2013 · The Great Circular European Railway Challenge · Chapter 15 of 18

Tourisme Grande Vitesse

I’m writing this at midday in Barcelona. I’m the only customer in an Irish pub, which I don’t think was open when I arrived, more like it just had the doors open to let some air in. Nonetheless the barman was more than happy to serve me a Guinness, complimentary in fact about my early start. He asked what my story is, and listened wide-eyed in wonder as I regaled, in brief, the previous 15 days’ journey. I’ve given him a bit of paper with some URLs on. They don’t have a breakfast menu but are making me some specially. There’s a poster on the wall for the KISS Army, Spanish branch and they’ve lent me some electricity to charge my phone. It’s dark and cool while outside it’s about 30°c already.

I like it here.

I’m not really gonna say much about Zurich. We stayed in a cheap grotty hostel in the centre, popped out for some EIGHT QUID beers, and I had a dream about shopping for hats - as usual I couldn’t find one that fitted me for ages, until finally a leather trilby was perfect, but cost £168. Great dreams I have. Stretch says he woke up several times in the night wondering why the fuck we weren’t moving, the 4-bunk dorm making him think it was a train, delayed again, delayed again…

Soft caffeinated fluids plus pastries at the station. A brief chat with an Australian in transit, whose luggage was still in Singapore. We told him what had happened in the cricket during his flight. He seemed crestfallen.

No reservations for the Zurich to Geneva train. Stupidly busy, we picked a coach and seats at random and made camp. Only once we were settled did we notice they were reserved for someone, but we waited to get kicked out. Lester took his rail pass out to write the journey on, and out of the bum bag came a reservation slip he didn’t remember ever seeing before.

It was for the seats we were in. Fuck me!

No mountains, but lots of lakes and fields. The odd bit which looked like Warwickshire. And then a fucking huge lake. Hello, Lake Geneva. Treated to some great views towards the mountains over which the day’s Tour de France riders were cycling, we pulled into Lausanne for our briefest cameo appearance, as old colleague Fernando jumped on for the 20 minutes to Geneva. He brought with him wine, cheese, meats, chocolate, a great spread. Lightning discussions about life since he last saw any of us were had, then we had 15 minutes to change country. At Geneva you go through a border before the train leaves, having to bugger off outside and up the street into the customs and immigration bit of the station to platforms 1 & 2 for France.

The train to Lyon was a baking hot heavily crowded service, made better by cheese, chocolate, and electricity. Not a great deal out of the window. 2 hours to travel 170km or so. Yawn. At Lyon we had three or so hours to kill, and after a pub/left luggage fiasco we all but Paul settled in a pub with no television while John set off to find somewhere we could watch the Tour.

The 10 minute walk to that place was one of the hottest walks I’ve ever done, worse than going between two hotels in Dubai. I hated it. Thankfully the bar was air conditioned and empty, and sold us nice drinks and food while indulging our appetite for cycling. Some Aussies joined us. My god there’s a lot of Aussies in this continent.

There’s also a lot of Iron Maiden shirts. I think I saw at least one in every capital city except Skopje, Belgrade, and Sarajevo.

Back to the station to regroup with Paul, and Mick, who had valiantly stayed behind with the bags, it was time to get on possibly the fastest train of the trip. While some journeys were all about the scenery, and some were about getting from capital to capital, this was about speed: 550km in less than 2 hours. We’ve only got long haul trains left now, really, no short changes or distances, and lots of modernity.

No fucking plug sockets though.

Only Dave and I stayed awake the distance, experiencing the sections of 300kmh+ travel on the ground. We made it to Paris early - early - and carted our gear across the river from terminus to terminus, de Lyon to d’Austerlitz. 3 hours taken up by a variety of croques and drinks. We’re not exactly grumpy but it’s ever so slightly feeling like a grind. Having to get to Barcelona via Paris is a ridiculous route, but the only feasible one by train. We’re moving into ever hotter territories with 2 full weeks of exhaustion in our bones. Only 2 unvisited countries and capitals left over 4 remaining days, 4 countries in a single day feels a distant memory. Maybe Iberia will be a struggle.

