We got the Barcelona blues
By Charly
Montgomery

Charly Montgomery

Editor's Note: Charly Montgomery, a senior at the College of Charleston, spent spring semester in France. This is one of her experiences.

On April 14 Tadj, Courtney, and I board the first train to Barcelona in good spirits. Problem number one: Tadj doesn't realize our car is at the end of the train. We board the train in the middle as the whistle blows and are required to walk the length of the train to find our seats.

Keep in mind this is Easter vacation for all of France, and our train is packed with travelers and their luggage.

Poor Tadj, being in the front and unfortunately disliking confrontation had to fight her way from car to car, stepping over purses and lunches and feet with my encouragement until we found our seats which were, of course, filled.

As we had the infuriating experience on our trip to Toulouse of people taking our reserved seats and pretending our French was incomprehensible and refusing to move, we all whipped out our tickets to prove that, yes these were in fact our seats.

Tadj had the misfortune of having a double booked seat. Luckily for her a young man who had not reserved a seat but found an empty one got out and offered it to her.

Courtney and I shooed people out of our seats without mercy or problems. The whole process took over 45 minutes, and at one point, for more than five revolting minutes, Courtney and I were stuck beside this woman who was digging in her nose. Since then we've encountered several more nose pickers and always in places where we were unable to move away quickly, like subways and planes.

We switched trains at Bordeaux with no problem, making sure this time that we boarded the correct car. Instead of taking a taxi to Irun we snuck onto another train and crossed our fingers the conductor wouldn't check our tickets, and more importantly, that we were on the train bound for the correct city.

At Irun we killed time by pulling amusing phrases from our ridiculous Spanish guide book. Our favorites were "I'd like one without cheese," and "We are three girls in a tent." Very useful phrases indeed.

I might add that in Barcelona they do not speak Spanish, but Catalan and so our silly phrases were made that much more ridiculous. We were in very giggly moods and decided not to force our company on the man in our correct compartment but chose an empty one. As our luck had it, we had to vacate not too long afterwards when the rightful ticket owners appeared.

Not wishing to repeat the procedure, we took up in our correct compartment with a quiet Spanish man and an awkward couple from Juno. Throughout the night we tried various contorted positions in order to sleep somewhat comfortably. None of them worked, and we were all very upset that we had been too cheap to shell out an extra 15 euros for those oh so inviting looking bunk beds.

We arrived in Barcelona exhausted but excited to see the sun and the Mediterranean.