Say What?!

I woke up this morning to a great group of folks traveling Europe from Tennessee. There were probably 40 of them and they bombarded what seemed to be the designated sleeping area of the airport at six in the morning. I don’t want to call them elderly because that makes me think of really old people (not you Nani no worries J), but they were older than middle age. Roughly 60’s I’d say. What do you call that age? As soon as you pass middle age, are you immediately considered elderly? Is there a cut off age? I mean I have plenty of time, but am just curious.

Well anyway, back to my folks from Tennessee. We were all sitting there just chatting away and this man comes over asking where the police station is. (Definitely the most people I have seen in the last 4 days that have spoken English fluently- a bit overwhelming). He goes on to explain to us (I suppose it’s more of a warning) that he was in the bathroom and found a bag that had been left that was ticking. Yes. Ticking. My first thoughts… great, I’m going to miss my flight yet again. Then I realize there could be a possible bomb on the other side of the room. He began to panic and was frantically telling us that he has been searching for police for the last five minutes (Yup. Uber long time) and that he had done everything he could. He goes up to stand against the wall… apparently the farthest point from the alleged bomb, as if he is expecting it to go off any second. All of a sudden he comes out of the bathroom nearest to us with his five or so bags of luggage and that really gets them ladies to a talkin`. He notices all the attention and continues to go on about the green bag left in the bathroom. He at first thought the faucet was leaking, but then opened it up and saw some sort of tubing. I guess he ran from there. BUT, real kicker to the story, his wife was in the women’s bathroom next door. “My wife in the bathroom over there, but I’m to scared to go back! I’m just going to stay as far away as possible.” He sure did. He stood up against that wall like it was nobodies but his own. The ladies next to me were still in shock from his comment about his wife. “I’d go on and leave him right here in this airport”. Guess he didn’t quite follow the etiquette of southern hospitality leavin` his wife in them bathroom.  The police finally got notice and a swarm of them took off for the bathroom. They came back with a white purse (one of the ladies) and said there was nothing suspicious in the bathroom. The owner of the purse frantically ran over to it and said “oh my goodness! My purse! It was stolen!” I don’t know if stolen, forgotten, or left is the correct word but her wallet and camera were for sure no longer in that purse. At this point I left to go check-in and get to my boarding gate so absolutely nothing can put me in between of that airplane- that is of course a bomb goes off. But at least I will have died knowing I would have actually made it on this one!

Other than getting woken up by police at 3 am to check and make sure I had an actual ticket and wasn’t homeless (2 out of the 15 of us in the “designated seating area” actually were escorted out of the building), that was just about my only excitement in the Barcelona Airport. Oh and my headphones broke on the six hour bus ride here from Madrid. Just my luck! Golden Girls in subtitles is still better than no Golden Girls at all!