Barça loner

The Paris to Barcelona train was, on paper, our poshest night train yet. Branded as a “trenhotel”, it’s pimped as something approaching the comfort of a regular wheel-less hotel. So it was a bit of a disappointment - no, a lot of a disappointment - to discover there were no showers and the corridors were cramped as hell. Nonetheless there was a bar carriage with convivial Australians in it, on their own tour of Europe with slightly less haste and speed. The beds were bloody comfortable though.

Before arriving, the only thing I had on my mind for Barcelona was to go visit the Nou Camp. But given the extreme temperature, and the time it took for us to make our way from Estacio de França to Sants and pack our luggage away, I decided against it. Paul had gone to see friends who happened to be around; Mark and Steve went to Sagrada Familia; everyone else went to the beach. I headed off on my own.

Originally I was heading for Scobies, a pub which came up first in my search for Irish pubs near Placa de la Catalunya. It was shut, so I just searched for pubs near where I was standing and up came the Shamrock, the place I was treated so absurdly well which I mentioned at the start of the last entry. BCN trips and bacon strips and …

Barcelona has so much more to offer than dark Irish pubs with Guinness and English breakfasts. I know that. But I’d been here before, recently - my first ever visit was only in February this year. It’s all so fresh in my memory, a bit too fresh: when I came, it was with my beautiful girlfriend. But I was a depressed and hopeless fool, and we split up within 2 weeks of getting back home, without seeing each other again. Bleh. So I was in the mood to escape Barcelona rather than be reminded too much of it.

I didn’t want to forget or escape the overall trip though. I had a great time explaining the whole thing to Christian, the barman, and his boss Pedro. Of all the people I explained, or was present during the explanation of, our journey to, he was easily the most impressed and jealous. Nailed it with “surely you don’t have wives or girlfriends!” though eh? (Bad Darren, enough with the rumination)

I took the time to blog a bit, plus talk with Ellen. She is an ex-yahoo living in Barcelona and we were trying to arrange a meet. With Mark’s phone out of commission and mine out of reach in a pub kitchen we spoke via Facebook and she came to join me, just as I was finishing my second pint. Goodbyes and good lucks from the staff, we buggered off to Sants on the Metro where Mark, Steve, Mick, and in fact pretty much everyone, within 5 minutes, were having beer and a snack. Lots of catching up done, a full English inquisition into Ellen’s time in Catalonia.

And then, a goodbye, again. The trains from Barcelona to Madrid involve airport style levels of security - x-ray machines for luggage, landside/trainside separation, a boarding gate. All this for a domestic train. Mad.

I was feeling very fired up and in cracking spirits after my great morning, so it was a genuine surprise when I sat down and promptly fell asleep for the first hour or so of the journey. I hadn’t felt noticeably tired so, like, what?

The rain in Spain fell heavily on the plain. There was a real storm, particularly striking as we passed into the very edge of it. The onboard display told us we were travelling at just over 300km/h, and also that the outside temperature dropped from 36°c to 14° during the storm. Wow.

It was back up in the 30s when we hit Madrid. Before leaving the station whose name I forget we went for a wander around the back of it, the old station building which is now a giant greenhouse with loads of foliage and also turtles. What should then have been a regulation single line transit across the city to Charmatin turned into a pain in the arse 3 tube trek because they’d shut the middle 3 stations of the line we want to use. Grr.

At Charmatin we occupied the corner of an outdoor section - under a roof - of a tapas restaurant and ate a huge feast of cheeses and potatoes and anchovies and salads and all kinds of other stuff. There were power sockets. I have really struggled a lot without regular access to enough power sockets to keep my devices going and since Italy both the blogging and GPS recording have had to take a serious back seat.

A massive thunderstorm took place overhead, finishing just before we set off to the station. Our train didn’t get a platform until very near the departure time, a wait entirely filled with me frantically hitting refresh on the BBC TdF coverage desperate for a Cavendish win. 2 laps to go and we slowly walked to the platform. 1 lap to go and we hung around outside. Bah, Kittel.

A virtually identical train to the previous one was taking us to Lisbon, Portugal. Our last country and city, our simultaneously southernmost and westernmost point. A small party stayed in the bar talking to a theoretical computer scientist/mathematician/philosopher. No Australians though.