Two roommates, another friend, and I took a trip to Marseilles, France this past weekend. It was great. Charlie and I had been idly thinking of trips one evening over a month ago, and somehow the idea emerged to take the train from Madrid to Barcelona, rent a car, and drive to Marseilles. Why Marseilles? Because it was a city along the French coast that we'd both heard of, it looked pretty in Google Maps, and it was about five hours away from Barcelona by car. We checked prices of car rental, gasoline, tolls, and the like, and decided to shelve the plans until / unless we found one or two other people to go with to split the cost.

Fast forward a few weeks. I was talking with Alec, a British architecture student who spent some time at the language school, and he mentioned that he needed to go to Marseilles at the end of February to study the work of a famous architect there. Hey Alec, wanna travel with us? We had also gotten a new roommate, Briana, since we had originally been scheming about the trip, so we asked her too. Both were totally down for the trip, and Alec even knew a little French, which was more than the rest of us.

So we went to Marseilles this past weekend. I took Friday off of my work and we left Madrid Thursday night on the Estrella, the night train to Barcelona. I had been imagining coach seats like on U.S. trains, or even like on airplanes, but the rolling stock on the Estrella looked at least 30 years old and the seating was arranged in compartments like on the Hogwarts Express. Unlike the Hogwarts Express, this train was not the glorious antique kind of old. Four seats faced four seats with upright backs against the walls of the compartment. They "reclined," in a sense -- the flat part of the seat slid forward a few inches to put the back at an angle -- but it wasn't enough. Plus, because the seats faced each other in the compartment, reclining the seat just pushed your knees further into the person across from you, so if both people slid their seats down, their legs would be all jumbled up together and anybody wanting to leave in the middle of the night would have to jump over the leg knot. The train was an all-stops run so the trip took almost nine hours and we got into Barcelona at 7:36am as scheduled. The upside of the trip was talking and playing cards into the wee hours with two very nice folks -- a brother and sister from France who were in our compartment. The brother was 26 and spoke perfect English and his sister was 17. She didn't speak English well, but she spoke Chinese and Japanese quite well, as well as French (of course) and one other language that I can't recall -- maybe Russian?

If I was to do this part of the trip again, I'd get beds, which actually weren't that much more expensive. At any rate, we stumbled into Barcelona-Sants (the train station) on Friday morning and tracked down breakfast (let's see -- baguette sandwiches and orange juice, or... baguette sandwiches and orange juice? Spanish food isn't known for its variety). We picked up the rental car and started to drive.

The car was a Citroën C3, a small four-door hatchback; the cheapest thing we could get. It was a stick shift like the majority of cars in Europe. Briana and I had been planning on splitting the driving since we're the only two who have experience with manuals and who can legally drive in Spain, but she didn't have her California driver's license because it had been stolen over a month ago in Sevilla and the California DOT hadn't sent a replacement yet. I ended up driving the whole trip, which is always more interesting on only three or so hours of Estrella-addled sleep, but it was very fun and I love to drive. Janny, a friend in Madrid, had loaned us a GPS before we left, and with its British voice as my navigator and a full tank of gas, we dodged the motorbikes and horns of Barcelona and got out on the open road.

It is beautiful country -- just beautiful. Having spent the past couple months within a few miles of our apartment in central Madrid, that was one of the reasons we wanted to drive: to get out and see mountains and open space again. We stopped in Montpelier for lunch, I ate a crepe with Nutella and banana for desert, and we made it to Marseilles by dusk.

Charlie had found us a hostel that was really truly awesome. It had things that all hostels should have, like walls that were bright orange and yellow, and an outdoor courtyard with tables, and a nice common room, and a stunningly pretty French girl who spoke perfect English (and was also very nice) at the check-in desk. The four of us were all in one room along with a couple from Canada who had just graduated from college and were taking a few months to travel around Europe "to put off the real world a little while longer." We bought some brie and a baguette and the Canadians had a cheap bottle of wine and it all felt very French.

Some friends in Madrid had told us, "Marseilles is a dirty city." It is dirty, somewhat; certainly not what comes to mind when you think of "French city." It's right on the sea and there's a harbor for sailboats and such in the center of the downtown area; the blocks immediately surrounding that are built up for tourism but the rest of the city (at least that we saw) wasn't terribly polished. It's a city of immigrants -- Algerians especially -- and the graffiti and general feel of the place was actually quite refreshing after the sparkling tourist-geared center of Madrid.

