I’m writing this from the train station in Girona, Spain. It’s stifling in this bland little cafeteria and I’m wearing my travel uniform of jeans and sneakers so I feel extra sweat and gross. This here is the NOT so glamorous part of travel- the part that’s less wonder and discovery and more impatient frustration.
You see, I missed a train.
Two actually and they were both completely my own fault. Poor miserable sleeping Mike across the table from me is merely a victim of my disorganization. And I’d had such good plans!
Originally we’d meant to set out to Avignon, France via a border town called Cerbere on the 8:57 AM train. We’d get an early start and arrive in Avignon with enough daylight left to walk around town. We went to bed early and everything. I set the alarm myself.
Which means of course, it never went off. Or rather, it did, but as the phone was set on mute it didn’t do a very good job of waking me up. I think waking up at 8:30 and realizing your alarm needed to go off 90 minutes prior is up there with the worst feelings in the world.
We weren’t too upset at this point- we’re really not early risers you see. The way I’d timed it we could take the 10:50 train to Cerbere and still make our Avignon connection easily. time to relax, shower, eat breakfast, pack. And we’d even got an extra hour of sleep. Maybe things would be better this way.
At least that’s what I said (I’m ever the optimist). Mike just kind of sleepily shook his head at me.
We got to the train station on time (well, belatedly on time), activated our Eurail passes, found our right platform and waited. Let me repeat: we were on time for the train.
Apparently the train stations in Spain, or at least in Girona have this weird quirk. Because the train was 5 minutes late, the board on platform 2 looked something like this:
Local 10:55 (blinking)
Cerbere 10:50 (not blinking)
Now if you saw this, would you think that the train that had just arrived was the train to Cebere? Maybe you would because you are not dumb like me. “that’s not our train!” I insisted to Mike and sat back down, watching the platform clear off and feeling superior.
Yeah, it was our train.
Missing one train is a mistake, missing two is just carelessness. At this point I wanted to cry. When I learned the next train wasn’t for another 90 minutes I almost did. Instead though I’m drinking a Coca-Cola Light, wishing this stupid train station had wifi and waiting. Waiting waiting waiting.
The good thing about trains though is that there’s always another one. Unlike flying where missing a flight is a huge headache of time and maybe money, here we just wait for the next train headed our way. It sucks, but it only kind of sucks.
Hopefully Mike will forgive me before the 12:45 train rolls around. I mean, there’s no way we can miss that one… right?
Thank you to Eurail.com for sponsoring our train travel… which I will hopefully get better at!
