It's a small world

This was originally posted on my friend Anna's blog, http://www.dailydoseofanna.blogspot.com/. From time to time she has guest bloggers, and I was lucky enough to be one. Check out her blog, it's cool. Anyhow, this piece is being republished here, but the original can be found here.

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So first off, let me say that I'm pissed at Aerolineas Argentina. I got to the airport this morning to fly from El Calafate to BA, and they had a) overbooked the flight to start with and b) changed equipment to a smaller plane. Consequently, Strategerist did not make it on her flight. The good news is that there is free wifi and a place to vent. I tried every trick in the book to get on the flight and nothing worked. I asked for compensation, they refused. I stood at the counter and refused to move. In the end, I got a voucher for lunch. Small victories.

So I'm sitting in the airport lounge, and I find the ONE outlet to plug my ghetto ancient computer in to. And I'm happily logging on and all that and suddenly I have the urge for a cafe con leche. So I turn to these two guys in the corner of the cafe playing scrabble and ask them to watch my computer. I notice that they have a lot of Z's on the board, so I ask them where they are from. Poland, they respond. One from Warsaw, one from Krakow. And I get so freaking excited. I tell them that I have visited Poland, but that's not why I'm excited. I'm excited, because there was some measure of divine fate earlier in the day...

I was packing my bags and trying to organize my stuff. I was pulled my ipod out of a plastic bag, and it kind of got stuck. So I pull harder and I see something attached/hanging off of the earbud. I was pissed that I had broken it or something like that (wouldn't be the first time I've crushed those earbuds). Anyhow, it was my Solidarity pin (Solidarnoss) that I picked up in Poland in June 1989. It is my absolute favorite souvenir in the world. I've written essays on this pin. And here it was, in some random bag in Argentina. And I was pissed at myself because it should not have come and I'm not sure how it got to Argentina or mixed in with my stuff. So I put it away in my laptop bag, figuring this was the safest place for it.

So when I meet these two Poles and we start talking about Poland, I suddenly remember the pin; I dart to my bag, pull it out, and show it to them. They were more than impressed and asked me how I got that. I explained that my family took a vacation to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania in the summer of 89. They looked at me and said, 1989? Like they needed reassurance that I wasn't a lunatic. I insisted it was 89 and that's how I got the pin. Then they wanted to know what kind of family takes their vacation in the Soviet Bloc? Answer: the kind that produces a child who thinks Patagonia, Central Asia, and other remote places are fun!