The Trek Over

On Tuesday, my parents dropped me off at the Atlanta airport, the start of a journey that has already surpassed my expectations. Around the fifth hour of my eight-hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany, I woke up from a short snooze. Even though I had an aisle seat and two empty seats on my right, I twisted and turned but couldn’t fall back into the blissful sleep that provides temporary relief to long hours of travel. I soon began to feel a little nauseous and broke out in a sweat. Things weren’t looking so good, and given my past history, I had a feeling I was in for a ride of a different sort. I frantically mashed the attendant call button and anxiously awaited for the flight attendant to come to my aid. A young German woman (I flew Lufthansa) kneeled by my side and whispered quietly how she could assist me. “I’m not feeling well,” I said. “I think I’m about to faint. May I just lie down?” I pointed to the aisle, and the started lady nodded her head and began to help me from my seat. And that was all I remember.

I woke up from my fainting spell to find my body prostrate in the aisle. The first flight attendant was cradling my head in her hands (later a pillow offered support), another attendant was holding my legs up in the air and massaging my calves (to get the blood flowing), and a third hovered behind her. The cabin lights had been off for hours, and the women all spoke in hushed German above my head about how to handle my dilemma. The other passengers sitting nearby were awake and staring at me as if I had leprosy. The attendants brought me coke and water to help bring me back to life. After about ten or fifteen minutes of resting not-so-inconspicuously on the plane floor, I was given the ok to be moved to the Business class. Luckily, I was only five or six rows deep in the economy class and the escorted service to my seat wasn’t too difficult to manage. I was shown to a seat in the empty section, someone reclined my seat for me, another propped up my feet, and someone else threw a blanket over me. The first flight attendant who came to my rescue sat beside me for a while. I spent the remaining two hours of my flight resting in my reclining seat, covered with blankets, and sipping from the juices and water brought to me. I think I’ve discovered an almost guaranteed way to upgrade your plane ticket!

I made it through both the Frankfurt and Madrid airports easily enough and around 4:00 PM on Wednesday, Sarah and I were happily reunited. Then we caught a cab to the MAD HOSTEL . . .