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Barcelona / A Brief Note on Train Stations / Night Train from Barcelona-Nice
Barcelona was by far the most American city in Spain. We took another harrowing taxi ride from the train station to the hotel, which was pretty far away from the main drag. The main drag, La Rambla, was packed with people, most of them tourists. There's nothing at either end of the street, so where they're all headed is a mystery. Almost all were Americans/Canadians/British, which was a first. We met up with Hari's roommate Paul and his girlfriend, Theresa, and their friend Anne, and walked until we found a restaurant suitable for the five of us.
Everyone at the hotel spoke English, another first. It was air-conditioned and had complimentary soap. It was the first hotel with a tower by itself, as the others were mostly a floor or two mixed in with residential apartments (Hostal Roma, in Seville, had three stories of hotel). The Amrey Diagonal in Barcelona offered many pre-packaged complimentary goods, including bath gel (2), body milk (lotion), a shoe polisher and orange-flavored candies (2 per bed).
The hotel was a tower on a wide, four-lane road (with a recently planted, tree-lined median strip big enough to walk down) that looked straight out of any commercial/industrial park in California. Across the street was a mall with fast food (McDonald's, Burger King, KFC and Sbarro) and lots of commercial stores selling furniture, electronics, jewelry, clothing, etc. We walked through for about an hour and could not find a place to check our Internet. The zoning was interesting because it was one of the few commercial areas we had seen, other than the Corte Ingles complex in Madrid, Seville and Valencia. Much of Barcelona was actually pure shopping, without a restaurant or tapas bar for blocks (unlike Madrid, where there were 17 places to buy a bocadillo per block, but nowhere to buy really nice perfume).
Barcelona also had a wild night scene that we almost made it to. The clubs open around midnight, but there's no one there until 1 or 2, and the party doesn't really get going until 3. We made it until 12:45, but were too tired to go dancing all night. We got gelato, though, and then sat in a café on the edge of a square plaza and watched street performers. Paul and Eric had beers, while the girls had sangria, and we talked about traveling (they had recently been through Italy, where we were headed in a week).
The performers in the square played accordion, guitar, keyboard, and anything else. They would play a song or two, then come ask for money. The street performers just off the square, on La Rambla, were crazy. We saw: a guy doing ventriloquism, a pair doing the tango, two guys imitating bird calls, a pair doing a puppet show with the Beatles to "Revolution," "We Can Work it Out," and "Day Tripper," break-dancing surly teenagers, a sword-swallower, a guy with plastic army dolls that crawled on the ground, magic-light shows, real musicians with classical instruments (brass, violins, cellos), bad musicians with bad instruments (guitars, accordions, harmonicas), beggars who sat and looked despondent, often without limbs, statue-imitators who stood still and pretended to be Jesus, army soldiers, Roman gods, coal miners and cowboys, bronzed people, flower stands, an Asian man playing Asian-sounding tunes on what looked like a gutbucket, jugglers, mimes, a Charlie Chaplin imitator, a mime who threw things at passing cars and almost got one into an open window, people with Australian noise-things, enough Tarot-card readers for all of Spain, etc. All on one street, most at the same time. The street is so crowded that groups just shuffle up and down. It was, according to the guidebook, a haven for pickpockets.
La Rambla is the distance of three subway stops on the ruthlessly efficient Barcelona subway system. The stations, built for convenience and not aesthetics, were bizarre. We had to walk forever to get in or out, and it was never flat - down stairs, up stairs, up long claustrophobic tunnels with 8-foot ceilings and posters for Resident Evil: The Movie everywhere. It was literally several hundred meters from the entrance to the trains, with random up-five-stairs and down-five-stairs thrown in for people trying to drag luggage. The floors were black tile, the walls flat, graffiti-covered brown, and the ceilings faded aluminum metal. It was horribly hot underground, and we would sit dripping with sweat when it was actually quite pleasant outside. The trains all rode with the windows open, which made the ride loud.
The ticketing system for the metro was quite handy, with plenty of language options. The ticket for 10 rides could be shared, so one person could go through the gate, then hand the ticket back to the next. The gates, on the other hand, randomly switched which side you fed the card in from, so Eric constantly put the card in, then tried to walk through the wrong turnstile, then watched Hari laugh as she walked through the right one. The exit gates were metal cage structures with two gates to pass through, like a rodeo horse gate, and you could push them both in and speed through and then there would be a delightful clang-clang like a trolley coming through the tunnel.
