Of ghost terminals and other little things

Actually, it wasn´t quite a whole terminal, just a part of the shiny new T4 at Madrid´s airport, Barajas. It was section M. I had never heard of it, but our flight to Bilbao was leaving from there. It was so lonely that I asked the security guard if I was in the proper place, wondering if they were shooting a horror movie. But they weren´t, it was just an empty terminal. More than 60 gates, and only two flights scheduled for the whole morning. Little L and I were starving, after an 8 hour (I have to say remarkably uneventful) flight from Chicago, but at first we couldn´t find any open restaurants or cafeterias. That doesn´t happen in Spain. It´s full of them. I was also upset because in the other part of the terminal they have this nice playground for kids, with proper changing tables, bathtubs, ball pools, cribs... That´s where we usually leave from, but if I wanted to go there this time I had to go through security again, twice, and I didn´t even think about it with the baby, the car seat, the stroller...
As I was convinced that I would have a crappy morning, I found a place where we could eat, with a very friendly waitress. Understandable, considering I was the first patron in the morning, and this was 9 am. We had breakfast there, and we spent a good couple of hours with her. We exchanged stories, and laughed about the fact that a brand new, spotless great part of an airport goes totally unused. It´s funny how sometimes you make¨"circumstantial friends", people you meet randomly, and with whom you connect and share a tiny portion of your life, which was the case. L had a blast running around the empty space, which, as you can imagine, was huge. And I reconciled myself with the world, after leaving Chicago pretty mad with a couple of the Iberia employees at the airport, only to find, unexpectedly, the friendliest staff at Madrid. For a long time I didn´t like Barajas, and Heathrow was my favourite airport in the world. But that´s quickly changing. At the end, it´s good to be back home.