Xander's first day in Spain

liz (and some lady named sandy) did everything to get xander to follow me to spain and today was the day to get him! 'get xander from the airport' sounds easy enough, but as with the other countries i've lived in (USA excluded) the bureaucracy is enough to drive you to drink.

i got some nice taxi driver to take me to the airport (35 min drive) but it was at 8am rush hour, so it took more like 1hr20mins. awesome. i'd put in the only address i had for the pick-up place in my GPS but it wasn't recognized. so i called the two phone numbers i had (and had the taxi driver talk to the people in spanish), and they told us to go to the cargo park (which we already knew, we just didn't know where exactly to go in the huge cargo park surrounded by cargo company offices). so we just asked someone at one of the cargo companies where the office was for the company we wanted. though it was close by, they'd never heard of it and weren't interested in helping. (red)

so we went to terminal 1 to the information desk (orange). they didn't know anything. so we went to the united airlines office upstairs and the lady there called around and found the cargo office we needed. yes!! (this was already 3 hours into our trip)

so we went to the cargo office (yellow) and got some paper which would permit us to get a series of other papers. they made a copy of my driver's license and i had to pay 162 euros to get that paper.

then we took that paper to the vet (green) where we waited while she called some people. i emailed her my flight itinerary to prove i wasn't going to sell xander (idk how that proves that). she made a copy of my driver's license. when she was ready she took us to the agricultural cargo park (light blue) (a giant warehouse filled with farmy stuff and boxes) where we wandered through ceiling high shelves to a heavy refrigerator-looking metal door which she opened with a swipe of a card. inside was my precious baby!!! he was all alone in a locked and pull-tied cage. he wanted out so badly and i wanted to hold him so badly but we didn't have any scissors or knives to cut him free! :( the vet asked a warehouse man who came back with a knife and we finally cut the ties holding his door closed.

blessed reunion!!! :D :D :D we were so happy, even the taxi driver grinned from ear to ear.

the vet checked xander out to make sure he was ok after traveling and had no signs of disease, then we had to put him back in the box and leave him there. neither of us were happy about that, but she assured us we'd have him in 30 minutes (lol). she took his paperwork from the crate, glossed over it (GLOSSED!! after all that work!!!!), and gave us a magic paper.

we walked back to the office (idk why that vet made us walk but since she did we were without our car) where the vet told us we'd get xander (medium blue). wrong. we needed that magic paper stamped first... before they'd even move xander.

(dark blue) we went to the stamp holder's building where they copied our IDs to give us visitor's badges. then into the stamp people's office where they wrote down our DL numbers. the stamper was on a coffee/lunch break. i ran into a cafeteria and got a sandwich and drink since it was 1pm by then. stamp lady came back and stamped the magic paper, but not before making a copy of my DL.

we went back to the office, this time with the stamped magic paper (purple)! we waited like 45 minutes for them to bring xander to the office (we would have gotten him ourselves if we could have).

forever reunion!!! :)

i gave xander some of the meat from my sandwich in the car - he was famished!! we were anxious as we went home, though it was much faster at this point. we walked up the million stairs to the apartment and xandy checked the whole place out. i emptied his crate, cleaned it, him, and all of his things, then we had a little cuddle for a while before i decided to attend class at 5:30 since i'd already missed one (big mistake).

when i came home xander was just where i'd left him: snuggled up on the couch. we went on a walk around the block and settled in for the night. roommate isn't here so it's just us.

just like it was always meant to be.