A friend I’ll call “L” came to town for two weeks and traveled on her own for one of them. Once she returned, I thought it would be great fun to take the chance to go with her to Barcelona for 2 days. Neither of us had been to Spain, and after finding a 15 Euro flight there and back, we were sold on the idea.
Have any of you out there flown with Ryan Air? Well, if you haven’t, let-me-tell-you: don’t. The airports are generally a good 90 minute-2 hour drive from the place you are trying to get to. Plus, you spend a small fortune getting to and from the random small airport you have just flown in to. I took a Ryan Air trip from “Paris” to “Venice” to “London”. You can basically bank on losing the entire day that you fly Ryan Air. I forgot that I had vowed never to book with them again, blinded by my insane find of a 15 Euro flight. So Ryan Air it was.
First, we land at Reus Airport, 90 km from Barcelona. Kein problem. Thirty minutes after its scheduled time, the bus to downtown Barcelona arrives. Another 15 minutes for the driver’s smoke break and we pile in, people pushing to get to the front of the line like their lives depended on it. Thirteen Euro later and we are seated and ready to go. It is now an hour late for departure. No signs, no apology; it just is. Spain.
Five minutes into the drive, my mildly anxious friend asks, “Do you feel that?”. The bus is sounding as though it is in a gear too high for the speed it’s going. It jolts and sputters as though the man has never driven a stick shift before. We circle around a depressing, dilapidated town. Five minutes later, we look up. The guy in front of us with dredlocks to his waist says, “Didn’t we just circle this same little town?”. (He clearly must not have heard me talking in Spanish, to speak English with me first.) Yes. We had just past that town….and again we are circling it a third time. All of a sudden, the bus pulls over, on an uphill left curve with no shoulder. The guy in dreds calmly asks, “Are we getting high-jacked?”. My anxious friend mutters, “Oh god”. Without word or announcement from the driver, everyone piles out of the bus, figuring it out. Two minutes later another bus pulls up behind, as though anticipating the call, and leads us onward. We circle the same town twice more, for no apparent reason, before moving on to another stop in a small town five minutes down the road. We, again, exit the bus without word or information, blindly onto another bus. Our original driver is there. He takes us onward to Barcelona. Two hours later (and altogether 4, if you include the delay) we are there! A train ride and walk into town, and we arrive at the best little hostel in Spain: Backpackers BCN. I highly recommend. Small, clean, and the friendly owner, Javi (sounds like Haw-vee) knows everything about the area.
The next day we start off bright and early for breakfast and on to the Sagrada Familia. Walking on toward the Mediterranean and over in to Old Town, hunger struck around 2:00 p.m. and Tapas ensued. Inside the restaurant, we asked for a window table that was empty. L thought the waiter said “not safe” or something about warriors. I thought he was telling us it was reserved, especially since he seated someone else there shortly afterward.
But around 3:00 p.m., the waiters suddenly ran over, locked the doors and turned out the lights. A second door was locked and the GM shouted something in Spanish. Everyone in the restaurant got up and started rushing toward the back. An older man said to us in English, “Go! Bad here. Hide!”, or something like that. L and I look at each other in shock and start to get up. I, curious, go to the window to see a large group of people coming down Las Ramblas, the road outside. They seem peaceable enough…just walking along. They are walking to strike against the rise in retirement age, from 57 to 65. However, any business that remains open, they are the ones in danger. They should be closed, not working. They should be with the strikers.
About 30 armed police vans come down the street. We all stand back, in case the windows are broken. In the end, nothing happens, they unlock the doors 30 minutes later, and we go outside to see the damage. Smoke, overturned trash, planters, anything that could move has been overturned, trashed, or set on fire. Graffiti is on nearly every building.
Hey Spain, just a thought: if you destroy your city, and your government already doesn’t have enough money to pay you, what do you think you’ll have left over after they clean up your mess? Fo shizzle. I’m just sayin’…
After we left the restaurant, helicopters were flying high over the path of the riotous strikers. In the morning, about 70% of the shops we saw were open. I figured this was d/t cultural working hours. After the “incident”, about 70% of the shops were closed. Even the historical sites were closed. The strikers were making their way up and down the large main streets, turning over everything in their way. The riot police lined up, guarding the federal buildings most at risk for defacement.
We took the back roads to the hostel. No trains were running, no buses. And instead of making our 8:00 bus out of Barcelona, we booked a second night at our lovely little hostel.
The next day all was well. The trains were running and we made it back in time for our flight. The sun shine was worth the effort, despite our lack of sight-seeing. And, my uncanny timing in booking a flight during the first 24 hour strike in 8 years makes for a little adventuresome tale.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/29/europe.strikes/index.html?iref=allsearch
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