Tales From the Baltic: Part One

We start with fear. Fear of missing the flight. Fear of being stopped at customs and being sent back to the states (Why? I don’t know, but my fear can always think of a reason. Maybe it’s the bag of airport trailmix I forgot to throw out. Maybe my doppleganger has been muck raking in Germany. I don’t know). Fear of missing the next flight because I don’t know the airport and I don’t speak french and the anouncements are getting lost in the high ceilings anyway.

And then there’s a familiar face. We met last year. We ate dinner together on the ship. We sat in a hotel lobby for four hours commiserating. We’re on the same flight to Hamburg.

The fear is banished.

Briefly.

The flight lands. The minutes tick by and we’re still on the plane. The window for making our shuttle grows shorter and shorter. I need to get off the plane. I need to go pee. I need to find an ATM and get enough Euros to pay for the shuttle which only takes cash.

We disembark. Where’s baggage claim? There it is. How long will it take for our bags to arrive? Is this one of those airports where it’s the one little old man unloading the plane piece by piece, hand wheeling the baggage to the carosel and offloading them just as slowly? Yes. Yes it is.

Twenty minutes til the shuttle comes.

There’s a bathroom. There’s an ATM. Where are our bags? What if someone else has a bag like mine? It’s a european brand afterall, what if everyone has a multi-colored floral bag here?

The bags come. Mine is the only one of it’s kind. Even Europe has fallen victim to the plague of identical black bags.

Now, where do we catch the shuttle?

There it is. We run. Time is ticking down.

We’re here. Our bags are on the bus. I hand my Euros to the driver. He says something to me in German. I don’t understand. He repeats it, more slowly. The ticket is more than I thought, but I don’t know how much. I didn’t learn German numbers. Why didn’t I learn German numbers?

“Fifty cents more,” says a voice from above.

I give the driver more money. Get my change. Look up at my savior and thank her.

I’m on the bus. My brother’s on the bus. We’re sitting next to people we know who are talking to a man who has the most amazing German Scottish accent.

We’re going to be fine.

We arrive at the hotel, check in. There are our old friends. Here are all our new friends.

We embark. Go through the usual cruise ship safety procedures: can you put on a life jacket? Do you know where your muster point is?

Then it’s time for the first class: Fear and Writing.

I spend the next week processing my fear, disecting, trying to develop strategies for living with it. It’s going to be a long road, probably one I’ll walk for the rest of my life, but I’m oddly excited to embark on a journey to understand my fear and how it relates to my writing.

Thank you for reading.

Writers: if you’re comfortable sharing, what fears do you have surrounding your writing? I’ll share mine in the next post.