What would you do?

At the end of a short trip to Valencia I was sitting at the boarding gate waiting for my flight back to Lisbon. For some time I was quite absorbed in a chapter of “Prisoners of Geography” about South America vividly imagining the future conversations with my flatmates from Columbia and Brazil. Though my time perception for sure was distorted by waiting and reading, something was telling me there should be a waiting line for the boarding by that time. There wasn’t anyone. It turned out my flight was canceled. After about half a minute of panic outbreak in my head I started to search for a way to speak to the flight company or someone who tells you what to do in such a situation. After three conversations in broken English with random very friendly airport employees I made my way back through the security check area into the main hall of the airport. Apparently there was some problem with the machine and the flight was called off prior to boarding.

Here I was in Valencia airport with a new boarding pass for a flight to Lisbon in 7 hours, a coupon for a meal in one of the airport restaurants, hand luggage and almost completely discharged phone and camera. My charger didn’t work properly and that day all I hoped for was that about 10% of battery would be enough to show the boarding pass at the airport. What would you do if you were me? I decided to turn this situation into a small device-free adventure.

Though the airport is quite far away from the city center I went to the Xàtiva‎ train station. My assumption that there would be luggage lockers and an info point with paper maps was proven to be correct. Most likely this was the first time I have navigated a city with a paper map being on my own. As a matter of fact I am more known for complete absence of sense of direction so I was thoroughly drawing my path on a map with a pen. At some point I even caught attention of some elderly Spanish people who were very excited about someone using this type of old-school technology.

My phone died very soon forcing me into asking strangers in the street for time. However my camera in spite of showing empty battery charge the whole time has managed to capture about 20 pictures. It felt a bit like shooting on film with every shot being something valuable and special. I remember this day in Valencia as an improvised spontaneous street art tour that once again proved that if life gives you lemons it is important to remember that they are nice fruits that can be used for different purposes.