A decade on, we mourn, we reflect, we remember 9.11.01...
Ten years ago today, I was in Spain with my then boyfriend on a Kellogg GIM (Global Initiatives in Management) trip that he had organized for his class. We had spent several wonderful days with the group in Barcelona and that afternoon (morning in the U.S.) we all went to the airport, where he flew to Stockholm to finish his trip and I flew alone to Madrid (where the group had been before Barcelona) to hang out until he returned to meet me there the next week. I was to later that week travel to Marbella to meet up with some his/our school friends who were flying from the U.S. on 9/11, which of course didn't end up happening as the airspace was closed for days. Several other SO's were headed back to the U.S. that day and they ended up getting diverted back to Europe to wait out the aftermath.
My plane took off at just before 3pm Spanish time, the same time that the first plane hit the first tower. It was an odd flight at the time (the Iberia plane reeked of cigarette smoke, the guy next to me was really strange), and then in hindsight of course I realized that the pilot must have known what was happening while we were in the air, but none of us knew. It was only after we landed and I took the train (passing through the station that would later be another terrorist target) to my little hotel in the center of Madrid, that I saw what had happened and by then the towers had both fallen. The only English channel that I got in my room was BBC Europe, so I watched them play back what had happened for days. Watching the BBC now (which DH likes to do) still reminds me of those days I spent alone in a country where I didn't know anyone and didn't speak the language.
I knew as soon as I saw what had happened that people I had gone to school with were surely in those towers. Two of my classmates died that day. Two young men who were fellow econ majors and graduated with me in 1999. I had decided not to take the popular route from our program to work on Wall Street, but both of them had. One was getting ready to get married at the time and the other was the "man with the red bandana", who was written about so widely after the attacks, having gone back up the building several times to save others and was finally found months later with rescue workers in the lobby of the south tower.
It wasn't until the next day that I finally got out and decided to try to make the most of my trip. I went to the Museo Reina Sofia and when I happened upon it, spent a lot of time standing in front of Guernica, Picasso's famous war painting, knowing that this must be what scenes back home looked like and that we were at and now would actively be going to war.
I was able to reach home via cell phone and did have some luck connecting with others via the internet cafe near my hotel, but I didn't hear from the boyfriend for days. After a year and half together, we were newly living together back in Chicago, and it was certainly a definitive turning point in our relationship. Apparently he was busy dealing with the overwhelming job of dozens of seemingly worldly, but at this time completely panic stricken group of students he was leading, and he knew I was/would be fine. When he finally met me in Madrid, we took the train to Seville and then drove around Portugal for another week trying to make the most of the trip we'd planned for months.
I had left my job in July, primarily to travel around with him (we were supposed to be in NYC in Aug.), and now the economy which was already bad would get much worse. So when I got a job offer in the spring of 2002 in Boston, to undertake the unpopular task of raising money to help recent immigrants in the time after 9/11, I decided that as much as we loved each other, things were probably not going to work out the way we wanted and I moved back there without him. That summer, after he graduated (a degree he rightfully credited to me), he came to visit and we very tearfully said goodbye. He lives and works in Argentina now and still sends me a happy birthday text every year. Oh the people who shape our lives and memories...
Ten years ago today, I was in Spain with my then boyfriend on a Kellogg GIM (Global Initiatives in Management) trip that he had organized for his class. We had spent several wonderful days with the group in Barcelona and that afternoon (morning in the U.S.) we all went to the airport, where he flew to Stockholm to finish his trip and I flew alone to Madrid (where the group had been before Barcelona) to hang out until he returned to meet me there the next week. I was to later that week travel to Marbella to meet up with some his/our school friends who were flying from the U.S. on 9/11, which of course didn't end up happening as the airspace was closed for days. Several other SO's were headed back to the U.S. that day and they ended up getting diverted back to Europe to wait out the aftermath.
My plane took off at just before 3pm Spanish time, the same time that the first plane hit the first tower. It was an odd flight at the time (the Iberia plane reeked of cigarette smoke, the guy next to me was really strange), and then in hindsight of course I realized that the pilot must have known what was happening while we were in the air, but none of us knew. It was only after we landed and I took the train (passing through the station that would later be another terrorist target) to my little hotel in the center of Madrid, that I saw what had happened and by then the towers had both fallen. The only English channel that I got in my room was BBC Europe, so I watched them play back what had happened for days. Watching the BBC now (which DH likes to do) still reminds me of those days I spent alone in a country where I didn't know anyone and didn't speak the language.
I knew as soon as I saw what had happened that people I had gone to school with were surely in those towers. Two of my classmates died that day. Two young men who were fellow econ majors and graduated with me in 1999. I had decided not to take the popular route from our program to work on Wall Street, but both of them had. One was getting ready to get married at the time and the other was the "man with the red bandana", who was written about so widely after the attacks, having gone back up the building several times to save others and was finally found months later with rescue workers in the lobby of the south tower.
It wasn't until the next day that I finally got out and decided to try to make the most of my trip. I went to the Museo Reina Sofia and when I happened upon it, spent a lot of time standing in front of Guernica, Picasso's famous war painting, knowing that this must be what scenes back home looked like and that we were at and now would actively be going to war.
I was able to reach home via cell phone and did have some luck connecting with others via the internet cafe near my hotel, but I didn't hear from the boyfriend for days. After a year and half together, we were newly living together back in Chicago, and it was certainly a definitive turning point in our relationship. Apparently he was busy dealing with the overwhelming job of dozens of seemingly worldly, but at this time completely panic stricken group of students he was leading, and he knew I was/would be fine. When he finally met me in Madrid, we took the train to Seville and then drove around Portugal for another week trying to make the most of the trip we'd planned for months.
I had left my job in July, primarily to travel around with him (we were supposed to be in NYC in Aug.), and now the economy which was already bad would get much worse. So when I got a job offer in the spring of 2002 in Boston, to undertake the unpopular task of raising money to help recent immigrants in the time after 9/11, I decided that as much as we loved each other, things were probably not going to work out the way we wanted and I moved back there without him. That summer, after he graduated (a degree he rightfully credited to me), he came to visit and we very tearfully said goodbye. He lives and works in Argentina now and still sends me a happy birthday text every year. Oh the people who shape our lives and memories...
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