A Spanish train experience
The following day I returned to Barcelona and spent a relatively uneventful day there. On Tuesday morning I boarded a train for the airport, which turned out to be a big mistake. You see, trains and I don't get along, and the Spanish ones are known to be particularly temperamental. However, it was supposed to be only an eighteen minute ride, and I was on the train platform 3 hours before my flight, so I assumed I was ok.
Trouble struck at T minus 2.5 hours, within view of the airport terminal. The train suddenly came to a halt and the announcement screens went blank. When 15 minutes passed without movement, a few of the foreigners on board began looking a bit anxious. The Spaniards appeared not to notice, and simply propped open the door to the next car to cool down the air, which was getting quite stuffy and hot.
The train operator appeared and warned that nobody would be let off the train, but said that he could tell us nothing more. He made the same announcement in each of three cars, although most passengers probably never heard him even once, due to the commotion caused by his appearance.
At T minus 2, we were finally told our train was out of order and that another train would come for us. However, we watched helplessly as one, then another airport train passed us by. Finally a train pulled up alongside us and stopped. After herding everyone into the last car, our shepherds changed their minds and decided to load from the first car instead. The whole rescue operation seemed so improvised and muddled that one could almost believe this was the first train malfunction in Spanish railway history. Police had arrived on the scene by this point, but their main function appeared to be preventing any of the passengers from jumping off the train and making their escape to the airport, which was no more than fifteen minutes walk away.
At T-1.5 we were safely on the new train, where we were in for a new surprise. Instead of taking us to the airport, the train would instead return us to downtown Barcelona, where buses were waiting to take us back to the airport. Upon hearing this inane plan, even the stoic Spaniards started to express their anger and frustration. Many people were now certain to miss their flights. A girl next to me was sobbing and explaining in a halting voice to a small conference of locals around her that she had no money and could not possibly take the next day's flight to her destination.
The train crawled slowly back to the city. Even though everyone in it was in a hurry to get to the airport, the train stopped at each intermediate station. At the first of these stops almost everyone jumped out, more out of an instinctive desire to escape captivity than out of any rational decision, since getting to the airport from these intermediate stations was a fool's hope at best. Eventually almost everyone re-boarded the train, but more precious minutes were lost.
With about 50 minutes before my flight as we reached downtown Barcelona, I was one of the lucky ones with a shot at making their flight. Rather than wait for the buses, I bid goodbye to Barcelona public transit and shared an airport taxi with another guy who made the same decision. I made my flight with a few minutes to spare and had a thankfully uneventful remainder of my trip to Berlin.
Trouble struck at T minus 2.5 hours, within view of the airport terminal. The train suddenly came to a halt and the announcement screens went blank. When 15 minutes passed without movement, a few of the foreigners on board began looking a bit anxious. The Spaniards appeared not to notice, and simply propped open the door to the next car to cool down the air, which was getting quite stuffy and hot.
The train operator appeared and warned that nobody would be let off the train, but said that he could tell us nothing more. He made the same announcement in each of three cars, although most passengers probably never heard him even once, due to the commotion caused by his appearance.
At T minus 2, we were finally told our train was out of order and that another train would come for us. However, we watched helplessly as one, then another airport train passed us by. Finally a train pulled up alongside us and stopped. After herding everyone into the last car, our shepherds changed their minds and decided to load from the first car instead. The whole rescue operation seemed so improvised and muddled that one could almost believe this was the first train malfunction in Spanish railway history. Police had arrived on the scene by this point, but their main function appeared to be preventing any of the passengers from jumping off the train and making their escape to the airport, which was no more than fifteen minutes walk away.
At T-1.5 we were safely on the new train, where we were in for a new surprise. Instead of taking us to the airport, the train would instead return us to downtown Barcelona, where buses were waiting to take us back to the airport. Upon hearing this inane plan, even the stoic Spaniards started to express their anger and frustration. Many people were now certain to miss their flights. A girl next to me was sobbing and explaining in a halting voice to a small conference of locals around her that she had no money and could not possibly take the next day's flight to her destination.
The train crawled slowly back to the city. Even though everyone in it was in a hurry to get to the airport, the train stopped at each intermediate station. At the first of these stops almost everyone jumped out, more out of an instinctive desire to escape captivity than out of any rational decision, since getting to the airport from these intermediate stations was a fool's hope at best. Eventually almost everyone re-boarded the train, but more precious minutes were lost.
With about 50 minutes before my flight as we reached downtown Barcelona, I was one of the lucky ones with a shot at making their flight. Rather than wait for the buses, I bid goodbye to Barcelona public transit and shared an airport taxi with another guy who made the same decision. I made my flight with a few minutes to spare and had a thankfully uneventful remainder of my trip to Berlin.
posted by Dmitri Evseev at 2:52 PM
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