I can't remember ever having a more stressful journey between two points. Even though it's been over a month since it happened, in telling this story to a friend two days ago I got all stressed out all over again, which indicates to me that I'm not over it yet. But perhaps writing this blog post will help me process and get some of that energy out of my system.
My flight was scheduled to leave Madrid for Chicago around noon on Monday, Sept. 1. Since I didn't have any bags to check - in fact now only had one bag, period, because Brussels Airlines had lost one of my bags the day before - and I had checked in online the night before, I decided to leave the place I was staying at 9am so I could be at the airport by 10, which (my experience led me to believe) would be plenty of time to use one of those self-service machines to print out my ticket, go through security and find my gate. Ahahahahahahaaaaa!!!
