Right, I am now safely home in Leeds, which means that I must chronicle the complete ridiculousness that has been the past week of unplanned travel, beyond the fact of being simply stranded in Barcelona. So let us begin! The full account is very long, so it shall be under a cut.
My first diversion was not actually to Barcelona, it was to Girona, a smaller city still along the southern coast of Spain. When I found out that I was to be transferred there before a flight from that city to Leeds, I was able to get a hotel room there with little fuss just for the night. That was last Thursday, for the record. The room was perfectly amenable, but smelled completely weird. So I drank beer and watched Buffy in Spanish, which was sort of hilarious. Also, there's a Spanish music channel that just keeps circulating music videos over and over, which is absolutely awesome, as it was a mix of older rock and newer stuff, plus lots of Spanish musicians I've never heard of, so it was good fun. I wish MTV still functioned like that instead of investing in terrible reality shows.
Anyway, when I went back to the airport the next day, it was of course to news of more airports being shut down, and when I finally got to the front of the queue for Ryan Air I was told that the next flight out would be on next Thursday. At the time, this seemed utterly outlandish, so I asked for a refund of my ticket, and said goodbye to Ryan Air. I proceeded to buy a bus ticket to Barcelona, figuring I'd go by train first to Paris, and then to London.
Well, I got to Barcelona fine. It was an hour and a half journey, and the Spanish landscape was quite beautiful. But of course, this idea didn't quite work out either. As soon as I tried to ask in Barcelona when the next train tickets would be available to France, and said inquiry revealed that I wasn't Spanish myself, all ticket vendors automatically started shaking their heads and shrugging in the universal signal of 'who knows?'
So I was officially moored in Barcelona. In the course of this, however, I had been calling Erin and recounting my woes, and Erin happened to be awesome enough to have friends everywhere, so while I languished in the Barcelona airport and only managed to get a ticket to Paris for Sunday, she texted me the offer that she managed to get in contact with an old friend in Barcelona willing to put me up for a few days. I took her up on this enthusiastically.
As it happened, the friend was a native to Barcelona named Silvia, who had met Erin when they had both been doing semesters abroad in Denmark for their degrees. Silvia had finished her degree in microbiology there, and is now doing her PhD in Barcelona. She was nothing short of an angel--I met up with her on Friday in the train station, and she proceeded to give me a bed and internet access, and then take me out for drinks with her friends. The friends, though mostly not very fluent in English, were a blast, and we were able to communicate mainly through pop culture references--there is apparently a universal love of Rafael Nadal in the lab where Silvia works. In any case, it was quite fun, despite my having to call it an early-ish night and not going on to the dance club.
I should add at this point that 'early' is an extremely relative term--in Barcelona, dinner is at 10, so an early night is around 2-ish. Finally, a country that runs on my internal clock! The next day, after waking late, we spent the day walking around the old part of Barcelona, which was absolutely beautiful and refreshingly clean after Venice, and then came home and watched Gunshy, which was moderately entertaining. I am definitely not accustomed to seeing Liam Neeson be silly.
So after Saturday it of course turned out that my new flight to Paris was going to be a no-go, and I didn't even bother to go to the airport because there really wasn't a point. Instead, I managed to secure a hostel online that seemed very amenable, and had a lazy Sunday morning with Silvia and her brother as news of the rising ash cloud and, more importantly, the football scores, got posted. As it happens: Football is serious business. I knew that before, but it's definitely on my mind more now.
Sunday afternoon I moved into the hostel, which was quite pleasant, all told. There were many others in the same situation as I was there, so I learned at that point that I'd been playing my cards quite smartly, in terms of cost, so that was good. I stayed the first night with a Brit couple who left fairly early in the morning, spent the day getting some groceries and toiletries and then working on one of my essays, and then watched Gangs of New York with some other Americans who were trying to get back to their unis in the UK. The next evening was the most fun, though, because I bonded with a whole bunch of Slovakian kids who were all on their last touring night, and were absolutely wonderful company. I drank sangria up on the roof of the hostel with them and some other guests, and got caught up in a giant classical music discussion, and it was glorious to nerd out over Mozart's requiem and all that I love about eastern European music. We also compared reading lists for high school, and I got further convinced that I absolutely must read The Great Gatsby (I will, when I have the chance, I swear it) and also got an interesting perspective on history from students who lived in a country that didn't technically exist until the 20th century. It was all-together fascinating and a joy for conversation.
