The Pamplona Diaries: Day One---A Long Day´s Journey into Nowhere

From Pamplona

On Sunday, Eric and I set out on our pilgrimage to Pamplona. We arrived at the bus station in Barcelona, excited and ready to jump aboard our autobus that would whisk us away on our journey into Basque country.

However, like morons, we didn´t stop to think that every other backpacker in Europe would have the same idea as us. So when we arrived at the bus station, (surprise!) all the buses were already booked for the entire day.

So we jumped on the underground Metro to try our chances at the train station. Likewise, the same thing was going on there: all the day trains were already filled. HOWEVER, there was a night train leaving at 22:30 that we could take for 45 € each that would take us to Pamplona, with only a small catch: we had to jump off at a small station outside of Madrid at 3:16, and then pick up another train at 7:30 going to Pamplona. Not exactly what we had in mind as far as travel arrangements, but with our given situation, we didn´t have much of a choice.

So we bought the tickets, dropped our backpacks off in some lockers at the train station, and then headed off into Barcelona to waste the day away until our train was ready to depart. It felt like I had been awarded a bonus day in Barcelona, so I was pretty excited to get to see some additional places that I had missed. We started out by going to see the Olympic Stadium from the 1992 Games, but Eric somehow took us on a scenic 2 hour detour of rundown Barcelona that went nowhere even close to the Olympic Stadium.

So, we went to the beach instead. It was a beautiful day there, hanging out amongst all the beautiful people and thinking beautiful thoughts. I´m sure all the buff, tan Spanish were wondering what a pasty stringbean and a hairy ape were doing invading their beautiful beach. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful day there. I jumped into the salty Mediterranean waters and swam out to the bobbing yellow buoys far away, then swam back to shore to relax and look at the beautiful people some more. I was in paradise.

But all good things must come to an end. We grabbed some bocadillas at a sit-down restaurant, jumped on a Metro back to the train station (with 15 minutes to spare) and then boarded our train. Pamplona, here we come!

This was our first train ride in Spain, so we didn´t really know what to expect. They placed us in a coche (train car) that had small little rooms designed for 6 people to sit in. The chairs are all facing each other, so you´re staring at whomever is placed a few feet in front of you, and you feel obliged to talk with them. But when you´re a dumb American who only learned "¿Como se llamas?" in high school Spanish class, you can´t get very far. So, you just give pleasant little smiles to your fellow passengers, even though deep inside you just can´t wait to get the hell out of that tiny, hot little room with the two screaming little kids that the Spanish mother can´t control.

Earlier that night, I remember seeing the father of the little kids, waving happily from outside the train as we pulled away from the station. Now I can understand why he was so happy...he was getting away from those annoying kids for several days and could finally get some sleep. So, it was me, Eric, a couple in their 50s, and a mother with a 4 year-old girl and 2 year-old son crammed into this passenger room. It was so stuffy in there. I don´t know why the Spanish just don´t open the windows in their trains. It´s not even AC technology. I felt like screaming "Abierto las ventanas, por favor" at the top of my lungs.

To my left, the Spanish mother was sitting. She had forgotten to bring toys for the kids to play with, so they were beating each other over the head with the billettes (tickets). Then once that got old, they started slamming the lid on the AC unit that wasn´t working in our room. Over and over. After the first few minutes, it´s like a piledriver being driven through your skull. There was also a small fold-out metal table for placing food and drinks that she had sticking out. After seeing that at the 2 year-olds eye-level, I knew what was about to come. Sure enough, like clockwork every 5 minutes, the toddler would fall headfirst into the table, and cry, the mother would comfort him, and then 5 minutes later, he´d do it again. Wham! Over and over. Obviously, these Spanish have tougher children than back at home in the US. Or their parents just don´t care.

