Sliding Doors

Paris, France and somewhere between Paris and Barcelona, Spain
It was the longest night of our lives. And the most uncomfortable. The day started out jovial. Brad and I put our backpacks at the train station because our train to Barcelona didn’t leave until 10:00pm. To get a feeling of Paris, we took the metro and got off somewhere and walked until we came across something significant. It turned out to be Basilique du Sacré Coeur, or the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. It was a gold-roofed church prominently placed on a hill overlooking the city. Some natives were playing guitars and these bamboo pipes on the steps that led up to the church. It was a nice theme to put your mind in a reverent mood.

Wandering down the hill we came across what is called the Sex District and it was an appropriate name. There were porn shops all along both sides of the street. This is the home of the now internationally famous theater, the Moulin Rouge. We paused to take a picture of it. That’s all. This is the side of town where one wouldn’t want to be at night. The seediness was stagnant and repugnant in the air. It was a worse feeling than the streets of Las Vegas. A lady grabbed my arm pleading for me to enter her sin shop. I had to shake her off to free myself. We left.

A friend from home had told me that he had taken Mike’s Bike Tour when he was in Munich. We came across another branch of it here. After a filling meal at the Hippopotamus, we met the tour group at the Eiffel Tower.

There were about 10 of us from Canada, Puerto Rico, Germany, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Our fraternal leader John, a recent graduated of UT and proud Texan, took us to a garage that housed all the bikes. They were Schwinn beach cruisers. He took us on a leisurely tour of Paris stopping off to see parks, statues, and other important buildings. It was a great opportunity to meet people in such a casual way. At a café we stopped at we made friends with a lady named Holly. She had just been married in the park where we were. She got fed up with planning her wedding in the States so she, her fiancé, and their parents, hopped a plane and planned the wedding in a day and it was over in 15 minutes. It was in an area where a carnival was going on and they jumped on a trampoline after taking their vows. She was great. A comment by her was interesting. She said she could tell Brad and I had sisters because we knew how to talk to girls. It makes one think. I guess I relate because I had to talk to a girl growing up and one talks to girls and guys so differently. I met Kathryn who was a student at Texas A&M and we swapped some travel stories and tips. She suggested to me that I take the full day Mike’s Tour in Munich. We rode the metro with Holly and Juan and said goodbye as we went back to the train station to get our bags.

Our time was running a little short. After a vexingly slow metro trip, we got to the other train station, Austerlitz, with 15 minutes before our train left for Barcelona. As is standard when one is in a hurry the shortest line always takes the longest. We had our Eurail passes, but we wanted to make reservations. The line did not move the whole time. I watched the hands of the clock and it was as if they were speeding up as the rest of our world was slowing down. The impatience was turning to anger. There were two guys in front of us that got into a verbal altercation with the world’s slowest person who was in a position to change the course of the rest of our lives.

Had we missed that train we wouldn’t have met the Canadians or the Australians. Brad and I had a choice: we continue to wait in line and sprint after we got our reservations, if that would ever happen. Or we take our chances and try to board the train with just our Eurail passes and hope for the best. The latter turned out to be the wisest choice we could have made.

And the night began.

Walking up and down the crowded aisles we attempted to locate a pair of seats that were empty. This is where the Canadians enter the story. Sara and Jaime were in the seats behind us. We were feeling good that the four of us had gotten seats. Departure was in a matter of minutes so we settled in. It didn’t take long before a tap on the shoulder came and we had become displaced. The Canadians jeered as we walked away trying to find alternative seats.

The train ride from Paris to Barcelona is a 14-hour endeavor. It is imperative that one must have some comfort in order to tolerate this. There were none. Every seat was reserved.

There were 50 French kids who occupied the seats of the car we were standing in deciding what to do. All around people were creating their own seats. Two people crouched in the spaces behind the last row of seats. People sat in the aisles. A girl cleared out a luggage rack and proceeded to call it home. The Mexican. Her name was Xanat from Mexico City and she became our amiga in discomfort. Not seeing many other alternatives, Brad made home the opposing luggage rack and I sat in the area between where the two cars meet. I was on a hard metal floor with six others including the French equivalent of Bob Marley. The butt got sore every 10 minutes or so and I had to shift positions to avert the numbness. I finally got smart and blew up a pillow to sit on and listened to some music on my head phones.

The train was loud especially sitting between the cars. People were incessantly walking through our transitory home and getting on and off at each station, trying to cram in wherever they could. Then we saw them; the Canadians who were so proud they got a seat had become part of the nomadic herd. They squished down by me and later went to look for something and lost their seats and we didn’t see them for another eight hours or so.

The train rocked back and forth and when you were almost asleep it would stop and more people would get board. This was our ride from 10:00pm to 8:00am. The whole time, as miserable as it was, I was thinking, “We’re on a train to Barcelona.”

And a placid smile crept across my face.