paralyzedbynotcaring

Epic throwdown, pt 2

By now I am wary of the rail way and could not make myself get up early and go back to the station to deal with getting the tickets for the next parts of my trip. My body said no. So I slept in, relatively, and then bought a two-day pass for Barcelona City Tours. The 13th stop on the tour was the train station, and I almost got off but decided the ticket counter was probably on siesta anyway. So I completed the western tour of the city, including notable locations such as a bunch of stuff from when the Olympics were in Barcelona, a soccer stadium, and some really epic statues. My favorite was of Columbus, who is raising his hand as if to say, what, like it’s hard? He’s such a dick. Love him.

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After finishing the loop I went the mercado and got a salad. I brought it back to my room and crunched it down, though truth be told it was very hot in my room and without ranch dressing a salad is a fight to eat. I decided that, as it’s Friday, I should find the ticketing office today just in case they are closed on the weekends. I found the information booth more easily this time and gave up completely on asking about “Eurail” and instead said “long distance.” This helped a bit, though I still had to wait in line to ask where to wait in line. Such is travelling without prebooked reservations–

–however, after my number had been called I was told that I could get a ticket from Barcelona to Narbonne, France, but not the intended transfer from Narbonne to my destination, Bordeaux. Why? Because the French train workers are on strike. Why? I asked the clerk at the Barcelona station. He looked at God and said, “France.”

France, you are now my enemy. This is worse than the time Anthony Bourdain said he didn’t like chicken nuggets. Outrageous.

Sources close to my heart hope that the strike will end soon because it also involves the garbage company. Lil Bro texted me with “just take a taxi.”

Let me google that for you, Lil Bro:

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So I have a ticket to the south of France and then… ? Not sure what to tell my Airbnb in Bordeaux. “Hi, I’d love to keep my prepaid reservation, but your country’s trains aren’t running until question mark, sorry”?

And what about, I don’t know, the rest of my stops?

I’m not thrilled at not having plans, especially now when it is clearly not my own fault. That salad has been doing the salsa in my stomach. I continued reading Rick Steves’ guidebook to distract me, but he lets this bomb loose: “Make yourself an extrovert, even if you’re not.” Get out of my comfort zone, huh? Is 9000 kilometers still not enough?

Here is a pretty picture of the Placa Catalunya to remind myself that this should be fun:

These fountains do tricks.

Tomorrow I’m going to a museum and a beach for realsies, not just looking at them from a bus. Take that, Rick Steves.

“Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.” Siggy Freud.

Epic throwdown, pt 1

This morning I took a shuttle to take a train to take a train to take the train (Madrid to Barcelona).

And then a taxi.

The first two trains were pretty straightforward because I started at the airport (end of the line) and could only go one way from there. I was on my way to catching the famed fast train to Barcelona. I just had to find it first.

I exited the commuter train at Chamartin, which should have a Eurail stop. The train station employees I asked told me no and to go to the Atocha stop. Back on the commuter train, then. At Atocha–a mega station attached to a mall– I asked a seguridad where the ticking booth for Eurail is and where the banos are. After the look I’ve come to expect from people I talk to, he said “No Eurail. Banos there.” He clearly spoke English and said banos in a Californian accent. I repressed my rising Eurail panic and paid almost a Euro for the privilege of using a mall privvy. I had my suitcase, my day bag, and my purse with me in the stall and we had a conference.

“It’s going to be okay,” I told my purse. “We will ask every employee here if we have to. Maybe even menfolk.” The purse remained nonplussed and with all of us in the stall I had to shimmy sideways to get to the real business at hand. With that issue aside, the reality of having to haul everything around again and ask anyone in a vest for the Eurail started to crush my spirit. If there was a sign or guide to the station or a helpful hint on the Eurail website, I wold have seen it by now. All I’d seen so far was a directory of the stores, and there wasn’t even a Sephora. And the wifi sucked. I stayed seated sideways and waited.

Then a message from God came in the form of a terrible cover of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts.” I put my head down and let it happen.

I left the banos and asked every seguridad, ticket counter, and free-sample peddler how to get a Eurail ticket. The sixth person pointed me to the Information center, which was hidden behind what seemed to be a carousal made of candy. The information desk clerk pointed me further into his office to the separate ticketing office. Not a counter, not a kiosk, a full on DMV style take a number and wait behind the yellow line office. I took two numbers (one for a train today, one for a future train) and waited behind the yellow line. About forty other people were also waiting, but many came and went and the numbers on the Now Serving display ascended from 199 to 647 surprisingly quickly (90 minutes).

Here’s the deal with the Eurail pass: you have to also book a reservation. I have the Eurail pass, but not the actual ticket for a specific route. Now, you can indeed book these online, but only if you do so at least 8 business days before your trip so they can MAIL you a hard copy of the ticket. This totally destroys the ethos of this trip–to be a leaf on the wind–and I am not a little irritated at how archaic this advanced train system is. Paper tickets? Mail? I know I’m from silicon valley and expect everything to have an interactive app and same-day delivery, but come on.

