So fast forward our trip to the end of our time in Berlin, 10 days after our European adventure began. We’re on our way to Stuttgart to visit my sister & brother in law. We’re flying Air Berlin. So we book a taxi the night before, we diligently arrive at Tegel airport 2 hours prior to take off (despite only needing to get there an hour before, for domestic) and realise that we legitimately should have camped out the night before because what lies ahead is a cluster-fuck of epic proportions.

There are 3 check in counters open and a line that loops from one end of the terminal to the other 8 times. EIGHT fucking times (later this extends out of one terminal and into another). There are at least 1000 people in the queue and then there is us. Me, Sal and a snotty, tired Sonny. Oh and 2 huge suitcases, a pram that Sonny refuses to sit in, 2 backpacks and a portacot. Fuck my life.

So we line up, Sally wonders off to get food and while she’s gone I move approximately 20 steps forward and into a fist-fight. Angry German is being screamed across a flimsy cord barrier “du hast mich scheizen!” (Not actually what was yelled but it all sounds the same, right? Angry like a Rammstien concert.) Suddenly a fist pops out and smacks the guy in front of me in the nose with a sickening thwacking, crunching sound (again, kind of like a Rammstien concert when people start getting smacked in the face with dildoes) there’s a spray of blood, he falls over, there’s squealing in German now which by the way is equally frightening and I’m just trying to keep a hold of all my fucking luggage and not wee my pants. I mean for fucks sake, I wasn’t even caffeinated at this point. The next part is all very efficient and machine-like, like an ikea furniture set that actually fucking works for a change – security take the non-bleeding man away, medics scoop up the sobbing bloody one, a mop comes and suddenly it’s as if nothing ever happened. So very German.

So Sally and Sonny come back with strudel in hand, Sonnys in the pram screaming blue murder so I pull him out. He doesn’t stop. He turns red. Snot is flying everywhere, he’s arching and bucking and people start staring and now they’re yelling at me in German “ich bin nien!” (Again totally not accurate but you get my gist) so then I’m pushing an empty pram whilst trying to bottle feed the screamer and hide from the ‘everything’s your fault when I’m stressed’ glare from Sally whose pushing the suitcases and carrying the portacot and backpacks and trying to eat her strudel all at the same time. And then he goes to sleep. Fuck yes! There is a god! (There isn’t, and if there was I’d expect he’d be rather tied up with I don’t know… Curing AIDS or stopping the bombs in Syria rather than my baby from crying). We walk another 49.5 steps forward, Sonny’s in the pram now, sleeping quietly. We’ve been in line for over an hour, and so far all flight announcements have been in German so I ask an airport employee what’s happening and explain that our flight is taking off in less than an hour and there seems to be at least another 3 hours of queuing ahead “vait vait!” She says “you all same, just vait” and waves me off. Surely the plane will be held then, I think. Surely! So we wait and wait and then, can you guess it? We wait some motherfucking more! Until we’re about 2 line loops from the front and our plane is literally meant to be taking off right now. I’ve asked again and again been told “vait vait vait”. Then shit goes down. Crazy German lady flings back the queue cord, kicks my pram with sleeping baby in it out of the way (literally, kicks with her birkenstock’ed, German-y feet) and goes to pull the next queue cord and walk through “hey!” I yell, in unfortunately much less scary English, “don’t kick my fucking pram lady!” She turns to give me a withering, European look of scorn and continues through. Sonny’s managed to stay asleep throughout the kerfuffle, and honestly my main concern was that I would have to institute a ‘you wake, you take’ rule. But it’s ok. No screams. So I settle. And then the bitch comes back for seconds. This time she goes to step over the pram, straddles it, props her knee up onto my sleeping son’s leg and then just stands there yelling German abuse at another woman. While using my baby as a footstool. My $20,000 baby. I mean that’s like kicking a mid-priced car! You could dent that shit! And he’s not insured! He’s not under warranty! You break and we still have to take!
“Lady! Get the fuck off my baby!” I yell. She turns and glowers at me, one raised eyebrow (I actually think she was damaged with too much Botox and potentially it was the only part of her face she could move) her knee remains on my pram. Now I’m tired, I’m hangry, I’m de-caffeinated, the bitch is on my baby and I’ve had enough. So like the lesbian version of the hulk (seriously, I felt myself turn butcher, my hair shorten, my muscles bulge), I pulled my arm back, launched it forward and shoved the cunt in the chest, fully expecting a fake tit to explode in my face (unfortunately it didn’t.) “I said, step the fuck off!” she stumbled back, a look of shock on her face, and then a man (I guess her husband) yelled some angry German and pulled her back into her section of the queue. And then again, it was like nothing ever happened. Silence. Like a clean up crew came and mopped up all the emotion, so fucking German!

Anyway, I’ll skip to the bit where we get told “oh your flights gone, sorry, please go line up at the ticketing desk to buy another ticket”

Lulk (lesbian hulk, just go with it) reappears and I lose my shit. Again. Sonny is awake now, kicking his rainbow socked feet around the pram, getting agitated. Sally looks murderous and I want to break something. “Are you fucking serious?!” I say, to the same guy who earlier told me “vait vait” “yes.” He says simply. “Ticketing over there” and points to another goddamn, mother fucking, cunt bucketing, dick swilling LINE.

So I go to the line. I line up. I eventually get to the booth where a woman greets me, almost in tears, and my Lulk fades away. A few tattoos dissipate, my hair re-grows, I’m not longer wearing a vest with the female symbol and a fist on it, I’m back to being a stock standard, reasonably neutral lezzer with one tattoo and skinny leg jeans. Because I do have a fucking heart you know, and it’s not this poor girls fault. I hold Sonny up to the window all snot, red checks,two little teeth and all, and I plead our case. She books us on the next flight and tells us to join the queue. The same queue. Which now goes across 2 fucking terminals. No way lady, NO WAY. This is no time for a butch attack though, I flutter my eyelashes, I hold up my baby and the lady tells me to sneak upstairs to a secret check in and there’ll be no queue. The secret check in turns out to be less like the entrance to hogwarts and more like the Etihad service desk where a sour faced woman reluctantly checks us in “I’m not meant to do this you know” she says petulantly. And finally, we’ve dumped our luggage, we’ve got our boarding passes and we’re away!

That’s not the end of it though, we have to pass through customs where sonny’s jar of puréed pumpkin must undergo a drug test, we sit down to eat and the screamer bucks so hard in the pram it tips over and gives him his first ever bruise. On his head. So now he looks like a victim of domestic violence. Our next plane is then delayed by 45minutes. And i write this entry from my seat on the smallest plane ever, with a propellor that sounds a lot like a vibrator in need of a few new AAA’s. BUT, we’re finally on board.

My sister says she’ll have brenzel waiting for us in Stuttgart. Well I tell you what, I haven’t got a clue what Brenzel is but it better be soaked in a whole lot of liquor. I need a fucking drink.

*Note: This in no way encourage smug nay-sayers to nodd their heads and say “I told you so!” there are many more travellingwithbaby tales to come!