Night fell in Barcelona as it does at the end of every day. Only this time, Phil, Neil, and I were there to witness it. As one might expect, the night was like daytime.

Only dark.

Not very dark, either. Major cities have ample street lighting.

Our goal was to catch an overnight bus to Narbonne, France. We had been expertly killing time since about 15:00 using the only means available to us: wandering around.

One such wandering led us into a small but open area, nestled among some high-rise apartment buildings. A typical group conversation occurred:

But now the dogs were no longer at play; their poop secured in plastic bags.

Like I said before, it was dark. Our 1:00AM departure was approaching. To make matters worse, certain administrative aspects of our trip had been “intentionally ignored”, for flexibility’s sake. This is another way of saying it was 11:30PM and we didn’t have a hotel for tonight (or tomorrow morning for that matter). Shit.

We located an Internet cafe, which was closing in 30 minutes. I hurriedly studied all the still-available hotels in Narbonne. Preying on the desperation of booking a hotel the very same night, the prices were criminal. Regardless, we had a booking now. The hotel industry had won this time. Onward to the bus station!

When I say “bus station”, I mean it as more of a euphemism: it was a fucking shed on wheels. A service desk manned by a 12-year-old-looking kid, sterile fluorescent lighting, and dirty floors greeted you inside. There was a tiled waiting area to the left of the front desk, blocked by a chain barrier, and a surly-looking guard. Behind the chain, EACH and EVERY seat in the cramped waiting area was occupied by a mess of slumped limbs, resting heads, and oversized suitcases.

Most of these people looked either exhausted, or dangerous. Or both. We’ll wait outside, thanks.

Once outside, we found out why a shed-of-a-bus-station needs a security guard: a middle-aged couple got into a sudden spat and the man was escorted out by the guard. This bus station wasn’t a happy place; everybody was tense and all they wanted was to go back to their homes in Narbonne — immediately. Phil, Neil, and I were just as miserable as anybody but we still managed to joke around with each other. We stood there, eating some cherries, and casually spitting the pits down a sewer grate.

It’s hard to be upset when one has cherries.

The clock soon struck 1:00AM and the bus to Narbonne rolled into the bus station. The characters waiting in the bus station assembled into a line with us. Up close, they were even harsher on the eyes than before.

The driver stepped off the bus to load our bags into the luggage hold. I wanted to take my backpack into the bus but he told me en Espanola that I couldn’t. I take overnight coaches ALL the time and always keep my bag by my seat. Surely I’m allowed to take my bag onto the bus? “You cannot take your bag onto the bus,” said the bus driver, as translated by a helpful, Spanish-speaking, French woman. She was scary. She helped us again that night but she was still scary.

As I boarded the bus, the sheer number of shady characters aboard made me realize we MUST be taking the cheapest means of transport to Narbonne. Overhead were glowing, space-age, neon-green, lights that made the bus seem like Star Trek (Author’s note: I know nothing about Star Trek). Beneath this sickly green glow were comfy-enough looking seats with men and women in all forms of contortion, some slouched and relaxed, others curled up, trying to sleep, despite all the “greenness”. The whole scene looked like the bus had already crashed and they were but corpses, rotting in their own seats –especially this old guy I saw as I headed towards the back of the bus – his frame, thin and boney, his skin, dry and wrinkled, and his jaw, hanging loose, tongue protruding to one side, as drool pooled at the corner of his mouth. If we were in a desert, vultures would have eaten this guy.

We found seats at the far back of the bus, distancing ourselves from those other zombies. The bus was about half-full of passengers (or half-empty). Thank God; any fuller and we would’ve surely been stabbed and then robbed.

Or robbed and then stabbed.

Being too bright to sleep, I set up a playlist of songs starting with up-tempo, rockier ones which gradually faded to longer, slower ones, with the faint hope of falling asleep some time in between.

