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Published: August 9th 2008
Oy Vey. We are here safe and sound in Barcelona, Spain, but not without many mishaps and hiccups, I guess you could say. Well here is how it started. We found a train itinerary that would have us in Barcelona last night, from Interlaken. We got to the station about 5 minutes before the train left, and it is about 5 minutes walk from the Bed and Breakfast. Then, Ian realizes he didnt turn in the key to our room. So he SPRINTS back to the hotel and actually makes it back to the train 15 seconds or so before the doors closed and locked. PHEW! That should have been our first sign. Anyways, we took the first train, which was about an hour and a half, into Bern, where we then went to make reservations for two other trains. However, they were COMPLETELY booked. We havent experienced that before. So we trained alllll the way back to Interlaken, figuring we could use the free internet at the Bed and Breakfast we stayed at and find a night train. Welllll all the night trains were booked, says information at the station in Interlaken. So we go to our B and B and use the internet, racking our brains trying to find a non reservation train itinerary, searching every train from Interlaken or Paris and anywhere in between. None. So we pack up and decide to go to Geneva, which is a bigger station, and closer. So we get to the train station and decide on a whim to ask another information attendant to check a night train, maybe for the next day. She said she found one for that night! Sweet!! So we bought it and went BACK to the Bed and Breakfast to drop off our backpacks because we had about 4 hours to kill. This is when we went to the Chinese restaurant and watched the olympics. Then we went BACK to the B&B to pick up our stuff, said goodbye for the millionth time (and thank you!) and headed to the station. We had a total of 4 trains. Two regular trains, one night train (for 11 hours), and one 2 hour train in the morning to Barcelona. We were either traveling on a train or waiting for a train from 6 PM until 1 PM the next day. The first two trains went smoothly, but the night train was awful. We had beds, but I didnt know that meant you didnt have a seat. There were 6 of us crammed into a room barely big enough, and the beds were stacked so closely together you couldnt even sit upright on your bed...I felt very clausterphobic...no where to stand or sit, just lie. AND we didnt have dinner because we figured an 11 hour train would have a meal car...no such luck. So I was hungry and miserable...Ian took it better than I did, and I was fine once I was tired and could just go to sleep, but before that I wasuper bored and uncomfortable. So I finally try to go to sleep and we awake to a rapping on our compartment door. We open it and its some lady and her kid yelling at us in French and we figure out she thinks she has our beds. We show the ticketchecker our ticket and she shows us it was for the NEXT night. We are kinda freaking out at this point....the lady at the ticket office made a mistake and printed us an ITINERARY for the 8th but a TICKET for the 9th. Luckily, I guess there were other free compartments so they all left, but I was paranoid for a couple hours after that that theyd come back and we would have to pack all our crap up and leave. Luckily, it was smooth sailing the rest of the way.
We get to Barcelona and walk pretty far to our hostel only to find that since we cancelled the first night, they cancelled ALL of our nights. What the hell. So we told them we emailed them in advance, which we did, and they realized they shouldnt have given our rooms away and put us up in some OTHER hostel for tonight, all the way back past the train station we started at, and then we would have to pack our stuff up and go BACK to the original hostel for tomorrow night. Atrgrhhjfghrhrhhhh. LAME day. We thought yesterday was bad, but today was worse...and after 20 hours on trains, NOT what we needed. We seem to be okay now tho, we ate, and feel better. We kept high spirits for most of it, realizing that its an adventure and a story to tell blah blah blah. Hopefully tomorrow is nice.
Heard Bernie Mac died and John Edwards cheated on his wife while she had cancer? Makes me happy we are so separated from the news sometimes.
Love u guys!
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Mom
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Awwwwww
Poor things .... I hope Barcelona is worth all the trouble you both have to go through to get there. Glad you had each other to lean on. And you will have quite story to tell. Miss you both. (Draco says something about "that's what you get for leaving me so long.")