I’m a planner. That is one of the basic tenants of my personality. Before coming to Florence I printed out every boarding pass, train ticket, hotel confirmation, and museum pass. I had three different excel spreadsheets for budgets and schedules and basically anything else you can imagine. I put everything in a three ring binder and dubbed it “The Bible”. I proudly showed it off to everyone and anyone who wanted to listen and everyone told me I’m wasting my time in accounting and I need to just open a travel agency. This trip was my baby, and I had everything perfectly planned to a T.
Long story short, I got a little too proud and cocky… So when I saw that “our” train to the Pisa airport to catch our flight to Brussels was leaving five minutes early I figured it was just assumed it was good karma for having everything planned out so well. Imagine my surprise when we were on the train for an hour and realize we were on the two and a half hour long train so instead of getting to the airport an hour and a half before our flight, we’d be getting to the train station twenty minutes before. Needless to say the next hour was awful, I honestly did not think we had any hope of making our flight.
My first thought was that I just wanted to call my mom and cry and have her tell me it was all going to be okay. But very quickly I realized it was two in the morning at home and that my friend and I were on our own. After that realization I felt a nice calm come over me. It was going to be up to us to figure out what to do next, it was time to make our own luck and we were ready to rise to the challenge.
What came next was basically a scene straight out of The Amazing Race. A run through the Pisa train station, jumping in a taxi and running “AEROPUERTO” (which yes, I know, is Spanish not Italian), a dash through security (and then a rerun through security because I forgot to throw away my water bottle, and a final sprint to the gate where we saw there was still a line of people waiting to board. From the moment we got off the train to the moment we got to the gate was fifteen minutes. My friend was squealing with joy and I broke down crying. Within minutes we were on board and off to Belgium.
Brussels was a beautiful city and I’ll include some pictures below, but I think I’ll always remember it as the city that helped me come back down to earth and learn how to handle things when everything doesn’t go perfectly right. I know I’m never going to make a mistake like that again (I’m actually writing this on a train right now and I guarantee you that I checked my ticket and the track screen five times each). Brussels will always be the city that forced me to grow up and realize that things going wrong aren’t a death sentence, just setbacks that need to be dealt with. So I enjoyed those Belgium waffles and French fries, I deserved them after that ordeal.