on time, at the time I had overspent my vacation budget by twice as much as I had planned and had spent the week living in stress and without everything I had packed for this trip.
I just wanted to get the fuck out of there and get home.
And by the grace of the travel gods I did.
After shoving my way to the front of the crowd and stretching my boarding pass into the face of the nearest airport employee, desperately asking, “AMSTERDAM?”, I was hit with immediate reply of, “Oh my god, yes! Go, go, go!”
Shooting back an apologetic look to my crowd mates, I ran under the security lane barriers and towards my gate, only to find out that my flight was delayed another thirty minutes.
Well, fuck it.
I may have been riding a chaotic roller coaster of high-level emotions, but at least I hadn’t missed my flight simply out of fear of advocating for myself.
The tension rose again as our gate was moved but there was clearly some miscommunication between the airport employees and the bus drivers.
Having the boarding process halted yet again, my fellow passengers and I started worrying, the Germans around me cracking jokes about how for sure we were never going to board our flight.
But FINALLY!
We made it.
I nearly started crying.
The week was finally coming to an end and I could get back to my normal life and normal, far more lowkey, levels of anxiety.
Bless.
Flying into Amsterdam was like being covered in a blanket of calm.
Amsterdam airport is my safe space, being the one place I always seem to fly into after flight disruptions.
They welcome me home and often give me sandwiches (if you don’t fly KLM, please start!!) along my journey.
I love it here.
And I loved it even more when a business team of Croatians started swearing up a storm about their current project behind md. 😀
Hey, I know those swears!
Amazing.
And finally, after the second most stressful day in Sicily, I made it home.