BARCELONA — AT LAST
/The road to Barcelona was a long one, and as it happened, the fun didn't end after we arrived.
It's Thursday afternoon. We're cheerfully rushing around getting logistics done — signing bank documents and our lease (all of which were in Spanish/none of which I understood), getting the keys to the apartment, letting the kids see their new home — and having an "ahhhh" moment of happiness at the thought of finally settling in. We tell the kids that tomorrow morning they'll see all of their favorite toys. We toast to the very last night of living out of suitcases. I fall asleep with visions of home dancing in my head.
Aaron leaves the hotel first thing Friday morning to meet the movers at 9:00. As he's walking up to our block, he stumbles upon ones of those you-can't-make-this-shit-up scenarios: a water main half a block from our building has exploded overnight. Literally, blown up. The force burst windows in the building across the street, buried their parking garage (and the 20 cars in it) under 3 meters of water, and then — because we live on a hill — sent a tsunami-like volume of water down to every block below ours, which led to the inevitable closure of 15 streets. Our doorman confirms that in the 20 years he's worked here, he's never seen anything like it. Obviously this happens on move-in day, and obviously the moving truck isn't getting anywhere close to our apartment. No Friday move-in after all.
Because I'm starting work tomorrow (Monday), I was needless to say less-than-enthused about this news. (Maybe naively, I didn't pack one shred of work-appropriate clothing in my Grand Adventure carry-on bag.) But we did have three new mattresses delivered to the apartment on Thursday, so we loaded up on bedding and some other essentials, and there we found ourselves again — living in an all-but-empty apartment, just as we had done in Brookline. Full circle. How lovely.
But the universe smiled later that evening; the moving company would make an exception to their normal operations and deliver our things on Saturday morning. Luck!
Six guys who collectively spoke 10 words of English showed up right on time to finalize the move. Because I couldn't communicate with them whatsoever, we spent the day playing charades. (Me: "Futon goes here. Futon...is like a sofa? Couch? No? Umm...like this? [Squatting] No, not table. [Mimicking arm rest] Ahh, yes like chair...but [waving arms frantically] longer, longer!") They successfully got all of our stuff up, unpacked the boxes and reassembled the furniture, and took away the trash. By 1:00pm, they were gone and we were home. At last.
