This Is This

4. Now You’re Here
Map

We packed up in the morning and filled our bottles on the way to the station. The station had a border checkpoint in on it so the western side of the platform was run by the Spanish authorities and the eastern side was entirely French.

We entered the station at the French side of the platform and were waved towards a fence which divided the station, on the opposite side of which there was a Spanish flag. We walked through the doorway where a Spanish policeman checked our passports. He asked me something in Spanish. I caught the odd word from my French and said: “Barcelona”.

“Change at the next station and take the bus there to Barcelona,” I think he said.

My disappointment at not being able to finish the trans-Pyrenean train was outweighed by the scenery of the bus trip. The natural beauty was more dramatic than any I had seen in France as the wooded mountain peaks became more prominent and the rock formations looked painted.

Barcelona soon added a touch of reality to the fantastic voyage. We touched down in the stifling city at the train station and then took the rediculously luxurious air-conditioned subway train to the Placa de Catalunya and the statue of Columbus at the end of La Rambla where we had arranged to meet the girls.

By the sheer stroke of coincidence, which have always hounded me throughout my life in equal measures of blessing and curse, Tesni had met up with Yorvick and Matt, two old friends from school in England and they arrived shortly after we did. Tesni led us to the nearest bar. She was born in Almeria, down the coast to the west and she knew her way around. I ordered two beers and a large cheeseburger before I went into the toilets to change into a pair of shorts and wet my hair. The heat was personal, but the meal came to one pound fifty so I promised myself another one before I left town that afternoon.

We walked down La Rambla, Barcelona’s famous boulevard. This is a tree lined promenade that descends from the Placa to the Columbus Monument at the waterfront. It’s like the Champs Elysees in Paris, if you have ever been there, but without the cars, therefore more people. W. Somerset Maugham described the sights along the street as the most beautiful in the world. The sights, he said, are not found in the trees and rustic architecture, but in the people, the bird vendors, sidewalk artists, and street musicians.

Coming down from the beautiful mountains into a city didn’t bother me because there was still so much to see. Like the Pyrenees, Barcelona was also a feast for the senses. It felt like I was moving on, really travelling. I was saying to myself “OK, you spent last night on a mountainside with your girl and cooked macaroni and cheese, but that was yesterday. Now you’re here.”

The girls were staying in a youth hostel off the boulevard. We dumped our bags in their rooms and sat down to talk. I hung my wet tent out the window to dry. Everyone was sweating in the rooms, but the girls managed to fall asleep, tired from their overnight trip. As everything in Catalonia was closed from one to five o’clock, I decided to make use of their shower.

The shower woke me up so Yorvick and I went for a walk through the sleeping city. We found a back street bar which seemed to be the only place open in town, although half the clientelle was asleep. I had a beer and torilla. The six other customers were quiet as corpses.

Three of them were intently watched cartoons on a television in the corner and the rest, who were asleep, were turned towards it with their eyes closed.

When we left at five it was a little cooler. The shop keepers were reluctantly opening for business so I bought a watch for less than two pounds to replace the original, which had given up after only three hours travelling. It was incredibly tacky and consisted of a square of white plastic with a rectangular black face housing the digital display window. Still, if it did the job, I didn’t care how it looked, which I would later find out was also the Spanish attitude towards their trains.

I said a quiet goodbye to the girls, who were just woke up from their siesta when I returned. This was not a concidence, because I woke them with my furtive packing, but they were going out soon anyway.

I said goodbye to Leo, who I was leaving as I had told her before. Looking back on it, this seemed incredibly selfish. I had the chance of spending a sex-addled month in a city of culture with a beautiful young woman who loved me, or I could tramp around the continent on my own. I chose the latter, and although the former might have made the better story, there are many things I would have done differently were I in the same situation today. Just as there are many things I would tell that eighteen year old, but he wouldn’t have taken my advice anyway, and maybe doing my own thing then was the only way I would have learned.

I didn’t consider any of this at the time, of course; I just headed to the station.

I walked there with Yorvick and Matt, who were going to Paris that evening. My train was there at the station when we arrived, so I said goodbye.

“Where are you headed, anyway? Ultimately.” asked Yorvick.

“Turkey, I think,” I said.

“Shit, well you take care of yourself, all right?”

I wondered what it was about Turkey that sparked off this image of danger and strange customs. That was exactly what attracted me there.

———–

Related posts:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

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