I was half-asleep when I felt the bus braking every few minutes, as if the highway had given way to smaller streets. From the squint of my eye, I could tell it had stopped, for barely a minute, in the middle of fucking nowhere. The only person I think I saw get off was the man I thought was dead. The bus closed its doors.

Nowhere on the ticket did it mention Narbonne was the first stop on a longer journey.

At no point did anyone count the ticket stubs to make sure all the Narbonne people got off.

And no announcement was ever uttered to the effect that we had stopped or were approaching anything that even remotely resembled Narbonne.

At 6:00AM, the bus drove past Narbonne with us in it.

At 7:15AM, we left the bus at its second stop in Beziers, France, at the central train station. We all agreed Beziers looked nice. Maybe we’ll find ourselves there again sometime.

We decided to take a train into Narbonne, where our hotel was booked. The train was late. Actually, every mode of transportation we took in France was late.

There was a cluster of nice-looking hotels in Narbonne; among them was ours. Strangely, instead of building them downtown, near the train station, they were plopped in the middle of the town’s industrial zone; amongst sheet metal, auto shops, and greasy guys who poured concrete into things. I guess the land was cheap.

We walked and walked and bussed and walked and finally got to our hotel at around noon. My friends scoped out a cheaper hotel, so we cancelled the hotel we had originally booked. Since we were cancelling a booking which had begun last night, we were on the hook for last night in this hotel. Check-out time was in two hours.

Naturally, we each checked into our rooms for only two hours, had showers, a nap, and then left.

We made it to our new hotel across the street. It was decent but the toilet was broken. Being polite, Canadian, and tired beyond care, we didn’t report it. Neil and I slept soon after, in our separate beds, for something like 200 hours. Intermittently, I heard Phil leave the room and do stuff. Mysterious stuff. All the while during our prolonged slumber…

Mathematicians cannot be trusted.

The next day in Narbonne was quaint and lovely; exactly what I expected from a small town in France. We walked through the town centre, looking for a restaurant. At our particular location, there were cafés and bistros all around, but no full-menu, sit-down, restaurants. I had an exchange with a servicewoman:

We continued to talk pleasantly. The woman wasn’t trying to be smug when she compared France and Spain, either. Price jumps were just the beginning of the differences between the two countries.

She eventually guided us towards a restaurant… It turned out to be a tea lounge; not a restaurant at all. I had an iced tea, Neil had a milkshake, and Phil ordered a coffee but received a tiny, overpriced, macchiato instead of the large mug of Tim Hortons brew he expected.

We eventually found the most popular restaurant in town. The line to get in was long and packed with every age, race, and gender of French person. It was posh and clean. Most importantly, it had meat on the menu.

It was McDonald’s.

I had a caramel frappé and a grilled chicken sandwich on a ciabatta bun. Southern France has the best McDonald’s menu of Western Europe.

After more travel around town, and a late city bus, we went to the beach. The sun was bright and the water was clear.

Post-beach, we went to enjoy more French cuisine at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

We had what Phil would call “the best meal of the trip” there. I too cannot deny the deliciousness that came in those cardboard buckets. When I was done my meal, I climbed through the children’s play-structure at KFC for fun; whilst some pale-ass goth girl in lace and large leather books stared at me like I was a weirdo. How ironic.

The rest of the night involved drinking, talking, and laughing in our hotel room while DJ Phil rocked the house with selections from his MacBook.

My friend Jon had an interesting comment to my last post. He said:

Unfortunately Jon, you’ve missed the boat on this one.

It’s not that I’ve stayed in academia because I’m not sure what else is out there, or that I’m timid of leaving school. I’ve stayed in academia because that’s been Plan A all along. For the most part, I enjoy the system.

In fact, I think life would be a helluva lot easier if I decided to go work as a mathematician in industry. The opportunities are more numerous, the pay and benefits are much better, and I think my personality is slightly better suited for life outside the ivory tower (though the longer I stay in the system, the harder it becomes to differentiate the part of my personality that is inherit and the part that is molded by the system).

