It would be nice to spend some time in warmer climes, when our total snow-rain in Latvia turns into vile slush and the biting wind reminds us that we are, after all, Northern Europe. The desire had been brewing for a long time, but the plans — much slower. Traveling alone is rather sad: there's no one to spin yarns to, no one to share the wow-factor with, and a multi-headed hydra, as everyone knows, is far better than the pathetic solitary brain of a primate, even one augmented by Google's machine intelligence.
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Reflections led to buying tickets to Portugal, and for a grand total of 6 people, no less. Traveling as a six-pack is quite the adventure, as it turned out. In principle, this is to be expected, but when you don't know where to cushion the fall, it still catches you off guard.
This time I decided not to work remotely, but simply to take a two-week vacation; my friends got tickets for three.
As for the difficulties, they immediately started raining down on us like January hail on Daugavpils.
I should start by saying that I started a home renovation, and, remembering what it's like to live next to it while it's happening, I decided to slyly bail from the house for the duration. Naturally, I didn't manage to plan and buy all the materials in advance, even though the builders had dragged exactly a ton of putty and leveling compound up to my fifth floor. Nevertheless, right on Thursday, when I already had to head to Riga, they delivered 240 kilograms of corkwood panels from Poland, and instead of prepping for the trip and working, the builder and I hauled brown, holey blocks upstairs. The panels crumbled just like my life over the last three years, but I thought once again that even though I live haphazardly, and do things completely half-assed and askew, at least I am doing something. All too often, people just do absolutely nothing because they can't ever get their act together. However, this topic is currently quite trendy under the name MVP, minimal viable product, glorified by the book Lean Startup.
Let's get back, though, to the difficulties of our trip. First of all, for six people you have to rent a minibus, not a regular car. Even a regular car in some countries strictly requires a credit card, for example in Spain. In Portugal it's a bit simpler, but for a minibus you still need a credit card. All my friends treat credit with suspicion, so we had to order one.
That's where the problems began
- I ordered a credit card, but didn't read the terms carefully. As a result, I cut it up with scissors and threw it away. Nothing to rack up lines of cocaine with now, bummer.
- then I realized that the credit card had to be in the name of one of the drivers, so I had been messing around for nothing.
- the friend who was booking the car was told by his home bank that he was an unreliable person, and they wouldn't give him a credit card. Mystifying, considering that he, unlike me, had taken out loans and paid everything back on time.
- we had to go to Citadele bank, where everything was smooth and awesome. Their card, called Hero, worked like a charm, and even in another situation where we needed it. Out of all our yesterday's misadventures, it was the only thing that brought us joy
- it turned out that you have to pay a whopping 100 euros extra for every new driver, so we decided to make do with two.
These problems were just the tip of the iceberg, and the real trouble began right away at the Riga airport. We were flying with a layover in Berlin, with an hour and a half between flights. The reason was the cheap tickets (something like 120 euros with a suitcase), and the fact that we were flying with a small child, and the parents were afraid of spending many hours straight in a plane with him.
However, we were flying with a low-cost airline (Ryanair), and it inherently never guarantees any connections, apart from the standard EU guarantees, which wouldn't have helped in this case. (Only food and drink if the flight is delayed for a short while)
One of the expedition members, Andrey, noticed this nuance in time, and not wanting to risk it, bought tickets on a third-party site, Kiwi.com, where for a few euros they also offered insurance against missed connections and delays. I, due to my state of mind, incapable of figuring out the nuances and intricacies of modern airline commerce, simply bought the same tickets. Andrey bought tickets for three, and I — for two passengers; one more traveler bought his tickets separately. This detail played an important role in the ensuing puzzle we were about to solve.
The decision to buy tickets on Kiwi became both our curse and our salvation.
The thing is, our departure from Riga was delayed by an hour and a half. The chance of making the flight from Berlin to Faro was becoming increasingly illusory. Despite the optimism of my comrades, things clearly smelled of trouble. And so it turned out. By the time we reached the check-in desk in Berlin, the flight to Faro was already in the air.
The only option now was to use the insurance (it's called booking guarantee). I had never done such a thing before, and for me it was all a novelty. Andrey wasn't particularly experienced in this matter either, so we made a bunch of screw-ups.
We walked out of the terminal into the Berlin spring, occupied a bench with all our junk (a stroller, a huge Ikea bag with kid's stuff, wrapped in duct tape, my backpack from the snowdrop warehouse, a small purple suitcase from Morocco that everyone calls pink, and other bags of a smaller caliber
By the way, the decision to take a small suitcase turned out to be exceptionally correct, but I am getting ahead of my arse again.(sic)
What trials awaited us, how bravely we faced them, and how we ultimately emerged from them, you will find out in the next part.