Fastforward about three hours and we arrive at Narbonne. We have about an hour until our new train arrives at the station so we break for lunch. We end up grabbing some Doners(they are Matt's favortie lunch) and chilling for a bit. We take our seats on the train and start reading. We wait...and wait...and wait.
"What the hell is going on? This train was supposed to leave thirty minutes ago!?!"
"I don't know" Lee sarcastically replied
Then the three beeps that prelude an announcement play. The conductor comes on and speaks some ridiculous sounding French at hyperspeed. We manage to catch the last few words...something about connection to Barcelona. Matt, Lee, and I just kind of sit there thinking, "What are we gonna do?" Then I realize, they are all waiting for me to do something! Damn it, when was I elected Public Relations Chair for our trip through Europe? I leave the train and try and look for somebody official. Yellow vest with red stripes, sounds perfect.
"Parle Vu Angle?"
"No".
I'm going to pause here and ask any of you if you have ever been lost or confused(or both because I was definitely both) and everybody around you speaks a different language? It is not a very good experience. While I'm running around trying to find somebody who speaks even the slightest bit of English, I see people getting off of our train and running to the front of a station, following the crowd seems like a great idea. A little more investigation and I find there is a bus there waiting. Lots of possibilites are running through my head...Is our train broken? Is this bus taking us to our next stop? Should we get on the bus? What if the bus takes us the wrong way? I decide that it definitely isn't a good idea to get on a bus which I cannot pronounce the destination of, even if everybody from our train is flocking to it. At this point I was going to head back to the train to tell Matt and Lee and see what they thought when I see a man who looks Spanish hanging out on a bench near our train. BINGO! Spanish I can do. I approach and ask him what's going on. He let me know that he thinks the bus was called to bring all of the passengers to the trains next stop and that we were on our own to try and get to Barcelona. He also informed me the cables for the bus were broken and they wouldn't be fixed that day. Now we have a serious issue. The next stop on the train is some random french town which isn't even bold on the map. Do you know what that means!?!?! It's not a major city, which also means not many people are going to speak English. We were in some serious trouble. I run to the train and report my findings to Matt and Lee. We grab our bags and head for the bus...but it's gone. So not only is our train not moving but we missed the bus to the next city. The best part of this is that we didn't even freak out. I think that we were expecting something like this to happen eventually, we all kept our cool and tried to figure out what to do next. It was decided that our resident PR chair would go in to the station office once again to try and speak with the officials. Unless I spontaneously mastered French in the five minutes we were outside the train station I saw failure on the horizon. I approached the desk once again and asked if anybody there spoke English, no good. I ask if they speak Spanish, and they give me the little bit gesture. Ok...this may work out. For about five minutes I try to converse with the official when a man walks in from the back of the office. He was wearing riding leathers and had a motorcycle helmet in his hand, who knew Evel Kennivel would end up saving our asses. The officials face changes from confused and frustrated to elated. He called the other man over, and proudly announced that he spoke English. Fantastic, we were saved. He informed me the train cables were indeed broken but they would be fixed in about an hour and that the bus outside was only for those who needed to go to the next stop. Those of us who were heading to Barcelona should wait on the train and they would figure out how we were getting to Barcelona when we arrived at Figueres. I relay the news to my waiting compadres and we commence our waiting on the train. I silently renewed my vow to take French 1 in the Fall before I dove into my book.
We picked up two other guys in all of the`commotion who joined us on our part of the train. One of them was from Vancouver and the other was from New York. We now had a squad of five ready to take on anymore crisis that came our way.
A couple of hours passed and the slumbering beast lurched to a hesitant start. We got about twenty feet before it stopped again. That's when the incessant beeping began. We sat for another twenty minutes or so while they resolved whatever issue it was they were having. Of course we had no clue what was going on. We arrived at Perpignan and heard those three horrible beeps again. It was like the calm before the storm, nothing good follows those damn beeps. The conductor came on and this time he spoke in Spanish. Who flipped the language switch on this guy? That would have been helpful about three hours ago...He announced that we would have to wait at this station because one of the other passenegers was "ill" and a fire engine was on its way to pick him up. Are you serious? Throw him off the train and lets go, we still had 30 minutes to Figueres and it was pushing 12:00 in the morning. We ended up waiting there for another thirty minutes which pushed our arrival to 1:00 AM. When the bus arrived at Figueres everybody scrambled. Why is everybody running and why do I always have no idea what's going on!? I'm assuming my insticts took over because I started acting like Washington during the revolution. I simulatenously(maybe not simulatenously but it happened pretty fast) spoke to an official of the station in complete and unbroken Spanish, translated this to some American girls, yelled at Matt to stop flirting with said American girls, threw our bags on the bus and ran on the bus. I'm not sure if there were enough busses for all the passenegers or what the deal was but, I was not trying to find out.
