Just Get Me Out of Spain!

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I arrived back in Madrid in the early hours, but the next train to France was not leaving until 3.30 in the afternoon. There was no real incentive to leave the station and venture into the city, so I stayed, playing cards and talking to an American girl whom I had met on the train.

She had come to Europe to travel with her boyfriend, but had promptly dumped him the moment they arrived. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor guy. They had arranged to meet in Amsterdam and she was on her way there now, despite the fact that she claimed she had fallen in love with some waste-of-space Dutch hippy. She was also running a couple of days late, and I’d be very surprised if he was still waiting when she arrived!

I considered going to Barcelona, which is supposed to be fantastic, but the Spanish trains were starting to irritate me and I just wanted out.

I couldn’t get to the bottom of whether the 3.30 train involved a supplement or not, but as I was desperate to leave Spain, I decided to risk it anyway. My suspicions were confirmed when the guard came along and asked me for the equivalent of £15. I would have to pay, but the American girl had a different type of ticket, being a non-European, and was okay. As I didn’t have that kind of cash, he took my Inter-rail ticket off me and told me that I was going to have to get off at the next station, in the middle of nowhere. Not a chance, I wanted out of that country so I tried every argument I could think of, with a guy in the seat behind me acting as interpreter. The guard refused to budge, but eventually everyone in the carriage started to feel sorry for me. Through a combination of a loan from the American girl, an exchange of some French Francs I had on me (although at rather crap rate) and a few donations, I managed to get the cash together.

It came as somewhat of a relief to get to France after the nightmare of Spain and Portugal, and I was almost tempted to kiss the soil.

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