A Strange Flight

Despite somewhat of an odd 14 hours on the flight over to Europe, Barcelona has kicked off with an amazing start. However, before going on to cover the sunny Mediterranean city, I will give some brief account of what took place on that flight.

Most of it was spent flying during the nighttime in European time, so to get adjusted, Marco and I settled to sleep after being served dinner.  As usual, I plugged up my ears, covered my face with an eye-mask and buried under the coverlets and my fleece.  We even took a sleeping tablet each so as to ensure that we'd get a sound night's rest.  But no matter what I tried, I could not stop the flow of annoyingly loud conversation that was taking place in the aisle next to ours, two rows up from our seats.  A tall man stood at the end of the aisle, leaning on the corner, speaking and laughing very loudly to a woman who was seated at the end of that row.  Clearly his seat was not there, and he even had to elevate his voice in order for the sound to carry down to where she was sitting, seeing as she was quite short.

Finally, I could not take it any more and I got his attention.  I gestured and said that we were trying to sleep, and if he would mind speaking a little more quietly.  He stared at me for a little bit before saying in a very bizarre fashion, "I am already quiet."  At first I thought that it was just a turn of speech and that he had accepted the request, but I quickly realized that he did not mean to alter his behavior at all.  That was when Marco spoke up and repeated my words.  The man replied, this time not very happily at all, "The airplane is loud, the bathroom doors make noise, my talking does nothing."  I could hardly believe my ears!  How easy is it to simply lower his voice - was he really going to get into a confrontation with us?

Marco pressed on, and said that the doors and the airplane have no choice where as he does.  The man then argued that no one else around us had any complaint - which was true because they were all up watching movies and had headphones on.  I could just feel my blood boiling.  Finally, when Marco repeated his request for quiet, the man actually had the nerve to say, "No thank you."  I almost leapt out of my seat.  Instead, I did something better; I called the flight attendant over, and explained the ridiculous situation to her.  Amazingly, when she walked over to that hateful man, he actually said "I will not! They are just trying to use their power against me!"  Seriously - he said that.  What are we - in second grade? If I could open the doors to push him out of the plane I would have tried.  Never had I experienced such rudeness and resistance at so small a request.

Finally, he quietened down and eventually left.  The rest of the flight passed without incident until we landed.  But as soon as the flight was moving toward the gate, the flight attendant announced that there was a medical emergency on-board and that we weren't to leave our seats until expressly told to do so.  Marco and I had witnessed another one of these emergencies on a flight in the US, but it was no more than a lady being transported to a wheel-chair, looking a bit tired.  However, this time it was clearly different.

Various flight attendants were sprinting up and down the aisle, carrying all means of medical equipment and even an oxygen tank.  Clearly the matter was serious.  When we finally walked out of the plane, we could only use the passage on the left because they had laid the poor passenger down on the ground in other aisle and Marco and actually saw them performing CPR on her.  A quick question to the attendant clarified the situation - apparently it was alcohol poisoning!  Of all the strange cases to happen.  Apparently the passenger had boarded the plane already a bit inebriated and proceeded to drink herself silly on the flight.  And totally unbeknownst to me, air pressure when a plane is in flight causes alcohol to act much stronger and quicker on the system.   But now... CPR!  We left not knowing if she had made it or not.  But it was a good lesson to be had.

I'm so glad that I did not find out my bar exam results right before our flight!