No trains and no food make Tara something something . . . the trip to Interlaken! (with notation from Brian! Yeah!)

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(November 23rd) Note: I have no side notes in this entry. All of the side notes in parentheses have been brought to you by Brian . . . and the letter q . . . and the number 4. Leaving Barcelona at 7:30AM on a Sunday morning wasn’t so bad. The late-night partiers were still on their way home, as well as some transgender ladies of the night. Nothing says high boots and mini skirts on a seven foot tall “woman” at 7:30 in the morning. (or the dui checkpoint catching drunk drivers at the same time) Immediately on the train, Brian had to use the toilet (really bad). A family watching the train outside before bidding their mom farewell had the unfortunate pleasure of watching Brian “flush” directly onto the train tracks. I had the good fortune of watching two small children and two grown adults laugh hysterically until they bent over at their sides. The mom happened to sit right in front of us and continued to giggle everytime she looked back at Brian (she thought I was handsome and hoped I was traveling with my sister). As the train departed her family ran alongside blowing kisses and waving feverishly until there was nowhere left to run.

Brian and I had planned for a long day getting from Barcelona all the way to Interlaken, Switzerland, but you can never plan for everything (no matter how hard she tries). Our very first train from Barcelona, Spain to Montpellier, France was delayed an entire hour which gravely pushed back our schedule (mostly because it was the oldest train in Europe). By the time we got through the line to get tickets from Montpellier to Geneva, Switzerland we had missed the train by three minutes and had to wait another two hours for the next one. Munching on bread and cheese from the market in Barcelona, Brian and I calculated and recalculated what it would take to make the last train to Interlaken (mostly I just ate and nodded my head yes a lot). We figured out that we had exactly negative one minutes to get off the train in Geneva and hop on a train for Bern, Switzerland in order to make the last train to Interlaken at 11:07PM. Can we time travel? No (Chris Ganz can) . . . but we thought maybe just maybe luck would be on our side and we’d somehow make it (or the flying dragon from Neverending story, I think his name was Valcore, would save us). We didn’t (he didn’t). We missed the train by ten minutes and started contemplating what it would be like to spend the night in a train station in Switzerland with snow falling on the tracks all around (and the only warm area is the line at McDonalds). And then, something happened. When Brian and I first started dating he told me things would always work out. I’ve had my share of downfalls in life so skepticism still held a firm grasp on my mind. But since we’ve been together, things do always work out (cause we’re awesome). One way or another, and not always in the way I expected. So sure enough, this time things worked out. We arrived at the Bern station having just missed the last train to Interlaken by 15 minutes, and walked with our heads low in defeat towards any sort of shelter for the six hours before the trains started running again. As we got to the bottom of the ramp we decided just to take one last look at the sign, just in case. And there it was . . . 12:09AM, the VERY last train to Interlaken. Not in the Eurail time table book, not at any train station ticket purchase station, and not on the computer screen of any ticket seller. But there it was flipping to life up on the board! And once again our faith in trains was restored and things found their way of working out. (I’m still happy Obama is my president. I wonder if the Broncos won. We’re out of salami.)

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Comments

[Dan P.]

Best Pants story ever...
I feel like this is really similar to the pants story in Seinfeld that Kramer sells to J. Peterman... (Though it may just be because that's the only other train story I know of... [My own side note]) I just feel that the story is great not because of anything massively life changing occurs, but because it's just a good story. It should end with "And then I got my pants dirty... The very pants I had just gotten back from the cleaners." Beautiful.