End of the Baltic Adventure

It’s the perfect lazy morning, the official checkout is noon but I figure we have until at least 1 without facing any hassles from the front desk. We head to the train station to figure out which buses we should take, Tatevik needs to take a bus to her ferry terminal for the ship to Tallinn, and I need to go to the Ryanair airport which is predictable 90 minutes away in the middle of nowhere. I buy my ticket and take Tatevik to lunch, in retrospect we probably should have gone to the café at the main cultural centre (something along the lines of the Pompidou centre in Paris), but we opt for the Mongolian BBQ, partly because Tatevik has never had it before, and partly because I’m a sad sucker for all-you-can-eats. Very full, we walk back to the station and wait for my bus to arrive. Tatevik’s leaves shortly after mine but she waits with me on the bus platform for a long time. The bus station also has airlock doors and I’m worried about her ability to get back into the station (there was not button to open it from the outside), but she gets in alright, it was such a nice trip, which makes the goodbye so hard.

The bus ride is long since the airport is so far away, out in the country there is still snow on the ground. I board my plane and sit by the window, a girl sits next to me and asks “you live with Madeline right?” I turn around and I don’t recognize the face at first, but some small talk jiggles the memory loose, Place Luxembourg where all the Brussels youth go for their Friday pints. Madeline’s friend Liliane, by a strange coincidence, was in Stockholm the weekend I was, went to see music at the same bar as I was, had her birthday on Sunday as mine was, took the same Ryanair flight as I did, and sat next to me.

Its soooo weird.

Liliane was spending the weekend with her boyfriend, and three of us are Brussels bound so we make a pack and head to the coach for town. All in all the expedition takes over 5 hours, but I’m finally back in Brussels, ready for bed.