Not a good day…

OK, this is long, and I swear, a lot. So if you are offended by f bombs a la “Planes, Trains, and automobiles, do not

My bad day actually started last night. As I was coming home from the internet cafe, I remembered that I was getting low on TP. So I stopped by the desk on my way back (it’s in a different building) and asked them for some more. “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow when the maid comes by” was the response. In my book, that is not the right response. I was too tired and too stunned to argue, plus I wasn’t at a critical point, so I went home. Of course I stewed all night about it…

This morning I was excited because this was the day Beth (my cousin) was coming to visit me. I overslept a little so i didn’t have time to take a shower. No problem, the new place (same management) was right around the corner. I checked in and then the girl behind the counter tells me that my room isn’t ready yet. OK, I am there a little early, I leave my bags there and go get something to eat. My leg is acting up, probably because of the luggage load… I come back and she says it’s ready. I’m in room 728. The last place I was in room 600 something on the third floor, so I ask her where my room is. She looks at me like I’m an idiot and tells me that it’s on the 7th floor… OK, I get up there, open the door, and the place is a mess. The maid has not come yet. I go back downstairs and explain this to her, she says I have to wait. No, “I’m sorry” or anything, just I have to wait.

I kill some time around and about, come back and the room is done. They have this interesting system where you have to put the room key into a receptacle to power up the lights. The last place was like this, so I expected it. The difference is that in this place, it kills all of the power (except the fridge). This means that I can’t charge my laptop while I’m away… grrrr I now have to do my laundry since I only brought a week’s worth (more or less) of clothes. She informs me that the machines work off of tokens that I buy at the front counter. The washing machine takes 2 and the dryer takes one. They’re one lira each! That equates to 9 bucks US total, pretty stiff… She tells me there are vending machines down there for detergent. I go down there, there are no machines. Take the clothes back to the room, go out and buy detergent, come back, take clothes back down and start my laundry. I transfer them to the dryer and wait. I look at the clock and it looks like I’ll have time to shower, eat, and then get to the airport on time. No problem… Well, when I open up the drier, the clothes are still sopping wet and they’re not even warm…
I go up to the front desk and explain that one of the dryers is broken, can I please have another token so that I can finish my laundry? “But you’d need to pay another 1 lira…” Actually, I wouldn’t. I start to become a little testy, but in a measured way. I try to explain that I paid for the drier but it didn’t work, therefore the hotel owes me for that token. She doesn’t quite agree, but she doesn’t want to argue, so she calls the maintenance guy. He comes up and he tells her to give me a token. This whole thing takes about 15 minutes to clear up. I go back downstairs and try another dryer. When this one stops, my clothes are hot and sopping wet. Now I’m getting pissed. My shower time and eating time are dissipating and all I want to do is wash my damn clothes! Fuck it, I’m not going through the hassle of arguing with her, I go upstairs and buy another token, explaining to her that there are two (out of three) broken dryers. About halfway through the cycle, a woman comes in and we start to chat. She informs me that the dryer I’m using is the only one that worked for her when she did laundry a couple of days ago…. They couldn’t even put up a sign? Anyway, when I got the clothes out, they were dry-ish, but certainly not dry. The woman suggested that I hang them up in my room for the last little bit… I spread my clothes all over the place and I notice the ceiling fan. I crank it up and the clothes sway in the breeze. They should dry in no time, except of course when I leave the fan cuts off, grrr…..

I take my shower and have just enough time to grab a slice of pizza on my way to the bus stop. My leg is hurting again, I take some medicine with my slice and figure it’ll kick in right about an hour afterwards. The busses are pretty uneventful, get to the airport 10 till 5. She’s supposed to arrive at 5, so with baggage and immigration to go through, I figure I’ve got a half hour to wait. Well, time goes on and I’m starting to get really hungry, and standing there waiting is making my leg ache. I wait and wait and wait. 5:30, 6:00, 6:30… At seven o’clock I realize I’m the only one waiting for a passenger to get off the plane. Everyone else is waiting for either the AC Milan soccer team or a famous player from it. Everyone has the jerseys on and the police have completely redone the security in the airport.

What the hell? it is now two hours after her plane set down and no Beth. I wonder if she missed her connection? I hope that nothing happened to her. Oh no, maybe I had the wrong time and I missed her! I did send instructions on what to do if I wasn’t there. I logged into my email account and looked at her flight details. Yup, there it was, 5:00 from Milan… ON THE 3d OF JAN!!!

I cannot fucking believe that I didn’t check the fucking itinerary before I left the fucking hotel to go to the fucking airport. I wasted about 5 fucking hours getting more and more pissed. Now I was in pain, I was hungry, and I completely wasted the day. Yes, I am an idiot, I got that out of my system on the way back to Valetta. I decided to eat there. Had rather nice Indian dinner and found a place to buy some shoes tomorrow (they were closed).

So I’m sure your ears were burning as you sat there in Milan my dear. It’s just as well, I was pretty pissed by the time 6:30 rolled around. I’m sure that I’ll meet you at 5:15 tomorrow all smiles cause tomorrow will be a better day!!!

Isaac