2 anecdotes

did i tell you how i reached and how i left Barcelona?

1. Reaching Barcelona

when ravi told me the name and address of the hotel i (as a citizen of the www) promptly went to the internet and figured out how to get from the bus stop in barcelona (Barcelona Nord) to the metro stop closest to the hotel, printed out parts of the map of barcelona city and wrote back to him confidently that i would get there on my own. so i didn´t bother to call anyone in barcelona or speak to anyone who had already visited barcelona or anything... you see, i´m an independent emancipated woman!

it was an overnight journey. and after the long hard day´s work the minute i stepped onto the bus and made myself comfy on my seat i was fast asleep.

suddenly i woke up due to the huge amount of light and the loads of movement around me. "Have we reached?", i asked myself. i checked my watch and saw that it was 05:45 in the morning. "Weren´t we supposed to reach an hour later?", seeing all these people getting off i hurriedly got off too. i even read the name of the stop and thought to myself "How familiar!. and if it´s familiar to me it must be the stop i saw on the net." but after around two minutes i realized that the driver hadn´t gotten off and that there were other passengers still in the bus. i rushed to the driver who told me that it wasn´t the last stop.

"Thank god!" i thought. "How cumbersome and embarrassing it would have been to have gotten off at the wrong stop!"

no, the story doesn´t end here since the bus started moving and from the same cozy seat, with the same sleepy eyes and the not yet alert mind i saw in bright blue neon lights the hotel just 2 minutes, walking distance, away. it didn´t take me long to realize that i had messed up. the name of the bus stop had been familiar since it was the name of the metro station closest to the hotel (Sants Estació).

and now i had to travel kilometres away to the endstation and take the metro back to the hotel!

i tried to console myself saying, "You´ll get to see barcelona by... early morning! You´ll get to see the metro of barcelona!" but who am i kidding... each time i saw a sign board, through the cold, strong, unbreakable windows of the bus, that indicated i was distancing myself from Sants Estació my heart seemed to cringe with pain.

now any indian indian, not nri´s, not just any indian, but a true indian would ask, "Why didn´t you ask the driver to stop?". must confess i thought of that too (and cringed yet again). but that´s the difference between europe and india. the driver woudn´t have stopped, you see, rules are rules.

2. Leaving Barcelona

when i left barcelona i was dead tired. all i was thinking of was, as mentioned before, the cozy, comfy seat of the bus. and my luck, the seat was broken. yes, only my seat amongst all the 60 odd seats was broken. so i couldn´t incline the seat and the seat thus was transformed into an uncozy, uncomfy seat. everything seemed even worse since i was to reach madrid on a monday and i without proper sleep i wouldn´t be able to concentrate in class.

when we stopped at 03:30 in the morning midway i went up to the driver and asked him if there was a seat free since mine was broken. and he was like, "Sorry!".

but when we before started off again he came looking for me and indeed there was another seat.

i know that when and if you read this you will never be able to feel what i felt. but i felt so grateful to him, for the 3 and a half hours of sleep i got during the rest of the journey. i mean i´m sure it wouldn´t have made any difference to him whether i had a broken seat or not, whether i could sleep or no. but he made a big difference to my day.

had to put this down in honour of him.