Travel to Spain - Dec 2023 - Part 1

 This is my third trip to Spain as I’m working with a company (for around 3.5 years now) that has offices in Spain. Writing travelogues has been a struggle off late. In any case business trips leaves you with very less time to indulge in general site-seeing and immersing in local culture. Still as its almost end of the year and ‘writing’ has been a constant in new goals, objectives for new year resolutions all those years. I will try my hand once again and see if I can write a nice travelogue (in my own eyes) about this visit.

So, here I am in Spain on a week preceding Christmas, the official agenda is to participate in annual business meeting for taking stock of last year progress and deciding next year’s objectives. The unofficial agenda is that company top management does not want to travel to India so close to Christmas, and they would rather have us travelling Spain. The added cherry on top is that there have been some recent top-level hires at group level. And this visit gives us a chance to meet those guys face to face. Plus, I have been partially promoted and I’m now expected to be a part of these events.

Though I have had my fair shares of overseas trips in the past (courtesy my job profile). The novelty of the experience starts right from airport itself (specially if you are travelling to Europe which is much away from middle east. Total flight timing of around 11 hours plus airport lay overs in between are not a joke, specially if you are wrong side of 40 and has food limitations. The only thing breaking this pattern is horde of Punjabis’ (I’m myself a Punjabi too) queueing up in lines at Airport check-in counters. We are sort of like global travellers and there is a unique class of persons travelling at airports. Normally these are aged parents travelling to be with their children settled abroad. In our culture and society, the parents send their wards abroad by spending their lives saving in the hope of a better future. Then if they become settled enough, they call their parent to live with them. Hence you will find old people from remote places in Punjab at airport. They are very limited in English communication and probably are travelling outside their state for the first time. My flight was from Turkish airlines with a lay over in Istanbul, which is apparently a convenient place for travelling to Canada which is like a mini-Punjab outside India. 

My flight timing was 6 in the early morning, considering international flight and state of rush in the Delhi airport. I had to be at the airport maximum by 2 in morning (or night?). So, it was almost an all nighter for me on the day before I travel. As my travel frequency has increased lately (for both domestic and international travel), I have been trying to plan my schedule to makes it less hectic on my body (enough of early morning and late nights flights for me as I’m not getting any younger now). But I don’t have much of options this time around. Generally international flights are scheduled at an ungodly time in India. Also, my total flying time was around 11-12 hours and adding 2.5 hours of layover and accounting for the time difference, it means I was landing in evening in Madrid and my hotel was further 2.5 hours away in Burgos. So, I was reaching my hotel just in time to catch enough rest before reporting to office next day. I was flying by Turkish Airlines this time and the layover was in Istanbul. Both the airlines and the layer airport were new to me.

I had an windows seat for first leg of journey, and I was looking forward to it. As it means more comfortable journey where you can use the windows as head support, and nobody to disturb you in sleep for bathroom break. But as the luck would have it. I find one old lady already occupying my seat in plane. Apparently, she was travelling to her family in England and as She was in a wheelchair. She boarded before everyone one. She was more comfortable in the window seat, and I don’t have a hear to ask her to move. Even if it means spending a long flight of 7 hours in uncomfortable middle seat. The layover was uneventful even if I can’t find anything to eat and I reached Madrid without any major issue only a bit hungry and tired. The driver was there to pickup us up, his car was as comfortable as you imagine it to be but there was a strange smell of smoke in the car. Either it was some peculiar brand of tobacco or some other drug (I decided that I don’t really want to know). As a result, when I landed at hotel in Burgos, Spain. I was already feeling a bit ill.