Tales of an unfortunate journey a.k.a. When bad luck never leaves you (or as I like to say #StarkLuck always and forever) a.k.a. How our dream of meeting the Marvel cast ALMOST came true, but now it probably never will
Bear with me guys, it’s a funny/sad story, but it’s a long one, so brace yourselves.
I’ve always been told not to start a speech with “So”, but since I have literally no strength in me to fight alongside the gods of grammar and proper writing this morning, I’ll do it anyway.
So, exactly one week from now, my friend and I will be heading to London for 7 days of fun, relax aaaand to attend the Captain America: Civil War premiere… Or so we thought.
See, the two of us are huge Marvel fans (we love entertainment in general, but have a penchant for Cinecomics, Disney and Marvel) and we’ve been planning to attend one of their events for YEARS. And by years I mean that we’ve spent the last few years saving money and trying to figure out where and when we should go in order for that to happen. Trying being the keyword.
See, we live in Italy, our towns are pretty small (mine’s a little bigger, but that does little to the cause) and not extremely well connected to the bigger cities; on top of that, we’re not exactly Tony Stark when it comes to paychecks and financial resources (meaning we have no job and little money to spend in “epic journeys”).
I graduated from University last year (with honors, if it helps understanding the situation) and so far I’ve only been able to find part-time jobs like baby-sitting or translating a couple of texts for some agencies.
Finding a job here is not a piece of cake (mmmh cake… Great, now I’m hungry) so we have to manage with what we have.
Anyway, a few months ago, after finally coming to terms with the fact that there would be no Italian premiere (last year for Avengers: AoU we waited, and waited, and waited… and waited for one, but it never came) we took matters into our own hands – as much as possible, at least – and decided to go big, or go home: we would try our luck with the London premiere (ooooooh!).
We started planning everything, making calculations, checking every day flights and hotels’ prices, trying to find the cheapest, though safest way to do this.
January came, and we had to book then if we still wanted to find low prices and availability. So we did.
Civil War debuted in theaters between the 29th and the 4th of May – safe last minute changes- so we had to cover that span of time, plus at least a couple of days before if we wanted to go to the red carpet.
With May 1st in the middle of the week, we still payed as much as we did a couple of years ago when we booked in June for July, but at least we knew we had secured or spot there.
Too bad we couldn’t leave Italy on the 25th of April, because there were no flights that day, at least not with the company we were flying with (the cheapest one) so we had to book our flight for the 26th (in the evening, cause of course they cut the morning flights – and not only those, the company is planning to leave our airport for good, something that was announced after we booked our tickets, obviously – and did I mentioned I also had to pay double the price for our return flight cause the site wasn’t working?).
You’re starting to see our problem?
The thing is, I’ve always had bad luck: every time I go somewhere outside my hometown, you can be certain that something will happen to me, and usually, that something is nothing positive. And every time I try to plan some activity, taking into account every little thing that could go wrong, you may rest assured that things WILL go wrong, and all I’ve done to counteract that, will be vain.
Now, I’m not saying I’m bad luck for the others… Just for me. My own, personal little raining cloud, always following, never leaving me.
And apparently, my friend is not that lucky either.
So of course, after months of speculations (checking every inch of every site that could have had info on the matter) we found out that the premiere would be on the 27th or 28th (If we look back to previous ones, they were usually a couple of days before the release date, even taking into account other European dates) and we started to get excited, because for once, we would finally be able to make it.
We still had a lot to plan, because 1) If everything went well, we would land in London at midnight, not exactly the best time of the day (well, night) 2) Both me and my friend were going to be on our period for the entire length of our vacation (duh, why thinking we could escape that for once) which meant cramps, cramps, cramps and not only that 3) We didn’t know our bearings, and if we wanted to get a decent spot on the red carpet, we had to go there first thing in the morning 4) We had to consider that it probably would have rained the whole time, and cold weather awaited us – in the last few days in Italy we’ve had a sudden rise in temperatures, so it wasn’t going to be a simple transaction, especially for our suitcases – 5) We still didn’t know how the whole thing worked, and how to go to the toilet while being stuck in the crowd (major problem, major.)
We were in the middle of trying to figure out all that when, a couple of weeks ago, it was officially announced the date of the premiere: April 26th.
You can imagine our reactions.
I’ m not going to cry my heart out here, cause I don’t think you guys deserve this punishment, but I’m telling you this: my Facebook profile image is Sad Affleck since the day we found out. So just imagine me instead of him in the Sound of Silence video thing…
*Bye, Chris Evans, I’ll never be able to meet you. I thought that day would come eventually, but clearly, it is not this day… Or next Tuesday… Or any other day, apparently.*
So, not only we’re arriving in London when the fun has already ended, but I also have a sore throat now (obviously, this had to happen… Again, cause of course just last month the same happened before a concert, and a couple of months ago on my birthday) and who knows what else in store for us.
So far, we know that every single event we were interested in, it ends or starts before or after our stay (like countless exhibitions, Romeo and Juliet with Richard Madden, or any tv series convention taking place there).
I know we shouldn’t complain so much, since we’re still getting a week in one of the best cities in the world, but you can see how all of this can be immensely frustrating.
One thing for sure: I am never, eeeeever planning anything else that ahead of time. Not even my wedding.
#StarkLuck
A dream is a wish your heart makes 