On our first day, we ate lunch and dinner at the same place, and missed breakfast since Eric didn't get up until noon (we did laundry the night before until 2 a.m.). We met Paul and co. for lunch at Self Naturalista, a self-serve vegetarian buffet. The Self Naturalista had good spring rolls, a plate of strawberries (cherries for dinner), an energy drink blender of some sort that Eric traded to Hari for a glass of lemon juice (too sour), and some pretty stale bread. Dinner was a repeat, but with mineral water, carrot-cake topped with apples and a plate of lettuce topped with guacamole that went well with more stale toast.
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Boiling over with the frustration, stress and heat of 700 people waiting in line, Barcelona-Sants station was the worst of the stations we had seen (turned out to probably be the worst anywhere). Atocha at least looked nice, while Toledo was small and charming. Seville was modern and had A/C, and Valencia was loud (construction) but otherwise fairly accessible. Sants, on the other hand, was hideous. It was easy to get lost, since the place was enormous and there were no tracks to orient by (they were safely underground). There were throngs of people, mostly backpackers, lying on the floor waiting their turn. The walls and floor were a depressing, sedative-brown that made it so you didn't feel like strangling the clerk, just overdosing on sleeping pills and taking an eternal nap on the floor (after which, you would still be waiting for your number to come up).
The storage lockers accepted only coins, and cost $4.50, which is a lot to carry around in coins. Since there were tons of lockers (almost all of them in use), none of the nearby change places had coins. None of the restaurants had coins. Most of the stores had signs up that said, roughly, "Don't even ask." While Hari guarded our locker, Eric ran down to the metro station and bought our metro tickets for the day, which gave us enough change (from the machine) to take the key. The poor guy with the locker next to us, who arrived before us, was still waiting for his companion to return with change when we left.
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After lunch, we said goodbye to Paul (they were going to the Palau with Gaudi's work) and went to the train station to make reservations for our next train, to Nice. Except - ha, ha - we couldn't. The numbering system was on number 117, and the number we drew was 532. Our ticket printed an estimated wait of six hours and 39 minutes. The station had roughly five windows open, out of about 20, to help international numbers (ours).
We tried making phone reservations, but Eric couldn't figure out how to use the phone. He did succeed, however, in leaving the phone card in the phone. It would not be the last time. So we left and decided to come back six hours later.
We left for the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona's famous and highly-recommended (by the guidebook), half-completed church. Other tourists, however, had heard the same, and there was a tour-bus stampede on. We waited in line for 20 minutes or so, and once we got in there were crowds everywhere. The church was impressive, massive in scale but very intricately crafted. Plus, it looked like the architect was on hallucinogenic drugs. It's paid for by alms and donations, which is probably why they've been working on it since 1882 (expected completion date is 2023).
Tourists can climb the completed towers, which fold like artichoke leaves around what will be a massive central tower (it's not in place at all yet). On the way up, there are frequent balconies cut into the frozen foam surface of the church, where we admired the view of the tourist buses below. There was one spiral staircase for going up, and one for going down. We passed a fat woman hurtling down the up stairs on the way - "Excuse me, I'm not feeling well, excuse me, I'm feeling quite ill" - who either had acrophobia or had overexerted herself. The spiral stairs were cool - unlike most, there was no column in the middle, so we could look down and see the floor hundreds of feet below. In general, the church seemed to make very little effort to keep tourists from falling. There were no guardrails, no warning signs and no ropes. We were allowed to stick our feet off the balconies as far as we wanted, or through the holes in the balcony floors (large enough to get a leg through, but not to fall through, but very cool nonetheless).
After the church we went to the harbor, which was nice. We saw the Olympic village (the Olympics were the ruin of Barcelona, bringing American-style hotels, commercialism and fast-food), the future site of a Planet Hollywood restaurant (related item) and a nice harbor with lots of boats. We tried to make reservations at a nearby, un-crowded, air-conditioned train station, but their computer was down (on any other day, yes, but today -- no). So we went back to Sants (it had been about 41/2 hours), where they had passed our number by 20 numbers. So we took another one, and waited until 8:30 p.m. to finally make reservations.
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Night Train: Barcelona-Nice / A Brief Note on Train Stations / Barcelona
Our reservation was for a night train, so we had the day to wander Barcelona. We went to Tibidabo, a mountain-top church with an amusement theme park directly underneath it. To get there, we took a suburban train, to a cable car (which exploded with a loud bang and some sparks, then stopped and sat smoking for a while halfway up the hill), to a funicular, which looked after graffiti like an abandoned Volkswagon bus. It was a fun trip, with a rewarding, spectacular view from the top. Also, a theme park.