After sitting through the screaming for 2 hours, I had to get away. So I wandered up and down the cars of the train, trying to get my sanity back. I hung out between the cars like many of the other foreign passengers and let the cool outside air bathe over me. After roaming the train for 30 minutes, I finally made it back to my tiny room to find everyone asleep. So I set my watch to go off at 3:00 and took my seat to get some shut-eye.

I woke up about 2:30, with less than 2 hours of sleep. The mother next to me was also up, trying to keep her toddler from blowing up and waking the entire train. I prodded Eric at about 3:10 to get up so we could make a hasty departure once our stop arrived. At about 3:25, we finally pulled into a tiny station, just as the ticket lady had told us would be the case. I saw a few other backpackers jump off, so I safely assumed that this was our stop and jumped off as well.

Off the train, I looked around me, and things didn´t look right. The signage wasn´t quite matching up with what was on my ticket, which is not uncommon in these parts with the switch over to Euskadi (Basque). So I flagged down a nearby conductor and asked him if this was our stop. He shook his head and motioned for us to get back on the train...right as the train was starting to pull away. He yelled at the train to stop, but the conductor on board gave an unsympathetic look that said "Sorry...you´re screwed," slammed the door and the train took off, leaving Eric and me in the cold night air.

So we went inside the station to try to figure out exactly where we were and how we had screwed up. There were two other backpackers from England who had done the exact same thing as us, so that made us feel like only partial dolts. Through a lot of garbled conversations with the Spanish staff at the station and through checking maps and schedules, I figured out that we were stuck in Tudela, which is a tiny hole-in-the-wall town about 15 kilometers or so away from the station we SHOULD have gotten off at. The train had somehow gotten 30 minutes behind schedule, so even though we jumped off at the right time, we picked the wrong piddly town to do it in. Luckily, there was a 7:14 train that we could jump on to get us to the next station to make our connection to Pamplona at 7:30. So all we could do was just sit...and wait.

Tiny cramped train stations in the middle of nowhere are not the greatest places to get some sleep. It doesn´t help, either, when station security tells you that you can´t use the benches as beds to lay on. With all the noise coming from the express trains whizzing by...from the automatic doors opening and closing every few seconds due to security standing in the doorway and laughing...and from the annoying Spanish man with the cane who sighed and said "Aye!" every 40 seconds just to get attention...I knew I was screwed in getting any sleep. I looked over to my left, and Eric was already passed out on top of his backpack. That boy can sleep through a friggin´ tornado. I don´t know how he does it.

So I spent the night planning the French route of the trip and where we would intersect with Le Tour de France in the coming weeks. During all this, I got the honor of watching new weirdos pop in and out of the station. Two guys appeared about 5:00 and were having some fight outside the station. One of them was completely wasted and came in and started yelling in all of our faces, then went to the bathroom and started kicking and beating on things, then came out to yell at us some more. I was looking around for security just in case things got out of control, but of course, they were nowhere to be found. Go figure.

About 7:00, Eric and the Brits finally awoke. I told Eric my scheme of just jumping on the next train without letting the attendants know what we were doing, then hop off at the correct station. I didn´t want to complicate matters and try to explain to the attendants that we had screwed up and needed a new ticket. A ten minute ride wouldn´t hurt anyone, and they wouldn´t ever know. But one of the Brits wasn´t thinking and went up to the ticket counter and, as expected, got chewed out by the attendant. So I distanced myself from the Brits and proceded as planned with my own way of escaping from the station.

At about 7:19, the train finally showed, so we jumped on, with the Brits following in tow, and at the next station, we jumped off and boarded the train to Pamplona. The train was packed with backpackers from all over the world. Most of them appeared to be guys, which didn´t surprise me. Pamplona was the holy mecca for men to prove to the world just how big your cahunas really were, and just how big of an idiot you could really be.

We finally made it into Pamplona about 8:30. The night from hell was finally over, and we had somehow made it to Pamplona. If there was a patron saint of stupid travelers, he/she was definitely looking down on us that day.