How lucky am I? (arms spread apart) This lucky! How stubborn am I? (arms spread apart) This stubborn! (3/6: Barcelona to Toulouse, France)

Ok, I have to be on a train at 8:45am from Barcelona to Narbonne (France), where I’m supposed to pick up a rental car, and drive the A61 to Toulouse. According to the RailEurope website, this is the only train all day from Barcelona to Narbonne, so I make sure to get a wake up call at 7am, which should leave me plenty of time to shower, pack, check-out, and get to the train station.

Wake up call comes at 7am, I don’t wake up until 8:30. Unless there’s a time machine somewhere in the hotel, I’m not making that train. However, I don’t really believe that that’s the only train, so, I take my time, do all my stuff, and get to the train station around 9:30.

Me: “One ticket to Narbonne please.”
Ticket Guy: “That train left almost an hour ago. There isn’t another one.”
Me: “Oh… there isn’t any other train that will get me to Narbonne?”
Ticket Guy: “No.”

Right during that part of the conversation, one his coworkers walks buy, over hears us, and they go back and forth a bit in Catalan, and then the coworker starts typing on the computer.

Ticket Guy: “Ok, you can take a train from here to Cerbere, and connect from there.”
Me: “Done.”

How lucky was it that that guy walked by right at that moment to tell Mr. “you can’t get there from here” that, in fact, I could? No other trains my butt!

So, hang out for an hour or so, get on the train, and start in on my third book: “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri (soon to be a major motion picture starring the suddenly ubiquitous Kumar… I mean Kal Penn. Speaking of Kal Penn, did anyone find him remotely believable playing a high school kid on 24? The guy is 30-something, isn’t he? Wait. I’m 30-something. Never mind. It was totally believable. Let’s just move on.). Reach Cerbere a couple hours later, and get off the train to face French passport control. They check my passport, hand it back to me and let me go through. No questions, no stamp, just “Bienvenue” (welcome). Get inside the station, the connecting train I want to be on doesn’t leave for another couple hours, and ticket office won’t reopen for another 45 minutes (they take a break from 1pm to 5pm… lazy ass French). There are a couple other “clearly tourist” types in the station with me, and since I seem to be the only one who understands French, I end up being the translator for everyone. The benefit to this is that when I want to leave the station to try to find something to eat, no one minds watching my bags for me. So, I wander down to the village center, and everything from the tourist office, to the cafes to the markets is closed from 1 to 5 (you thought I was kidding about “lazy ass French people”?). So, head back up to the train station (beautiful views of the Mediterranean Sea, though), and just sit and wait with everyone else.

I end up sitting with a group consisting of a 22 year old German hippie girl, a 50+ Indonesian-New Zealander (who won’t shut up), and a 50+ Canadian woman who is outside North America for the first time in her life. When our train comes, we all get a compartment together, and keep talking (well, the kiwi woman does most of the talking – I’m mostly trying to keep from strangling her). At some point we do the go around the circle and talk about your self. The Canadian woman (hey Dusty/Cookie, she’s from Edmonton!) does her bit, and then the Kiwi turns to me and says “you’re in computers, right?” I haven’t said a word about what I do, or where I’m from. “I never said that… what makes you say that?” German chick, “Yeah, you seem like some one who’s in computers.” What the hell does that mean? How did two complete strangers, unprompted, no previous knowledge, both just come out with “you’re in computers”? Is it that obvious what a dork I am? Anyway, I concede that I’m in computers, and leave it at that.

Eventually we get to Narbonne, and I get off the train (the others are all continuing on). I get in a taxi and give her the address for the rental car place “9 Route de Perpignan”. We drive out basically to the middle of nowhere, and she says “here we are.” Huh? We’re nowhere! We argue a bit over the address I have, and finally, in a huff, she turns around and starts driving back to the train station. “Hey! There it is!” I’m not sure how, but somehow I see a sign for National RentalCar on the side of the road. She turns around, pulls in, and I go get my car.

Two hours later (about 7:30pm), I’m in Toulouse. I’m running way behind, and it’s dark now, but finding my hotel shouldn’t be a big deal – Toulouse doesn’t appear to be that big. I spend the next two hours driving around in circles. Here’s the thing: they don’t really label the streets, instead they have big signs that indicate what major landmarks are in a given direction. Of course, I know nothing about Toulouse, and know nothing about its landmarks, so this doesn’t help me. I picked the hotel I’m staying at (Hotel Anatole France) because: 1) it’s cheap, 2) it has laundry nearby, 3) there are restaurants nearby. So, I am intent on finding the place. Back to the driving around in circles for 2 hours. I’m just trying to find a landmark so I can figure out where on my map I am. I would use the signs pointing out landmarks, but no matter where I am in the city, all the signs say the same thing, and at no point do I appear to actually arrive at any of the landmarks. Part of the problem is that there are lots of rotaries. We have rotaries in New England. I’m used to rotaries, I even like rotaries, but at this point I just want to burn Toulouse to the ground. As I’m driving around, I notice that there are lots of laundromats, and plenty of hotels, but I just can’t find the one I’m looking for.

Finally, I decide to stop for dinner. I go to a restaurant called “L’Entrecote”, which is supposedly famous for its steak with “special green sauce” and french fries. I also have a half-bottle of the house red to go with it. At the end of the meal, I get a cup of coffee (driving around in circles for 2 hours is tiring), and ask how to get to where I’m trying to go (note: now that I’ve had dinner, and know that there are other hotels with laundry nearby, my need to go to this particular hotel no longer exists). I’m told to head towards a certain rotary (“Place Wilson”), and then head towards “Place Capitole”, and then look for signs for “Place St. Pierre”. I head back towards Place Wilson (the same rotary I’d already been circling for 2 hours), and follow the signs for Place Capitole. I end up back at the restaurant. It occurs to me, that what I thought was Place Wilson, might not be Place Wilson. I put my window down and ask the person in the car next to me, “where’s Place Wilson?” They point in the opposite direction from the rotary I’d been circling around. *sigh*. Now I just want to kill myself. Anyway, head towards the real Place Wilson, follow the sign for Place Capitole, even find the sign for Place St. Pierre. But, thanks to a convoluted sequence of one ways, I suddenly find myself on a bridge. I don’t want to be on a bridge. I turn around, come back over another bridge (the bridges are one way), find my way back to Place Capitole, and try again. I repeat variations on this theme three or four times, before finally pulling into a parking lot (that I’ve passed a couple times) before I get forced onto the bridge again. I ask someone in the lot, “where’s place St. Pierre?” His answer, “this is it.” I hate Toulouse.

Anyway, it’s now midnight, but I’ve finally found my hotel. The same hotel that it’s no longer really necessary for me to have found. But the point is, I found it. Go inside, check in, drop off my stuff, and head back out to a bar to congratulate myself with a beer. Drink up, head back, and crash.