A journey in every sense...

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Due to circumstances, the cat's out of the bag. Nick and I were originally headed to Pamplona, Spain for the annual San Fermin Festival, and ultimately the running of the bulls - which has been a dream of mine since I was old enough to know about it. I even re-read The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway, in preparation and as a means to subside my uncontainable excitement. Needless to say, the trip has been a distraction since we'd decided to first make it back in April and was something we had been anticipating to be the highlight of our study abroad experience in general. But fate wasn't on our side.

If the trip from Kansas City to Shannon was a nightmare, then the trip from Shannon to Spain was a very slow, very painful sodomizing by a smelly large man. I've had two hours of sleep in the past 28 hours. After a number of delays, let-downs, nearly missed connections, missed connections, and a terrorist attack that could have very easily killed us, Nick and I find ourselves in Barcelona. The weather is much nicer, and we are in good spirits despite overcast skies and immeasurable fatigue.

It's been a long road with so many turns and so many moments of utter despair that it almost seems like we left Shannon a week ago rather than a day. By the time we arrived in London, which would serve as our layover city for the night, it was already 11 and we needed to get to our hostel quickly. The directions we'd gotten from the internet to get downtown and to our hostel proved to be about as useful as an orthodontist in England (more on that observation later). We were already experiencing some heavy fatigue at this point. In fact, Nick started feeling sick from it. In addition, we'd started to feel a sense of urgency that would become very common on the trip out. It's the kind of panic that didn't let us think about anything else. Your heart just races and you can't sit still.

We scrambled around for an hour, finally finding the train that would take us downtown. After waiting another 45 minutes, our train arrived. And as the doors opened, I turned to look at Nick who had quickly bent down and was frantically searching his bag. His camera had somehow fallen out. As if this weren't unfortunate enough our train was on its way out, which meant we'd have to wait for the next one in order to look for it. Exhausted, I watched the train leave the station and turned to retrace our steps in search of the camera - to ultimately no avail. Nick's camera was gone.

Once, we'd given up we went back down to the concourse and waited for the next train. At this point it was around 2am. It came and we rode into city center. We were too tired at this point to walk any longer or even figure out how to get from A to B, but we pressed on. After getting lost and contemplating having to pay astronomical fees to get a hotel for the night or sleeping on the street, we decided to ask a bobby (cop) for directions. To our surprise, he let us hop in and he gave us a ride. It turned out the hostel was over 30 blocks away - well outside of our walking distance, much more difficult to get to than we had planned, and somewhat dangerous considering the time of night, the area of town we'd have to walk through, and the constantly dropping temperature. He dropped us off out front, where we thanked him a thousand times over and headed for the door.

As if things couldn't get any worse, we came to find that the hostel had a check-in deadline that we'd missed by taking a later train. We officially had no place to sleep and nowhere else to go. After ringing the bell for a few minutes, we were let in by a German kid who spoke zero English. We found some stairs down to a common area and tried to get any sleep we could on the couches around the TV. However, the task was difficult to accomplish with the group of German kids trying to watch the English Patient and the need to make sure we kept track of our bags. It was almost a completely restless affair.

By 7:30 we were up to start our trip. Exhausted, we got on the tube and set off to the train station that would take us to our airport on the other side of town - Stansted. As we approached Victoria station, on London's circle route, the train was stopped and we were told we would no longer be able to ride due to a "power outage" a few stops ahead. After stopping at the tourist information center for advice, we discovered that all the tube lines had ceased, that the double-deckers were suspended until further notice, and that our only means of getting to the airport was an express coach to Stansted that left soon. Sprinting across Victoria Station Square, we were constantly slowed by a huge amount of pedestrians. The tube had been completely evacuated and all of its passengers were walking the streets trying to find alternate routes to their destinations. It seemed odd that so many people were on the streets, but we just chalked it up to rush hour and the power outage on the tube.

