Phew...what an absolutely insane, but wonderful, 6 days it has been!! My mom arrived in Bilbao on Thursday afternoon and we spent Friday - Monday in PARIS!! I wish I could say "I picked my mom up at the bus station Thursday and we had a casual evening before our trip" and move on to the Paris details, but if you know our family you know nothing is ever that simple. So, this post is devoted to the fiasco of her arrival and my next post will include info/photos of our Paris trip.
Alright, let's rewind to last Sunday evening when I made my weekly phone call home to finalize details of my mom's trip to Spain. At that point we concluded she'd arrive in Madrid on Tuesday morning, spend 2 days touring around, then take a BUS up to Bilbao Thursday morning. I emphasize the "bus" aspect because it will become very relevant later. On Wednesday night I received a short email from her saying she would be on a bus set to arrive at 12:45pm at Bilbao AB, but she didn't know what "AB" stood for so she asked me to check before I headed over after class. To me, "AB" stood for "Abando" which is 2 metro stops down from the bus station, and as far as I knew only held trains. Telling myself to stay calm, I went into my program office after my midterm Thursday morning to get some clarification. The moment I said "AB" they said "Abando" and the moment I said "no, a bus" their faces turned from "aww we're so excited a parent is coming" to "ummm that's not possible, you have a serious problem". Very settling, right? They were very helpful as usual and called the bus station who said there were 2 busses coming 30 minutes before and after the time she wrote, but none scheduled at the exact time. Basically, I was told to hurry to the bus station and wait just to be on the safe side. I completely disregarded the train station since in the past month of planning the word "train" had never come out of my mom's mouth. So there I am, sitting anxiously at the bus station at 11:30am expecting to wait for 30 minutes. The noon bus pulls in with a large "Madrid" sign on the front window so I jump up, only to be disappointed she's not on it. I assume she's on the next bus so I don't worry. However, when the next bus should have been posted, it wasn't. I went to ask the information desk (let me tell you, I got some great practice with my Spanish during this time) and they told me no bus was scheduled until 1:15, but once that came around and I went up to ask again a different worker said 2:30. At this point I start to panic because I didn't have my computer, I didn't have a phone, and my mom doesn't speak Spanish/has never been here before. Trying to stay as calm as possible I decide to wait until 3pm (it was now 2pm) and then go to the train station just to double check - even though I was told over and over again she was going to be here based on the information I had. 5 minutes later, as I did about my 100th lap around the station, out of the corner of my eye I saw my mom standing next to a Spanish man and was SOOOOO relieved. It turns out while she thought she was taking a bus since that is what she researched in America, her hotel somehow booked her on the train and she had no way of telling me so she had to get herself from the train station to the bus station and hope I was still waiting there. CRAZINESS!!!!! Totally and completely not how I expected/wanted that day to go, but in the end it was all okay. I took her back to my apartment and then we went out for lunch and a little tour of the area then had a wonderful dinner and went to bed in preparation for Paris. Photos and trip stories will be on the next post!
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