Okay, so it's been a while, but we're safe and everything thing's cool.
So we left Barcelona in a hurry, doing some last minute souvenier shopping on La Rambla. I had in hand my second 'I Heart Barcelona' shirt (the first being lost last night during some drunken dancing) and it was also my only clean shirt (even the one i was wearing was dirty).
We got to the station, Barcelona Sants, just fine and while we waited for the platform the girls did a bit of food shopping.
If you aren't involved in the disaster that is Neha's EuRail pass, let me fill you in quickly. Neha forgot her rail pass at the hostel in Madrid. We've contacted them to try to have them mail it to us (charging the $75 to her credit card). So Neha doesn't have her pass that let's her get onto the train with her discounted ticket. Luckily, there is a gaggle of 5 girls walking through and a long line of people waiting to board so she snuck by without having to show the color copy that she printed from a scan of her pass. I usually bring up the rear and in Spain I was able to just say, "Estoy con ellas," or 'I'm with them' and with a handful of tickets that they don't have time to count they wave me by.
We get onto our train headed to Montpilier around 4pm and got there are 9:30pm with lots of stops along the way. I was hesitant to sleep because I got stuck in the row in front of the girls where the seats are facing each other and I had two strange french girls staring at me from behind their sunglasses for the whole trip. Eventually Marianne joined me to finish the last 10 minutes of 'Catch Me If You Can' and watch the first half of 'Battle Los Angeles' on my computer.
In Montpellier we had to buy Neha tickets because in Spain they couldn't sell us tickets that didn't leave from Spain. Once we found enough change to get a ticket (yes the ticket machine wouldn't take bills) we rushed out to a McDonald's that was across the street from the train station where we lamented at the lack of low prices, free refills, unlimted napkins and other luxuries of the states. We ate it in the train station on our platform. A french woman carrying a McDonald's bag walked past us saying, 'Bon appeit!'
We finished our meal on the way to Marseilles were we sat in the wrong cabin, but no one ever questioned if we even had tickets so we just remained there the whole trip. We were too noisy for one man who got up and moved to the other end of the car.
In Marseilles we waited from 11:50pm to 5am for our next train. When we arrived we tried to find someone to help us make sure that it was in fact free for us to get onto the train with out EuRail passes and that we didn't need other tickets or reservations. No such luck and the ticket office didn't open 'til 5am which was the same time we were supposed to be boarding our train, but at this point I was in need of shower and ready to just settle in for the night. We found a power outlet and began charging out devices, but around 1am we were asked to move to a special area for of similarly trapped travellers and the usual homeless. I thought I fit in quite nicely with my previousy worn sleevless shirt, my rather thick beard and my gross oily faux hawk.
The night was mostly uneventful: one man who tried to enter the transtation (which was closed (like the bathrooms)) ignored the cries of security guards prompting one of them to unmuzzle is large dog and sprint off with the dog barking away. We couldn't see or understand what was going on so we tried to get back to sleep, though Marianne and Mei got no sleep while we were there. After teaching Shivani and Andrea 'casino', a two player card game, I had fallen asleep to be woken by a smelly guy who came and laid down with his bag as pillow saying 'he wanted nothing to do with us' but I sat up and gave a rather intense scare and gestured for him to move away without saying anything. He resigned and moved after a minute. At 4am the trainstation opened again and we wandered around for a bit while waiting to see what platform with should be at. We were still a bit nervous about not having tickets or seat assignments for the train, but we were too sleepy to worry about it.
On the train most of us slept for the majority 4 hour train ride. We had an 8 seat cabin to ourselves so we dimmed the lights and stretched out a bit. When we were asked for our tickets the man told us we needed to write the date onto our eurail passes (we are only allowed to travel for 5 days over the course of two months) and he said he would come back to check and make sure we did... he didn't.
We we arrived in Lyon we again went to make sure we didn't need tickets for the free rided to Geneva and sat around with some tea/coffee/pastries until they announced our platform. At this point we're sitting in a train station during rush hour, no one having showered in over 24 hours and no one had more than 4 hours of sleep. On the train to Geneva Neha and I finished a 3 hour french movie (how appropriate :P) we started flying from Atlanta to Amsterdam and the short train ride ended with the relief of seeing our new best friend Nico waiting for us at the train station. ... someone else can talk about Geneva. I'll just say it was still another 8 hours 'til we had all gotten a shower.
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