Depositing of Excess Baggage on the Way to Bilbao
Toileteering can be a costly exercise as Mike Williams found out…

After I leisurely sauntered back from the toilet, Michiko, Steve and myself walked towards check-in. We looked in a few shops. Steve looked up at the monitor and casually observed that the status of the departure to Bilbao had changed from 'final boarding' to 'gate closed'. Whatever. But this fact soon came back to haunt us, as what at first was a shrug of the shoulders tunred into a 'hmmm, Steve might have a point there' Michiko then suggested it might not be 6.15 British time but actually 7.15 Belgian time. Again another assertion with more than a modicum of reason attached to it. At which point we shit ourselves (metaphorically of course, the physical option having been rendered impossible by prior events).

We started running round the airport hurdling other people's baggage like we were entering the last furlongs of the Grand National. Michiko and Steve were quicker than me and they had good eyesight. I ended up at C34, the gate for Hamburg, squinting my eyes at a flight schedule which no longer listed Bilbao. Had Michiko and Steve caught the plane? Would I ever find the gate? Was I looking forward to a night in Brussels airport?

Yes, was the answer to the last question, and I had Michiko and Steve to accompany me. Like guilty children who weren't capable of making flight connections we mouched along, heads bowed, towards the Sabena desk. I was elected/coerced as spokesperson. Its amazing how necessity can distort one's sense of reality. I explained that the plane had arrived late and this had caused us to miss our flight. The Sabena official had technology on his side, he checked his computer and he retorted that we had had twenty six minutes to get to our flight. Had I really been on the toilet for that long? Steve then entered the conversation. He told the official that we hadn't realised there was a time difference, as if it was the responsibility of the airway to educate people about the exitence of time zones. Steve was actually Taiwanese, although he seemd to have been schooled in the logic of a British tourist - why the hell should we have assumed that Belgium departed from British Summer Time? We were transferred to a woman official who booked us on a flight for the following day and booked us into a hotel in Brussels (none of which we had to pay for - hoorah!). The only drawback was that Steve, being a Taiwanese, was not allowed to leave the confines of the airport. So the airport it was. Shit man.

The woman official gave us some meal vouchers, warned us to stay in the airport and not to wander out of Zone C. Steve turned away muttering that the woman was talking rubbish. No doubt Steve who had been in the airport for not much more than twenty minutes knew much more about airport protocol than the official who had probably been working there for not much longer than twenty years.

We had the meal in the otherwise empty airport cafe and whiled the minutes away. I spiked everyone's excitement by chewing a piece of gum that had been in Michiko's mouth for the past half hour. We consoled ourselves that things could have been worse. For example Steve suggested that the aeroplane we were due to fly on might have crashed. So we sat there for a few minutes sincerely hoping it had. It would have been unlucky for the 210 passengers and their families, friends and work colleagues but a welcome if not suprising slice of luck for ourselves.

Silence... Steve straightened his back and coughed. 'Are you going to be here for long?' Well what else was there to do? Steve said that he wanted to go for a little walk. Twenty minutes later Steve returned with an armed escort. It turned out that Steve had deferred to his greater wisdom and exited Zone C. However, the revolving doors that let him out had not let him back in. Steve said that he had not wanted to exit Zone C, just check the revolving door system. That sounded like convoluted bullshit. Regardless, the consequence of his actions was that he had technically entered Brussels as an illegal immigrant. He was on the verge of being sent back to Manchester, Taipei or perhaps a Belgian prison cell. Lucky for him, the police escort seemed a congenial chap, and once the escort had confirmed his identity with me and Michiko, he was back in the fold.

We found a quiet spot next to the airport's children's playground. Steve slept on the slide. It was going to be a long night...

Bilbao

Bilbao centre was an interesting place. A combination of dilapidated flats and rusty industrial edifices bordering a big smelly brown river. There was a rustic feel about the place. Later on we met up with Michiko's friend Eguz, who told us about the high unemployment and drugs problem in the city. She took us to the old quater, that was called the 'Seven Streets'. There was a bedraggled looking girl playing a flute. Some gypsy children walked by and started to insult her. A few minutes later this guy came out of a local restaraunt and punched her. Man, this was rough stuff.

Beforehand, when we had just arrived, we were approached by this old Basque geezer all dressed in white. He talked to us in Euskadi and showed us a picture of Simon Bolivar. Somehow we held a conversation even though I expect neither of us knew with any certainty what the other was on about. But just like two kids pretending to play tennis when they didnt know the rules, he said something, and then I said something. We wanted to see the Gugenheim museum and he pointed us in the right direction. We walked along the river to the museum, this big post-modern thing, rather like a melted version of the Sydney Opera House covered in silver. The interior of the museum was quite remarkable - with narrow foot bridges and corridoors and stuff - making it an ideal setting for a James Bond movie.

However the most remarkable thing I saw was located outside of the museum. Eguz lived in a suburb of Bilbao called Portugallette (see right). We walked towards Eguz's home from the local train station. On the way we passed through the town square which was jam-packed with locals sitting down and talking to each other. Children were playing, parents talking and tonnes of older people were out. It was incredible. Eguz said this happened each evening. People seemed to be having such a great time, it was so beautiful it broke my heart.

Another memorable event occurred towards the end of the week, when Steve and myself had been dropped off in the town square. We had to wait for others to arrive so we just stood around as the kids played around us and their parents talked. We watched this kid throw a ball up in the air. The ball got stuck in a tree and the kids were dumbfounded - how the hell they were going to get it down? Steve told me he thought he could climb the tree. It looked an impossibility to me as the tree was quite tall with no branches to grab hold of. But Steve was pretty lanky and had been in the army - so I guess he knew how to climb trees. I urged him to do it. He succumbed and galloped up the tree like Spiderman. In no time he had delivered the ball to the children, most of whom were in shock. Here was this guy, with features most of them had never seen before, coming out of nowhere to deliver their ball. One of the kids leant his torso on the tree's stem, and looked up its length in disbelief. Another was told by his mothers to thank Steve. The kid came over and said something in Spanish to Steve. He was followed by a number of other children none of whom were much older than 7 years old. They all got quite excited and started to shout incomprehensibles at Steve. Steve laughed nervously. They then stated running round him in a circle chanting 'Hola Chino'. This army trained tree climbing superhero was looking decidedly intimated by a handful of seven year olds! Later on I told the others, who found it very funny, and from then on Steve was known as 'Holachino!'.

There was lots of other shit that happened and maybe I'll write more if I have the time, but this was all that I took notes of at the time. Its amazing how it all comes flooding back to you when you start getting into it.

One last bit needs to be mentioned. Because Steve had bought his ticket after me and Michiko, he was not able to make our return flight and so had to stay an extra day in Bilbao - his birthday! Whilst making a phone call in a booth next to the river, two locals knicked his wallet and bag. He chased them through the streets of Bilbao but to no resolve. He spent another night asleep in an airport - this time Bilbao. A few weeks later he was in the local cineman in Sheffield watching a James Bond movie - 'The World is Not Enough'. The opening scene was set by the river in Bilbao and included the phone booth in which Steve had been mugged! Coincidence eh?

Date Article Put Online: April 2003

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