At this point, our bad luck had started to become a concern. We were beginning to believe that this trip was just not supposed to happen. We hadn't had any sense of comfort since we'd landed in London and our situation was not only not improving, but becoming much worse off by the minute.

The bus cost and arm and a leg, but it was our only option. And even that was late on its arrival. We were warned before we boarded that there were no guarantees we'd make our flights. The streets of London were crowded, and we could sense something was just not right. In storefronts, people were huddled around televisions. Traffic was a nightmare. There seemed to be a lot of helicopters flying around. And our bus was flanked by a number of speeding police cars. Eventually we made it out, but the bus ride which was scheduled for a 45-minute trip took an hour and a half. We jumped off the bus and sprinted to our gate to find out that check in had closed 15 minutes earlier.

We went to the ticket counter in order to see what we could do to continue on our trip. We were told the flight we had missed was the only one to that airport, and that if we wanted to make it there we'd have to take the flight the next day. We were also told that we could be re-routed free of charge "because of what has happened in London today". When we asked what had happened we were told about the bombings. Up until this point we knew something had happened, but the idea of a terrorist attack wasn't even a consideration. We didn't know how to feel about the situation. We were speechless. We just stared at each other, mouths open, wondering how we could have such terrible luck on one trip. In fact, I think we'd just lost the capacity to feel at that point. We had been completely emotionally drained as a result of the fatigue, sheer discomfort, panic, and urgency we'd experienced so far. When this was coupled with the discovery that we were not only on the tube when a terrorist attack had occurred, but that it was not far from where we were told to get off our train, we were shocked.

When we were taken off the tube, we were at Victoria station, on the southern part of the circle route. Directly north of our stop, three stops away on a different line is Edgware Road, one of the stops that was bombed. And had we made it to our spot to switch lines to head north, we would have had to transfer at Liverpool Street station on our way to Stansted, which was bombed before we ever had a chance to get there. Had we left the hostel 20 minutes earlier, there's a good chance we would have been in that station during the blast.

I've been sent some emails expressing concern for our lives. I appreciate every one of them. It's comforting to know that so many people care. And in many of those emails people asked about how scary it was. I can't really comment. We didn't have time to be afraid of it. Had Nick and I been concerned with anything other than making our flight out of Stansted we might have involved ourselves more with understanding the situation that was happening around us. So if anyone was looking for any stories of sheer terror at the magnitude of the events, I apologize - our minds were elsewhere. But looking back I have to be thankful. There doesn't seem to be any method to the stations or trains that were chosen, and it could easily have been ours. If we had known more about the situation before we were well out of danger, I might have been able to comment more on the experience of being in London during the attack.

We were stuck at Stansted as all public transport in and out of the city had ceased - tubes, buses, taxis, trains, etc. In fact, we'd probably caught the last bus out of London. At that point, we made a shotgun decision to re-route to Barcelona and try to catch a train. Upon our arrival, we found out that the buses and trains to Pamplona were booked for two days solid. Bottom line, it was out of the question to make the trip. Tired, filthy, emotionally drained, and jarred from the understanding of what could have happened today, we decided it would be best to spend the weekend in Barcelona, which meant this dream of mine was lost. But at this point, I'm more happy to be alive than anything else.

Right now we're on a bus headed into Barcelona. When we get there, we'll have no place to stay, no idea where we'll be, no idea where to go, but I'm oddly comforted. In fact, it's the first time this entire trip that I haven't felt sheer distress. We have three nights in Barcelona, and we're going to make the most of the trip. We feel we've earned the right to enjoy life at this point. We're going to make certain that all our agony and worry over the past 28 hours were not wasted. As I write, I'm looking out on Spanish countryside full of old houses with tile roofs during sunset. All is well.

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Photos

Fed Up
waiting for the bus to Stansted - which was late

Map of locations
We were stopped at Victoria, and were on our way to Liverpool

River Thames
This is the only picture I got of London. It's from the bus and is after the bombs had already gone off.

A Destination of Sorts
The welcome to Barcelona