Me and The Loved One spent an entirely fulfilling fortnight recently over at Fuengirola, Spain, where her father owns a house up on the hills. We had taken a taxi from the Malaga airport when we arrived, but the results were somewhat unsatisfactory, as the streets in Fuengirola are undergoing massive renewal work and the traffic arrangements were a bit on the chaotic side. Meaning the already complicated and hard-to-follow street map was now in full disarray and most of the roads were closed for cars. Our taxi driver wasn’t able to find his way to our destination even though he had a GPS navigator in the car, with us, not very helpfully, fuming in the back seat, feverishly leafing through a pocket dictionary in order to communicate with a driver who didn’t speak a single word of English.

My Spanish vocabulary consists of some 20 words that, when put together in any order, seldomly form an intelligible sentence. The Loved One has a bit firmer grasp of the language, aided by her natural tendency to emphasise her points by flailing her hands about in a very mediterranean manner while speaking. Sadly this didn’t help in finding the right route either, and finally, after many a cul-de-sac, desperate madre de dioses by the driver and a lot of consulting the locals on the streets but mostly by sheer luck, taking some 60 minutes to complete a 20-minute drive, we ended up on the right road and the right house.

This experience didn’t leave us with an exceedingly positive opinion of the local taxi drivers and their competence so, when the holiday was over and it was time to return home, I thought it’s not so bad an idea to walk to the Los Boliches station at the centre of the town and take a train to the airport instead of trying to call a taxi and see whether it arrived or not. It’s a good 20 minutes walk, at a leisurely stroll, mostly downhill all the way. So quite a long one but not entirely lethal by any means as we had taken and survived it a dozen times by then already.

During our two weeks we had hoarded much more stuff to take home than we had the luggage space to fit into, so some new luggage was needed. The biggest problem was a largish painting I had acquired. I didn’t want to remove it from it’s framing and roll it up so the only option was to buy a big enough suitcase for it. It soon became clear that luggage of required capacity wasn’t easily available and the only one I was able to find was from a clearance sale of an oriental bazaar, on the last day of our holiday. It was pink, lovely, of enormous size and hiper oferta at 25€. I loved it unconditionally, even when the handle broke halfway off after I had cautiously pulled it behind me on the streets for some 15 minutes.

Back at the house I fixed the handle with sturdy bolts and we merrily packed our bags. The Loved One had two flightbags to take care of, and I had two full-sized ones, the smaller weighing a bit over 20 kilos and my new pink one 30 kilos. We had reserved plenty of time for the procedure of leaving the premises, this including going through 3 printed sheets of paper with instructions on how to properly turn the electricity and water off, leave everything as desired and lock and bolt up all the doors and gates. Naturally checking and rechecking every detail took longer than expected and eventually we left the house in haste, huffing and puffing because we didn’t have the extra time we thought we would have, with the sun smugly shining in full force and the temperature firmly resting at 30°C.

After some 100m of advancing steadily the handle of my pink suitcase broke off completely. Which wasn’t all that surprising, considering how badly it coped with it’s own empty weight earlier in the day. Matters became drastically complicated because of this and it began to dawn on me that it wasn’t much help if the road slopes downwards when it’s made of all kinds of bumpy materials that keep regularly changing to other bumpy materials, making the tiny wheels of my bargain luggage squek for mercy. The pavements weren’t broad enough to pass all the trees and lampposts with both bags side by side, either.

It soon became apparent that the pink suitcase would be my cross and this was to be my personal Via Dolorosa, with only one station instead of the traditional eight, the Los Boliches Station that would also be the scene of my crucifixion were we to miss our train which became more likely by the minute. Whether the locals jeered at my ordeal I failed to notice for by now I was beyond observing details like that. The wheels of my pink suitcase broke and fell off and for the last part of the journey I dragged a dead 30kg weight behind me with my left hand, the other 20kg suitcase miraculously still surviving with its’ wheels intact in my right hand.

I have no clear recollection of how I managed to drag the bags up the three lenghty wheelchair ramps that lead to the station, just as the train arrived, or how I was able to buy two tickets from the vending machine getting all the required details right and still make it to the train. I had no time to collect the change as I hurled the suitcases inside the crowded train and hopped in, vaguely thinking how embarrassing it would be to collapse and die on top of our heap of crap luggage. The handle of my other suitcase then came off, as I tried to lift it out of other passengers’ way.

But we did make the train, at a sort of near-lethal half-run instead of the leisurely stroll, and a most horrible experience it was, all in all. The Loved One wasn’t overtly amused, and to be honest, neither was I. Not until the sweat had dried a bit later and the muscles had stopped aching a few days later. I believe she is yet to discover the amusing side of it all, and maybe she never will. Maybe there is no amusing side. We’ve only discussed it superficially. But I’ve made a silent vow that in the future, we will take a taxi as often as possible.