So that is why I had to find the ticketing office before finding the actual train even though I spent almost 2k on the Eurail pass. Oh and don’t forget the booking fee (10 Euros) . The good news is I was able to get on the very next fast train to Barcelona (yay!) but that meant I had to rush to the railway onboarding area right now and not book my subsequent ride from Barcelona to Bordeaux. So, after getting explicit directions to where the Eurail train was from three people along the way, I was able to find my seat and watch the Spanish countryside go by.

Above is a still taken from a 10-second movie I made about the Spanish countryside rolling by.

After I was settled in my seat and listening to my audio book (finishing rereading Ready Player One and then reading more of what the expert Rick Steves says about traveling) I decided not to be angry with the people who told me I was crazy/wrong/misinformed/American when the Eurail ticketing office was actually within shouting distance of their places of work. Though I am still American.*

A short taxi ride after that brought me within blocks of my Barcelona Airbnb, which is an apartment that opens to a small plaza on a pedestrian-only road.

I visited the market and am eating an apple. The sticker says it’s a seduce life variety.

So here’s today’s lessons: keep asking until you get the answer you know is right, and if that fails, seduce something.

*Very, very

En route

So far so good except for both my bag and my body failing the security test and requiring further investigating, almost falling asleep on the plane only to be awakened by a baby who suddenly realized it’s still a baby, and walking a few miles around the Dublin airport before sitting under the flickering light of the boarding display in despair. One bright light was a security lady who said “Just go wait at the pub then!” and shooed me away. This lady is an angel.

I did find my gate, though. Not to worry. I wasn’t reading the subtext:
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A few other delights happened, like my hair getting caught in a nightmare of accordion action on the boarding tunnel (how? what? how? three excellent questions), which I think gave me whiplash; a teenage boy standing over me in the aisle casually looking down my dress until I asked him about his SAT score; and Ian, who sold me a smoothy at the Dublin airport and then asked if I wanted a smoke break.

Other than eating beef stew airplane food and a lack of sleep the likes of which I have not dealt with since grad school, all is well.

Bu there are sill miles to go before I sleep.

Packing and other impossibilities

I leave tomorrow. I’m leaving. The. Country.

As I was separating everything I want to pack into piles, Lil Bro came in my room to observe. He then spent an uncomfortable amount of time trying to teach me to flick my pocket knife open in a sweeping jabbing motion. To do this is simple: I just need to stop being left-handed and caring at all about my nails. Honestly I am bringing a knife to open challenging food packaging and to pry my case off my cell phone to remove my sim card. Lil Bro advised me to perhaps consider buying pepper spray, and then he ambled out to check on his frozen chicken Alfredo.

Food was also on my mind and was my first item to pack. I am worried every meal in Europe will be covered in vinegar, so about a fourth of my suitcase is filled with foodstuff.

Did you spot the ketchup packet? I might bring more of those. You just never know.

Then it was time to color code my psychoses.

Blue for every day, light blue for trouble, white for emergencies, and so on.

Next I checked Pinterest and learned the right way to roll/origami my way through the heap of black clothes I’m bringing. The eight black shirts I packed are rolled into torpedoes lining the bottom of my suitcase. Rolling got a bit tedious and unrealistic–I’m not going to pack this painstakingly every time I need to catch a train. So then I just forced everything else on top of the row of rolled shirts.

That bra is a 36DD for scale.

Today around 6PM, I tried to check-in to my flight, which leaves tomorrow at 5:30PM. After entering my flight information, the Aer Lingus website rejected my check-in with this gem:

As this flight is departing in more than 30 hours, if you choose to check in now for this flight there is a charge for seat allocation (unless previously purchased seats). Alternatively you can check in online for this flight within 30 hours of flight departure time and avail of free seat allocation.

First of all, can we please take a moment to deal with the phrasing “avail of free seat allocation”?

Now, I have recently become mediocre at math, so I know this message is nonsense. I checked back again a few minutes ago–10PM–but the same malarkey manifested. I am displeased and unimpressed. The FAQs said that a transatlantic flight is eligible for check in 24 hours prior to takeoff, but the website still failed this test. I would like to avail of free bullshit. I’ve been spending so much time worrying about how to navigate the ridiculosities of the Eurail system that I completely forgot to fret over the plane ride.

I must remember that “in nonsense is strength.” (Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut)

It might serve you well to remember that, too, when reading these posts.

As for reading, I read a few poems in Imitations by Robert Lowell before returning it unfinished to the library.

Now I am going to lie down and start the long process of saying good bye to my bed.

Map of Europe for your Reference

For those of you who, like me, had to be reminded that Budapest and Bucharest are not the same place (same goes for Monaco and Morocco), here is a map.

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Author: paralyzedbynotcaring