We had a two and half hour ride to Barcelona, so I decided to make friends with the guy behind me. The beauty of this is that I got the real story about the sick guy on the train. He reported that what really happened was the man was asked for his train ticket and when he couldn't provide it he faked an allergic reaction to some food that the trainline had given him. Seriously!?! I wish I would have been in that cabin so I could have seen this guy fake dying. That must have been some serious comedy.
I woke up just as we arrived in Barcelona. The bus pulled to the front of the train station(which was of course closed since it was now 3:00 AM) and opened the doors. The thing I've learned about Europe is that they really don't hold you hand over here, they are pretty big fans of the sink or swim concept. Matt, Lee, myself, and our two new friends get off the bus and look at each other. Let's recap what just happened:
- Instead of arriving at 10:45 PM like we were supposed to we made to Barcelona at 3:00 AM.
- We had absolutely no maps of Barcelona
- EvERYTHING is closed
- We have no clue if our hostel is still open, or how to get there
- We have all of our bags on us, so we look like complete tourists
So we did the obvious thing. We walked the complete opposite direction of everybody else and tried to find a bus station. The five of us set off with enough determiniation to scare off Bear Grillis. We probably looked like a mini Mod Squad coming out of the station. Myself in the front looking like a glorified packmule with this 70 pound travelling bag on my back and extra pair of shoes hanging from the side(This is Matt's. I in no way claim that I brought TWO pairs of shoes on a backpacking trip through Europe or a big ass backpack), Matt to my left with his newly purchased swiss army knife at the ready, he was determined to skewer any fiends that dare try us, and Lee to my right with his rolley suitcase and murse looking like he was on his way to his five star hotel but his chauffer forgot him (aka pissed). Then there were the two companions we picked up on the train. They just looked...confused. Whatever, I had bigger things to worry about. We find a small bus station with a map. You would have thought we found the holy grail the way we reacted. We were able to figure out our position and where we needed to go, so we were no longer wandering through an unknown city. Along the way we dropped off one of the new guys and so our party was reduced to four. Our new friend announced to the group that he had to pee and he was going to go down the nearest alley. Thinking back on all my movie knowledge(which is limited), I know that every bad thing happens in an alley. They are dark, full of shadows, and cramped. Is this kid out of his mind? Matt informs him that this is the surest way to end up in a bathtub than you started the trip with. Eventually we drop him off and we are down to the three muskateers. We had to cross the entire city to get to our hostel. It was quite the journey. I wish something exciting happened to write about but...nothing did. We did notice that the bums of Barcelona come out at night and claim all the bank waiting rooms as their beds, which is mildly interesting.
We arrived at our hostel and luckily they are open. I speak with the employee and he informs me that they lost our reservation. I'd like to take a moment here to let you all know that this all really did happen. We were that unlucky. My brain is fried, and I'm out of ideas. Luckily, we booked with a hostel chain and they had another location which had some openings for us. Only downside was it was on the other side of town. There is no way in hell I am walking back across Barcelona at 4:30 AM with a 70 lb backpack. I made this clear to the employee and he offered to pay for a cab for us.
After taking the money we go to the street corner and try to hail a cab. You would think that at 4:30 AM it would be hard to find a cab. Quite the opposite. We walk outside and see a literal fleet of cabs driving down the road. The three lane road is packed out with five car lengths worth of cabs(15 for math challenged readers). It was like they all gathered in there mini-coups and were paving a yellow brick highway to their taxi convention. Interesting...and no they didn't stop. We wait a few more minutes and finally hail one. We tell him the name of our hostel and he looks at us with a look of dread. that's discomforting. He quickly informs us that he doesn't know where it is, and we part company. Let's try again.
The second taxi we hailed took us to the other side of town. We get out of the car and realize two things: Our hostel is on the top of a friggin mountain and this mountain is located in the hood. Piece of advice for all travelers: never trust a 10 euro a night hostel. The cab driver tells us "Buenos Dias" and departs(this is when you know your up too late. People are saying good morning instead of good night). We enter our palace, check-in and the employee tries to give us a tour. Do you think I care where the common room is at this time? No. He takes us to our room and we realize we are sharing it with two girls from South Africa. This would be a great opportunity to learn about their country but I'm tired and they were half asleep. Let's call this one a night and save the culture lessons for tomorrow, or should I say today?
I'm on my way to Seville as I write this. So there are some more things to write about but this post is already way too long. Plus I'm tired of writing. We stay three days at Seville, and have a few day trips planned. I'll write again soon.
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