Big Crazy Exciting Incredible Journey Homeward Bound Travel Adventure Story

After a wonderful trip to Paris, Sasha and I sadly boarded the train that would take us back into Spain: to Valencia. We had had a hard time finding transportation back to Spain, since tourists flock in for the famous Semana Santa. Therefore, we were thrilled to find cheap (thirty euro) tickets from Paris to Valencia, a city that we both wanted to visit. We were also surprised to see that this trip was only two and half hours long compared to the nine-hour ride from Valencia to Sevilla. We decided that it must be the fastest train ever. Around 10:30 pm Tuesday night, we got off the train, ready to take our first breath of Spanish air in a week. We looked around, saw a “Sortie” sign (“exit” in French), listened to the conductors, and realized that we were completely still in France. This was the day that we learned about the great town of Valence, France. Suddenly it made sense why the trip was so short. There we were, two inexperienced travelers, late at night, in a foreign country. Our first response was to crack up. A long, adventure ensued. As you can see, we took a picture at every stop, as our hair got dirtier and our eyes got puffier.

After collecting ourselves to face the situation with fear and stress, as we should, we found the conductor to talk to. Note: we don’t speak French. We tried to explain our situation. He didn’t get it. Enter Helpful Guy #1. HG#1 was a fellow passenger who speaks Spanish and French. Finally communication occurred, and the two conductors on scene in addition to our helper shared our laugh. The main conductor brought us into the office. He was SO helpful. He spoke more English than we had initially thought, knew what to do in this situation, and kept a good sense of humor. My favorite part was in the height of the stress when he starting whistling something really cheerful, possibly an old Dixieland hit, whish was ironic for the seriousness of the situation. I called our hostel in Valencia to tell them we wouldn’t be coming that night. The lady who answered laughed the hardest of everyone yet to whom I have told the story. “¡No sabia que hay una Valencia en Francia!!!” Yo tampoco. With information from the conductor, Sasha and I considered some options:


Plan A: Look for a hostel in Valence, then continue south in the morning. I left a worrisome voicemail for my parents and sent a text to my brother to ask them to look online and find us a hostel. The downfall: Valence is tiny, and it would be difficult to find something that late.

Plan B: Get on a train to Montpelier, France, then Barcelona. The downfall: finding a hostel in Barcelona during Semana Santa would be impossible. Were it Madrid we could probably be taken in by friends’ sympathetic host families, but we had no connections in Barcelona.

Plan C: Take the 1:00 AM train back to Paris, and look for a cheap flight in the morning. Downfalls: we had spent hours looking for a flight before finding our miraculous Valence tickets, so there was no reason we’d find a flight then but not before. Also, as generous and hospitable as our hosts were, we did not want to show up at 4:00 in the morning. Even so, I called Ally, who has internet at her house, to look for a flight. During this international call, my saldo (pre-paid minutes) died. The only thing worse than being lost in a foreign country late at night is being lost in a foreign country late at night with no cell phone. In addition, my parents would soon come home to a voice mail (“we have a problem, call ASAP”) and not be able to get a hold of me. I used Vodaphone’s emergency saldo code (*111#) to get $2.50 (good thing, my worried mom called back).

Plan D: Midnight train to Toulouse, to Nordeau, to Valencia, to arrive at 3:00 the following afternoon. Perfect.

The conductor wrote out the stops for us, and luckily he clarified that we had to change at both stops. He wrote down our situation in French, gave it the official Valence station stamp, and came with us when the train arrived to talk to the conductor. Inside the train to Toulouse, the two conductors helped sort out our situation once again. They laughed, and kindly allowed us to complete our ride to Toulouse free of charge. There was abundant space on the train, and we each got a row of seats to ourselves. We attempted to sleep until the train arrived at 5:30 AM. Once there, our instructions were to find the 6:14 train to Nordeau and buy tickets on board, since the ticket offices don’t open until 7:00. The stop before ours, the kind, stereotypical conductor-hat and conductor-moustache adorned conductor found Sasha and me to tell us that the next stop was ours. Sensing something was up, Helpful Guy #2, a passenger sitting behind us, asked if we needed help with anything (in Spanish, which we established was a common language). He advised us to take the train to a place that starts with an S (which we kept forgetting the name of) at the border, and then continue to Valencia. He seemed to know what he was talking about, so we weren’t sure if we should aim for Saraband or whatever or Nordeau, as planned. We got off the train and scanned the departure screen for the train to Nordeau. There was nothing to be found. Sensing our confusion, a friendly, English-speaking police officer with a very funny voice came to the rescue. After several minutes of attempting to re-decipher our original conductor’s written route, he came to the conclusion that what looked like “Nordeau” was really “Narbonne,” and what looked like “6:14” was really “6:54.” This made a lot more sense. The police officer came with us to talk to the very impatient information guy, who confirmed the existence of this train. We asked about Swaziland or whatever but no one knew what we were talking about. We gave up and went with Plan A. This gave us an hour to explore the Toulouse train station. We waited until 6:00 for the pay-toilets to open and spent a worthy 50 centimos apiece. I bought my last croissant of France, and we stocked up on Peanut M&Ms from the vending machine. I was rifling through the puzzle books at the convenience store and was pleased to find the French version of the Games magazine paint-by-numbers puzzles I have always enjoyed. This made the remaining 239847238942 hours of our trip much more quick, fun, and intellectually stimulating.


