Okay, this is my last night in Spain and I am not looking forward to the next 24 hours. I made a last minute change to my month-in-Spain-plans to visit my friend Max who lives on the French border with Switzerland, and because we all know how useless I am with maps and how I clearly underestimate the distance between two points, I thought it would be super quick and cheap to just pop over on my way to Greece.
God, I’m an idiot.
I was able to change my flight from Bilbao to Athens for a few euro, so I thought I’d just take a train from Northern Spain to Geneva. Ummm. Nope. Not only was it super complicated, it was super expensive. The bus too. So I found a cheap flight to Paris. Paris is just about two inches away from Geneva, so that’s only like an hour, right? Ha! And like 25 bucks to get there, right? Double ha!
About a week ago, Teresa told me about this thing called blablacar. Apparently drivers post rides on this website and passengers who don’t want to pay exorbitant train prices can search for rides with strangers to take them from where they are to where they’re going. She was going to St. Jean de Luz and was waiting for a ride to pop up. Popular routes tend to fill up quickly and I don’t think she found one. And I think she ended up hitching…and she’s older then me, so now I don’t feel so bad. She also explained the whole blabla thing. The number of “bla”s in the ride description is directly related to how talkative the ride is going to be. One bla means “shut up, I just need gas money”, two blas mean “we talk, but not excessively and are not scared of silence” and three blas means no one shuts up, ever. First I was just thinking about doing it but was definitely on the fence, and then I just found a ride and booked it. 35 euro from Paris to Geneva vs. 150 euro one way on the train. I’d even take a blablabla car!
So as I was standing at the Total gas station near the Port d’Orleans metro station in Paris waiting for Alexander blablacar to pull up in a light gray Golf and club me, cut me up, bag me and throw me in his trunk, I was thinking “What the hell is wrong with me?” I, mean, I can afford the train. I’m not that 19 year old kid anymore who saved for two years to backpack through Europe. And I don’t have to put any 19 year old kids through college. I have a job. I don’t have a mortgage. No debt. I don’t even own a car. So why am I standing by a gas pump eating a soggy gas station sandwich on wonder bread (in France of all places!) when I can be on the TGV reading or napping or eating a high-speed train sandwich on crusty french bread. I was reminded of another time when I arrived in Ko Samui and shunned all the tuk tuk and taxi touts when I got off the boat because I didn’t want to get ripped off 5 bucks or whatever tiny amount it would have cost me NOT to have to walk on the beach to my cheap hut in the midday sun and NOT to get chased by wild dogs. Yeah, I gotta stop this shit.
Or not. The ride was great, Alexander and his wife just got back from Chad, they work for the Red Cross, so I was 95% sure they weren’t going to kill me…although you never know, they’ve never heard me blablablabla. The other passenger was a grad student from Paris, who lived in NYC for most of her life and was doing an internship at a perfume lab in Geneva. Alexander was late so we were already chatting nervously at the gas station. Her dad was there and I could tell he was really nervous about his daughter getting in some strange car with strange people. I think he felt a little more at ease that I was the other passenger, the whole New York connection and me with my man feet and all. By the way, there was a lot of blabla action at the Total gas station. Wow. I almost got in the wrong car and ended up in Lyon. So many cars coming and going, picking up potential killers. Don’t they get CSI: SVU in France?
Of course I started talking about why the serial killer community hasn’t copped onto this whole blabla thing yet. I didn’t have to fill anything out except my name and email address, there was no vetting, no background check, no nothing. I didn’t even have to upload a picture if I didn’t want to. Alexander does this blabla thing regularly, he’s from France, but is stationed in Geneva so he goes back and forth quite a bit. I asked him if he ever had any crazy passengers. He said once a guy showed up for a reserved ride with nothing but a chainsaw and asked him if it was okay if he brought it with him. He was a lumberjack or tree surgeon or something, but we got a great laugh out of that. Needless to say, the chainsaw went into the trunk.
Okay enough about blabla, it was great, I got to Geneva safe and sound and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Time for bullet points and slideshow about my last day in Pais Vasco, hasta luego Donostia, espero que te vea el proximo ano!
- Got up, packed up all my crap and rode my bike into town for the last time.
- Looked for bus to Hondarrabia, a small village on the border between Spain and France, found it, didn’t get lost.
- Hondarrabia is ADORABLE. Made a mental note to get an apartment there next year.
- Spent a few hours exploring, taking photos, eating pintxos, drinking txakoli.
- I was in my second pintxo bar, eating some octopus when the throwback “Ray of Light” video came on Spanish VHS, which reminded me of my very first season on Paros, where I was going to be in two weeks. Either me or Sean brought this tape with us. Yes, a tape. And it was the theme song of the summer…”and it feels, like I just got home…” Which was often the case when we got up, grabbed a few figs from the tree outside our house and got on our bikes to go to work.
- After getting all nostalgic went to another pintxo bar for some anchovies and then back to San Sebastian.
- Got back on my bike for the very very last time, took a shower, put on a pretty dress and my mandals and went back into town to finally visit the San Telmo museum.
- Walked back to my neighborhood to have dinner at the sidreria close to my apartment.
- I wish all last days were this perfect!
Okay, all caught up on Spain!