Finally on Tuesday I basically decided that despite being told to not go to the airports, I was going to go because I'd be damned before I'd speak to another electronic voice telling me they were busy. So I took the trip out, and in doing so managed to wrangle a flight to Paris on Wednesday morning. Win. It was a little iffy at first--I dealt with one woman at the Iberia counter initially who I'm not entirely sure understood what I was asking, but also wasn't up on her company's policies, because she directed me over to another company's desk, saying that since that was the aircraft that was actually being used, I had to deal with them. So after queuing for that company, I was then told that no, since the ticket was printed by Iberia, they were the ones who had to fix it. I was at this point about ready to throw a self-righteous strop, but luckily I dealt with someone else at Iberia, who was very competent and immediately fixed me with a ticket for the next day.
Okay, so now for the grueling part. Wednesday I got up super early, took the metro to the airport, rushed around a bit but flew smoothly to Paris. Paris was a bit more confusing, as I first tried to see if I could fly to London from there, but as it turned out, there were no tickets for that day, and the prices were sky high for the next day, so flying was officially out. Then, I knew that I had to get to a train station called Nord, but had no idea what it was beyond that. After going to the information desk, I found out that it was actually Gare du Nord I was looking for, and that I could take a shuttle there.
May I just say here that I really like train stations? They're such a fixture all over the world as the first big expression of Industrial Revolution level transport that no matter where I go to one, I feel like I can get around in it. They're all so standardized, it's very comforting. And indeed, while there I was able to get a ticket to Calais within the next hour.
Paris to Calais was without incident, and there was a shuttle straight from the station to the ferry port. This was, of course, where the chaos started. The queue at the port was three and a half hours long. It was extremely orderly--say what you will about the Brits, but damn do they know how to queue--but god, it was long. It was okay for the first hour or so, but after that it was cold and uncomfortable. There were volunteers handing out water and blankets to the elderly, and kids were being brought inside, but the rest of us just waited it out. It was pretty extraordinary. I ended up talking to a physics teacher from Shropshire for most of the time, which at least kept us both occupied.
Then at last I managed to get myself on the ferry, procured myself a Strongbow, and plonked myself on a crate in one of the side cabins, where I hung out with a woman and her mother who, in contrast seemingly to everyone else, had made the absolute best out of the volcano: As soon as they heard the news, they rented a car, and decided to take a windy road trip across Italy and along the coast of France, and it was apparently wonderful. It was nice to hear someone being positive about the whole experience.
I also had the most bizarre run-in with a vague acquaintance who I'd known from Amherst High, of all places. She'd been a year below me, and worked tech for the musicals. She's now studying economics, and taking a semester abroad at UCL. We both sort of recognized each other as everyone was lining up to get off the ferry, but we couldn't remember names or where we know one another from until we started brainstorming, and man it was surreal. A nice highlight, though.
After the ferry, it was a bus to London, which took another three hours or so, and then it was revealed that while the British response to the disruptions was great on the coast, it was pretty much non-existent elsewhere. Ferries and shuttles were running all through the night, but trains and buses from London to everywhere else were still running their usual schedule, which meant that ticket offices for the bus opened around 7am, and the buses themselves didn't set out until 8. So there I was at two in the morning, freezing in a bus station. In short, it sucked. I mostly huddled like a hobo on the floor like a lot of others, because the seats were metal and even colder than tiling. It was fairly miserable. I did learn one thing, though--get me sleep deprived enough, and I can sleep quite comfortably hunched over and cross-legged on the ground. Wahey, I guess.
The upshot, at least, was that I got my ticket for the eight o'clock bus to Leeds, and said bus was well-heated. So I spent the next four hours or so thawing and napping, and then when I arrived, I cabbed it back home. Gah.
So there you have it. Probably about 50 hours worth of travel in all, 36 of which was all in Wednesday and Thursday. Not really something I'd repeat again, given the choice. But at least I know I can get around reasonably well even when flying by the seat of my pants (or, you know, not flying, as the case may be). Also, when I have awesome friends who have other awesome friends in foreign countries. That helps too.
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