6:54 AM
When the time came, we boarded the train and found the conductor. Although our story was no longer necessary to commute from Toulouse to Narbonne, we still told the conductor, hoping to get a sympathy discount or snacks or hugs or something. We still had to buy tickets, but we got prime seats (red and purple ones, nonetheless). I couldn’t help but fantasize that all European train conductors were alerted of our journey, and they were all in it together to help us. It worked in my head like the Twilight Bark in “101 Dalmatians.” All that mattered to the dogs (conductors) all over the continent was to get these puppies (Sasha and me) back to safety (Spain). I took pleasure in imagining our first conductor going home from work, his wife making him some tea, and him frantically waiting for news of our arrival. He could not be consoled until he knew that we had safely made it. Simultaneously, there would be a welcoming committee in Narbonne who would grab us and quickly escort us, without any bad guys seeing, onto the next train, where the kind old conductor would take care of us while on that leg of the journey.
Anyway, back on Earth, the conductor of this train (who whistled Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” with a cute vibrato as he printed our tickets) told us that in Narbonne, we’d have ten minutes to buy tickets and board the train to Valencia, and that we wouldn’t be able to buy tickets on board. We were very nervous about this, but he assured us that we’d be fine. The train had barely stopped when we bolted off, shoving travelers out of our way to get to the ticket booth. The line was more than ten minutes long. We went to the computer thing to buy them. It claimed that this train didn’t exist. With six minutes to spare, we sought a conductor. The one we found spoke no English at all, so I busted out my French. I was proud of how advanced I’ve become; instead of “Où est Espagne?” (“Where is Spain?”), I told him “Je voudrais Espagne” (I would like Spain). He brought us, along with an English-speaking Slovakian backpacker on his way to Barcelona, to the departure screen. He indicated that we should take the train to Port Bou, at the border, and then get a train to Valencia. This train was due to leave at 6:30 AM. It was currently 8:20. After some confusion, the Slovakian (who’s helpfulness was only slight, and therefore does not earn him the title of Helpful Guy #3) figured out that this train was two hours late. Since it was now about to leave, we risked the chance that we couldn’t buy tickets on board in favor of actually being on a train to Spain (that went mostly through the plain).


8:30 AM
As we had come to be accustomed, we looked for the conductor on the train. We walked twice through a million sleeper cars before we found him (with his shirt unbuttoned, not wearing his hat) and asked how to get to Valencia. He said we should get off at Port Bou then get the train to Barcelona. We asked one more time about Sacagawea or whatever, on the border, and he finally identified Cereber (it turns out it never started with an S). He said that either stop would work, but that Port Bou was better. Pleased that we were on our way to Spain, we told him we needed to buy tickets. He told us not to worry about it, covered his eyes, and stated that he never saw us. We took his cue and shuffled off to find seats and celebrate our second free train of the “day.”

We sat down, and a minute later a couple sat down behind us. This couple was memorable for two reasons: they were right in front of us in line at the Paris Catacombs the day before, and they both had long, fluorescent pink hair. We identified ourselves, and we chatted a bit. They’re British, and they’re touring Europe. They had had “travel problems,” as their morning train was delayed (HA! They don’t know the first thing about travel problems). They were on their way to Madrid, and also planned to change in Port Bou. Halfway through our commute, the train stopped at the Perpignan station. The conductors stormed in and sternly demanded that all Spain passengers get out. They finally explained that there was a bus directly to Barcelona, which I think was supposed to be helpful. We asked why we couldn’t stay until Port Bou and change trains as planned, and they confirmed that we still could. Wondering why anyone would choose a bus over a train, Sasha and I returned to our seats in the now almost empty car. We discussed what was going on, and a friendly elderly man sitting across from us entered the conversation. I’m proud to say that I honestly don’t remember if we were speaking English or Spanish. Either way, Helpful Guy #3 finally gave us answers. There is normally a train from Narbonne to Valencia, but it was cancelled. Cereber also has border control, but it has fewer trains out, hence the recommendation to stick with Port Bou. He explained that we would be taking the commuter rail to Barcelona, then the normal Renfe (Spanish train system) to Valencia. He said that they offered the bus because it goes directly to Barcelona, so it is theoretically faster. He, like many before him, loved our story.


