Day 1: Fort Cologne

Right now, I'm at Cologne Airport, where I'm holed up like Tom Hanks in the movie The Terminal. I've been sleeping here all night and can't leave because it's pouring rain and I can't find the damn left luggage to leave my bags. In a few lines, I'll recount what's happened so far.

As soon as I started preparing to go to Germany, the following problem arose:

As a good chemist, I feared there was no other method to reduce my suitcase's mass other than removing things from it. Nominees: the bathrobe, the Hora Chanante episodes, the Iberian products, and the toiletries bag. In the end, I decided to leave the bathrobe in Ávila (I already had a fairly large towel) and half of the Iberian products (chorizo, salchichón, lomo, and Serrano ham). I stuffed the toiletries bag into my backpack.

Following wise advice from my Uncle Domingo, I decided to risk it and reintroduce some of the original amount of Iberian products into my suitcase:

If necessary, I would pay the surcharge or make myself a huge sandwich at Barajas Airport. In the end, according to the check-in desk's scale, my suitcase weighed a whopping 26.5 kg! But they didn't make me pay anything. I still don't know if they'll maintain this “forgive me 6 kg” policy on the journey from Cologne to Dresden.
Well, first, I went from Ávila to Madrid on a regional train full of people where my friend Pedro, who accompanied me, and I had to fight to find a seat. Then, at Barajas, I had to wait in a huge line because there was only one check-in desk for the two flights Germanwings had scheduled. After checking in, I had a drink with Ana and her boyfriend, who came to see me off at the airport.
When I said goodbye to them, while going through security, the Civil Guard girl stopped me. I had no idea why, but it was because she liked my Clavel Ocho t-shirt (the one with the Norit lamb (a Spanish brand of soap), but instead of Norit it says Ritmo (rithm in Spanish)). Then, during the whole plane journey, I was talking to a girl from Palencia who was going to study German in Cologne.

The plane

When I arrived in Cologne, it was raining and not cold. I looked for a hotel to spend the night, but there were no rooms available, so I wandered around the airport to find a place to sleep. I saw a spot next to the Germanwings check-in desk that was very quiet, where a couple of people were already sleeping, and there was also a German girl doing patchwork. So I built a fort like in Western movies: with a couple of blocks of chairs and the luggage cart, I had a fairly safe place to sleep. I called it "Fort Cologne." For extra security, I attached the computer bag strap to the suitcase and the backpack so I had everything connected. I used the computer as a pillow. Finally, I couldn't sleep for more than an hour at a time because many people were passing by. It was a veeeery loooong night.