Caroline Holubek: La Reclamación
It was Friday, February 21st, 2020, and I would be leaving for a five-day vacation traveling through Italy in only 7 days. I had scheduled a 2-night stay in Venice followed by a 3-night stay in Rome. I had scheduled tours, hotel rooms, plane tickets, train tickets, and spent countless hours anticipating and researching every possible aspect about this trip. My boyfriend of 5 years was coming to visit, and I wanted our first trip out of the country together to be planned and executed perfectly. We were both 20 years old and about to embark on the trip of a lifetime. However, COVID was rapidly spreading throughout the north of Italy and there were so many uncertainties in Italy at the time, and I had to make the extremely hard decision to forgo the trip.
What Next?
Keeping our safety in mind, I ultimately decided Italy was no longer the best option. With this decision I was not only emotionally hurt, but I was also financially hurt. I had already paid for the plane tickets, hotel rooms, train tides, tours and more. My trip was completely turned upside down and I was tasked with scrambling to try to find a plan B in under 7 days. I went to the website where I purchased the tickets, figuring I would be able to reschedule the trip online; this was not the case. After scouring the website in a panic for what seemed like hours, all I could find was a help page that took me to a Facebook forum with the promise to respond within 7 days. This would not work. I needed answers fast because my boyfriend was coming to Spain in 7 days with nowhere to stay for 5 out of the 10 days he would be there. I needed to reschedule the trip as soon as possible, so I decided to go to the office and have the conversation in person.
La Conversación
I went to the Madrid airport, the 2nd largest airport in Europe, to reschedule my trip. Not only was I in a foreign country, but I was also very new to Spanish and was not confident in my language skills since I had only been there for 7 weeks. Most Spaniards know little to no English, so I knew I had to reschedule my entire trip in Spanish. In addition to being known for not speaking much English, they are also known for working at their own pace. Unfortunately for them I was not fluent in Spanish and was in a mad dash to reschedule my trip.
When I finally made it to the airport, after taking the metro directly from school by myself, I walked up the start to the first help desk. After waiting for 5 minutes looking around at everyone just in a mad mob, I realized there was a ticket machine and you had to take a ticket that would give you a number. I went to the machine and retrieved my ticket. After waiting for 30 minutes, I was directed to wait in another line at another desk. I was terrified, but at least knew this time to get a ticket. I desperately needed to reroute my entire trip but was nervous on my capability to do this in Spanish.
Finally, I made it to the desk after an hour of waiting and had my first line rehearsed and ready to go. My heart was beating out of my chest and I really had no idea what was going to happen. “Necessito cambiar mi viaje a italia porque no puedo viajar a causa del coronavirus” (I need to change my trip to Italy because I cannot travel because of the coronavirus). The receptionist was an older gentleman and he asked me what I would like to do. In that moment I remember thinking “oh man, I did not think this far ahead.” But all of the sudden., my 7 short weeks of Spanish kicked into overdrive and I started asking all sorts of questions all in Spanish. “What are my options? Can I just get a refund? Can I change my tickets to go somewhere else? How do I do that?” At this point in time, coronavirus was not a valid excuse for a refund, so my only option was to travel someplace else. The receptionist asked me where I would like to go, and I did not know what my options were, but he told me I could change the destination of the trip and simply pay the difference between the new trip and old trip. I was not expecting this answer and was not prepared to give him a new location immediately. I told him I would be back after a while with my decision and found a comfy table in the airport, took out my laptop, and began entering every possible destination leaving Madrid on Friday.
Attempting to find tickets in a reasonable price range was very difficult. After scratching off virtually every option, I found a good price to tickets going to Austria and flying back from Hungary. Three hours later, I settled with the castles in Vienna, followed by the baths in Budapest. With a newfound confidence I marched my way back to the counter and told the receptionist my plan. He went through the system and clicked lots of buttons and helped me change the trip. I triple checked that everything looked correct, and I only owed $100 per ticket. He thought I was crazy for changing the whole trip but looking back he, nor I, had any idea what was about to happen in the world.
Conclusion
I did it. I had my first reclamación, which in Spain means a conversation to ‘reclaim’ something, in my case money or a new ticket. I just went to the airport and changed my entire trip to a flight heading to one destination and leaving from another. For me, this was the first time in my entire trip I felt confident in myself. I immediately jumped on the metro and went home and told my host mom I was going to Austria and Hungary and I rerouted my entire trip in Spanish and she was so proud. She even checked my tickets for me because I could tell she was a little skeptical that I did all of that in Spanish. I heard her on the phone later that night telling her daughter how proud she was of me, and honestly, I was proud of me too! I went to school the next day and told my teachers and they ended up telling the director because they were so impressed.
Prior to this experience, I always was so nervous to speak in Spanish for the fear of bring wrong. I know my conversation was not perfect and I said a few wrong words, but the person knew what I was saying, and I was able to change the destination. Although my entire trip was cut short, and I was never able to go to Austria, I value my conversation experience in the airport and realizing my newfound language skills more than anything else. I finally was able to see all I had learned and the progress I had made in 7 short weeks and am still beyond grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and see where you land.
Caroline Holubek, from Greenwood, SC, will graduate in the Spring of 2021 with majors in Spanish and Business Administration. She studied Spanish lived in Madrid, Spain from January 2020 to March 2020 at Tandem Escuela Internaciónal. She is currently Digital Marketing Director for The Frilly Frog, an online children’s boutique where she plans to continue to work after graduation.