11:00 AM
Excitement was in the air when the train stopped at the border control before entering the tunnel that would take us to Spain. My parents say that I’ve been through this exact tunnel before, eighteen years ago. Crazy! Two and a half policemen entered the train to see our passports: two adults and a gleeful, smiling fourteen-year-old wearing full police gear. I secretly hoped we would be arrested by the apprentice for stowing away (since we had no tickets), but in the end we settled for it being “Take Your Son to Work Day.” We went through the tunnel, and emerged in Spain! After being comforted by the sign reading “Salida” rather than “Sortie” and bidding farewell to HG#3, we took our places in line at the ticket window. We were SO happy to see a Spanish woman working. We proceeded to buy tickets, all in Spanish, and ask her every technical question we could think of just because we could. We told her the story as well, and she kindly welcomed us back to Spain. I celebrated our arrival by buying a chunk of Tortilla to augment my breakfast of Snickers and leftover Portuguese corn nuts.
The commuter rail to Barcelona went well, and we shared a laugh when we saw a station sign with the character “ç.” We remembered that the language of Barcelona is Catalan, not the Castilian Spanish that we speak, and that it includes the French character. Phew. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to leave the station; our roundabout route could have been a serendipitous way to see the city. Across the station we spotted our pink-haired friends. We went to talk to them, and asked how the bus ride was. The man responded, “We’ve just been through hell.” He elaborated that “two-hundred” people were cramming to get onto this bus, and that it was hot and uncomfortable. He was frustrated to see that our train had gotten in at the exact same time, but admired our assertiveness in getting information and staying on the train. We joked about the other places in Europe that we would likely run into them, and at 2:30 Sasha and I got on our sixth train of the journey, headed to Valencia. It was great to hear Spanish again (Catalan didn’t sound too different, just like the Sean Connery version of Castilian Spanish), and we chatted with our neighbors on the train (including a lady with a cat!) and recounted our journey to anyone who would listen.


I did a lot of thinking on this train ride. It was incredible to me that we were on our way to Valencia. Sasha and I, the youngest of our families, somehow had made it from the foreign, scary, Valence to the back to a country where we know how to get around. I felt very glad to have three important things through our adventure:

1. Some traveling experience. I am extremely lucky to have had trips before this. In the past eight years, I have had four overseas trips (Italy with my family, Japan with school, Spain with school, and London with a friend). Even though three out of four were chaperoned and I had no hand in the planning, they still gave me travel experience. Even if I had not bought the tickets, I had been on trains in a foreign country. I can imagine that this would have been so much scarier if this were my first time overseas. So many people my age have not had the opportunities or finances for big trips, and I have taken all four of mine for granted.

2. Sasha. I cannot imagine going through this without her. Paris showed that we are great travel buddies, and we function so well together. I don’t know if I would have been able to laugh immediately after setting foot in Valence if she hadn’t been there. Our combined forces kept us moving south, and together we kept our spirits high. We shared candy, we took turns staying awake to pay attention to stops (as in I fell asleep every time I was supposed to keep watch, and she fell asleep every time she was supposed to, so it evened out), and we romantically reminded each other “We’ll always have Valence.” I am so glad to have had her there.

3. Luck. i. We speak two languages that, when spoken with a French accent, sound kind of like French. Also, lots of people spoke English. This could have happened in Siberia, or Greece, or Iceland, and then we’d REALLY be screwed. ii. We rode two of the trains for free. iii. We got comfortable seats on every train. iv. We weren’t in a wore-torn country. v. We’re cute young women. vi. We didn’t have lots of luggage. vii. It wasn’t the dead of winter. If any one of these things weren’t true, the trip would have been a whole lot worse.

Conclusion: Around 5:30 pm we made it to Valencia. We found our hostel, received laughs from the receptionist and other guests, and took the best showers of our lives. We ate Valencian paella, and after forty hours of being awake, finally went to bed. We arrived in Seville Thursday night, after a total of twenty-six hours spent on seven trains. This was an adventure that I will never forget, and a story I will always tell. Sasha and I are planning our next trip (to Italy in May), and making sure we don’t buy any tickets to Florence, MA or Venice, CA. With any travel troubles I have in the future, I will remember: at least I’m not in Valence. The end.