Writing this as we wait for the train to leave Barcelona Sants
station. Pretty painless. We splurged on a taxi as neither of us
had gotten a great night's sleep. Noted again how the city is dead
at 0800 in the morning. No people, hardly any cars etc.
Anticipating a bit of a panic (on my part) at Valencia station as we
have just an hour to get our tickets printed and figure things out.
One of the new TGV cars, we're in first class (thanks for that WE
Travel, we didn't ask for it but much appreciated) on the upper deck
and so to the extent that there's anything to see at 285kph we should
have a good view, though at the moment we're still in the long, long
tunnel out of the city from the station.
Very odd: no wifi on the train.
I never got to have churros and chocolate for breakfast and it was
only when we drove past the CCOO office in Barcelona on the way to
Estacio Sants that I remembered I had not heard back from them. Guess
we're coming back to Spain at some point. Need to take the other
Civil War walijng tour anyway. :-)
Train running away from the cars on major highways, but clearly the
track isn't up to carrying us at full speed. Ah well, I could use a
nap. I have just the thing to put me to sleep too: a lengthy podcast
on the work of the economist Minsky. Knew I was saving it for
something, this is, apparently, it.
Green right now but very dry-looking landscape. Hilly,
churches/convents/monesteries on top of many, plus as we toodle
along, mountains in the distance (north of the track) with snow on
the tops.
Dozed on and off through the Minsky pod. But it seems to have
registered somewhat as I have an idea for a column based on it (I
think. I should check and see if I listened to something else right
after and owe a credit to someone else. :-)
VIA may have good reason to be ashamed of its limited route structure
and slow speeds, but it blows the TGV off the on-board food tracks.
The toasted (but then packaged with lots of humidity so that its
sogginess could be assured) hard-boiled (yet sludge-like) egg,
tomatoes (hard and crunchy) and tastless cheese sandwich I tried to
eat made it into the garbage pretty quickly. Good potato chips
though.
For that and a diet coke for us both Geri had to walk 3 cars.
Last time I travelled on VIA 1st class I had a hot meal
delivered to my seat, it was something I'd be happy with in a
restaurant and came with a slection of wines, was preceeded by my
choice of drinks and finished-off with a really nice dessert and a
cognac.
I think we'll pack a lunch (like all the other folks in our section)
for the trip to Paris next month.
Some compensation in the views (we're right on the Med coast) and the
odd castle that I think might date back to when the pre-French were
trying to keep the Moors bottled-up in Spain.
And what looks like a kite-flying contest. A tonne of cars parked
mebbe 200m from the track with a bunch of kites flying above them.
I've stopped trying to take photos at this speed. And the stops
we've made so far haven't done much but give us a view of the inside
of a tunnel.
Even though we're not anywhere yet, nice to be in France. My French
has decayed considerably over the years but is still better than my
rudimentary Spanish and my near-non-existent knowledge of the Catalan
language. And as we learned once or twice, if I spoke a few words of
Spanish (sorry, should be saying 'Castillian') in a spot outside the
touristy bits and was taken for a non-Catalan Spaniard (hard to
imagine, but if the phrase was simple and one I have used a lot...),
what came back was rapid-fire Catalan.
On that point (sort of), the national government has declared the
attempt at a referendum on independence illegal, but over 90% of
Catalans polled say they are committed to recognizing the result.
And about 60% in favour. Especially since the collapse of the
Spanish economy and the massive cuts to services in order to bail out
the banks (and the accompanying corruption both of which have
generated a lot of indignation, hence the huge 'idignado' protests,
unlike any other country I can think of, other than Iceland, right
now) there's far more of a day-to-day connection to the EU for most
Catalans than there is to the Spanish state.
Just grabbed a wifi connection in the station at Nimes. But be that
but the place also looks kinda worth a quick visit at some point...
Wish me luck getting our tickets sorted when we change trains in an
hour or so... course by the time anyone reads this it will all be
done one way or the other.
As it turns out I didn't need luck. What I needed, though I didn't
know it, was to have Geri pounced on by one of several station staff
here in Valence. One of whom was extremely helpful, better yet, who
complimented my French, and gave me pointers on things in
Aiz-en-Provence while printing out out tickets for me.
Right now he is my favourite person in all the world, especially
since Geri dumped me and the luggage to slip out for a quic smoke.
There are 15 minutes worth of train departures (just departures) on
the board here right now. Showing ten trains. This town about twice
the size of Cobourg. The station mebbe ten times the size of ours
and I doubt if it sees ten trains pick up passengers in a day. Two
people travelling 1600km in first class paid less than $400CAD.
We would have paid over $1,000 had we waived the sandwiches. :-)
There's a sign apologizing for the wifi being down. I'm getting a
bit twitchy. Can't recall the last time I was without internet
access for this long.
Bit of a mixup when we changed trains and we wound-up having to get
onto different cars just to avoid being left behind, but all sorted
and we're established in the Aix apartment, a simple dinner under our
belts and looking for to a few days of lolling before starting to
explore the region.
More photos, though not many, to come tomorrow.
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