We went looking for a post office, forgetting it was Sunday, and made it to the train station around 6:45 for a 7:20 departure for Nice (via transfer at Cerbere, on the border).
The train ride was beautiful, along the lush wooded coast of southern Spain. The nicest part, by far, of the country, with thick forests and peaceful farming villages. We sat across from a Brazilian couple, who said the Portuguese were rude to them because Brazil was once a colony. The woman jumped every time a train went the other way, as did Hari, so they had a common understanding and got along well. Interestingly enough, we were identified as Brazilians several times. Ludmilla said we looked Brazilian, because of the dark skin and Eric's surfer T-shirts ("It is the same thing the boys in Sao Paolo wear," she said). In Paris, a clerk at the Hard Rock café started asking Hari questions in Portuguese. It happened elsewhere, too (another clerk there told us he thought we were Mexicans).
Two seats over, a University of Toronto economics student persisted, the entire train ride, in explaining diminishing marginal returns to the rest of the train (although it was directed at his English friends), using the most block-headed, complicated method possible. He also persisted in applying the economics laws he had learned to all the countries he had been in, and then explained it all to his companions, who kept getting up to smoke in between cars (unrelated items).
A Mexican-born NYU student sitting next to us was nice. He just graduated high school in New York and will go to NYU in the fall.
In Cerbere, we had about an hour in between trains, so Eric sat down at a table outside to wait, while Hari went to the bathroom. (Eric taking over the monologue now, although Hari probably also has exciting stories about the bathroom trip...)
A tall and mysterious looking Australian pointed and asked (without asking) if he could sit down, too, as there were no more tables. I said sure. He ordered a beer and sat in complete silence until the NYU kid also sat down and the two of us started talking.
"Do you speak French?" I asked.
He laughed and said no.
The Australian chose this moment to jump in. It was like the cowboy in the corner lifting his hat up to reveal his eyes and taking his feet down off the table (in real life, he did neither, and kept drinking his beer. But it was very dramatic).
"You don't need to," he said. "You're in France now."
He gave a sarcastic bark.
"Oh," we said.
We exchanged basic information. He was an Australian field geologist from Western Australia, until, he said, the corporate influence got to be too much for him. He's traveled heavily, and worked recently as a deckhand on a private yacht, saving his money to travel again. He quit, he said, because it became too much like a job.
Since he said he had been to almost all of the states, I asked him which was his favorite.
"Canada," he said. He gave another sarcastic bark.
He then tacked on Southwestern Utah, Montana, Alaska and New York City. I said that he seemed to be an outdoorsy type, given the places he'd listen, and he looked offended and continued on talking to the other guy, and stopped paying as much attention to me.
"People in the southwest think it's the wide open spaces," he said of Utah. "They say it's vast and desolate."
He shook his head. "Full of people. All the lower 48 and Europe are full of people."
His next plan is to drive with six people he met yesterday across the west coast of Morocco, where he said they would have to drive over the beach in some places. His companions, all from the Mediterranean, had never seen or heard of real tides before. None of them spoke the same language and the people would probably be on mushrooms the whole time. He was trying to pass through Morocco on his way to Dakar. He didn't seem too unhappy at the thought of the obvious dangers associated with his trip.
When our train pulled in, we left him sitting there, still sipping deliberately at his beer. (We return now to our regularly scheduled royal "we-isms" ...)
The night train was an interesting experience. Full of young student travelers, it was late and loud. The couchettes were extremely small -- roughly the size of a bathroom, with six bunk beds. We had the bottom two. Someone else had already stashed luggage in the room, and about the only place to put ours was at our feet, reducing the length of the bed to about four feet. Our bunkmates came in soon after we did. The first to arrive, a recent graduate from UCLA, said he hoped we didn't plan to go to bed any time soon. The next two, an 18- and 22-year-old pair of sisters from Alberta, said they understood if we wanted some quiet, and just to tell them and they'd go somewhere else. Fortunately, they were all talk, and all three of them went meekly to sleep before 1 a.m., which allowed us a decent six hours until the train arrived in Nice at 7:30.
Before going to sleep, we opened the window outside our room and hung out of the train, watching the stars, which didn't move even as the shadowy, dark countryside went streaking by.