Do you remember when our teachers were giving speeches on our behalf at our high-school graduation? Do you remember what mine said about me? (Of course not). She said, “I’m pretty sure he’ll be staying in school his entire life.”

She didn’t mean it as an insult or a joke, but as a statement of fact. Even then, I was sure of my career path. We’re all so confused about what we want to do in life at that age, but I sure as hell wasn’t.

And even now, minus some small quibbles, I’m still pretty damn sure. Almost everybody I know has had to go through revisions in their Plan (with a capital ‘P’!). Very few undergraduate students who once imagined themselves doing a postgraduate degree end up doing one. And yes, a lot of postgraduate students are doing their degree out of confusion about what else to do in life.

But for me it’s always been Plan A. There is no Plan B.

It just occurred to me that I’m supposed to be ready to graduate next year.

Yes, that’s right. Next year, at this time, I’ll be let go—to either spread my wings and fly, or to plummet to my doom.

And then to a lifetime of sitting in coffee-shops, hopelessly trying to convince chicks that being a doctor in maths is just as good as being of the sort that wear stethoscopes and run around in hospitals.

(We save lives, you know. Every friggin’ day.)

Where did time go?

I don’t feel ready for this. High school was only five years ago. I still remember it so well. I’m still living in the past. I’m not ready to grow up.

Aha.

There’s nothing like the bewilderingly cold grip of panic and the firm grip of fear to put your ass in gear.

I need to make more time in my life.

To do…y’know other stuff.

The next two Spain travel logs should be coming in from my travel companions. Please heap all complaints about “why is it taking so long?”, onto them.

*Snigger*

June 22: Barcelona, Spain

“Those white pants are what gives Phil his super powers” (Neil, in Spain)

Before I came to Spain, I purchased a pair of white linen pants from Marks and Spencer.

They were awesome. Beyond awesome.

So awesome that when I first wore them in Spain, I couldn’t stop raving about their awesomeness. (E.g. “I’m going to wear these pants every single day for the rest of my life”).

They were airy, breezy, cool, and let’s be honest, made my butt look good.

Those trousers were so awesome, in fact, that both my travel companions decided they needed trousers just like mine.

(“We can’t all wear the same thing,” I said exasperatedly).

Barcelona, then, originally planned as a 1-day pit stop before France, ended up as a 1-day mission to find two pairs of white pants.

“They’re not quite the same as yours,” Neil said, posing in his new pants, twisting and turning before the mirror.

“How very European,” I said.

The city of Barcelona—from what we could see, which is to say, very little—is a lot like Montreal: A bustling metropolitan area, mixing the old with the new, plenty of cafes and restaurants and transit systems, and shops upon shops upon shops.

Other than the partially successful mission to locate two pairs of white trousers, there was little we could do since we were still lugging around our possessions. Barcelona was only a stop on our way to France. Dan had already spent some time here, and we were all eager to spend time with the French.

I do remember a few things. Dan wanted to visit the Plaza de Toros Monumental de Barcelona, an interesting brick building, constructed with a mixture of Moor and Byzantine influence, and known as the unique location in Barcelona where bullfighting events are held.

And then we headed to the train station, where we discovered that there were no more train tickets to Narbonne, France, and we would have to take a bus there.

So we had to wait. Until 1 AM.

We explored the area near the bus station, which was a little bit farther away from downtown, but still not suburbia. We stopped by the supermarket, bought milk, cheese, bread, and cherries — then ate dinner, sitting on a bench and watching the world go by.

I suppose for the people that passed before us, it was rather amusing to see a white guy, an indian guy, and an asian guy, all speaking with American accents, sitting on a bench with backpacks and suitcases arranged all around, and passing each other plastic cups filled with what looked suspiciously liked white skim milk.

You just don’t get that kind of wholesome fun these days.

Time for a lesson in logic:

We made it to the bus station on time.

The bus left for Narbonne on time.

The bus arrived in Narbonne on time.

We did not arrive in Narbonne on time.