One of the neatest things we visited was Notre-Dame de la Garde, a basilica atop a hill which is the highest point in the city. What a walk up to the top! The construction of the building was spectacular and we got to go inside and marvel at it even though there was a service going on, but really, the coolest part had to have been the view of the city itself. From so high up, we could see Marseilles spread out below us for miles like a map, with the sea reaching out beyond it and the stormy clouds rolling overhead...

Our trip home was possibly the most eventful part of the trip. We got up and out of the hostel by 6:45am on Sunday because the train that Charlie and I were going to take left Barcelona at 1pm and we wanted to give ourselves at least six hours to make the five hour drive. Our Citroën had a display to tell us how much gas was remaining in the tank -- it read out in kilometers. After we got on the highway (we started the day with about 100 km remaining in the tank), I eventually found a station and pulled in. But we didn't fuel up there because I misread the sign coming in and ended up being dumped back out onto the highway once again. (It was a tollway-type fueling stop, with one-way traffic only and no option to loop back around.) OK, no problem. We'll catch the next one -- we have 55 km left in the tank. A couple minutes later, we spied a sign announcing "Next Gas Station: 72 km." Houston, we have a problem. Briana and I (Charlie was sleeping away peacefully in the back seat throughout this whole thing) decided to take the next exit for a town and look for a gas station there. This proved successful -- we found two gas stations -- except for the fact that they were both closed and dark, and the pay at the pump machines wouldn't authenticate my American credit card. So we couldn't fill. We also wasted about half an hour in this detour. Our tank was now at 35 km.

We plunged on. Because of our detour into the town, the GPS now had us on a rural highway with nothing around but fields. There were little SOS highway help call boxes every few miles, and we considered just stopping and asking for assistance, in which case we almost certainly would have missed our train. I decided that if we ran out of gas and had to call for help, the same SOS folks would probably answer anyhow, so we didn't really gain anything by stopping in advance to call. Plus, the car probably had some reserve capacity it wasn't telling us about. We plunged on. By now the fuel display was just showing a line (-------) indicating no fuel in the tank, and the car was dinging my attention to that unhappy fact. 20 km beyond empty. Suddenly, on the other side of the road, Briana and I saw a gas station! And it was open! But it was a divided highway with a solid median so we couldn't get to it right away. We took the next exit (25 km beyond empty), turned around, and coaxed the car back to the station (30 km beyond empty) where we were finally able to fill. That was one of at least two times the powers that be saved my neck that day.

The other time was a few hours later. If you've been following the story, you'll realize that we lost at least an hour in the fueling adventure, so our planned hour in Barcelona was looking more like 15 minutes, and we still needed to return the rental car. After getting turned the right way once again after leaving our savior gas station, the GPS told us we'd arrive in Barcelona 12 minutes before our train was scheduled to leave. OK, 12 minutes, we can do 12 minutes, right? Not so fast. We had to fuel the rental car once more before we arrived in Barcelona to avoid a refueling fee -- this went much more smoothly and was a six-minute stop in a tollway station. Coming in to Barcelona, the GPS said we'd arrive at the station with seven minutes to spare. After exiting one exit too soon (the GPS had told me "Exit now!") and fixing that mistake, then having to disobey its instructions twice more due to road construction, that estimation shrank to six minutes. Finally, we arrived at the entrance to the rooftop parking lot of Barcelona-Sants, with seven minutes (by my watch) until our train was scheduled to depart.

QUICK, EVERYBODY! Pack your stuff up, take the GPS down, sweep the crumbs onto the floor, we've gotta return this car! We magically found the correct lot, bolted down the stairs to the station and rental counter, and while Charlie scoped out the gate our train would be waiting at (if we weren't too late), I ran to the Alamo rental window. Our train was scheduled to leave in three minutes. I told the guy behind the counter that our train was leaving so soon, and he smiled and said, in Spanish, "Don't worry -- it's all good! You filled the tank up, right? Then you're set. I need your signature and your keys and you're done. Now go run for the train!" The whole process of returning took about 30 seconds. Charlie had found out that our train left from platform two, at the opposite end of the building, so we ran, weaving through the crowd with our backpacks swinging behind us. Two minutes until departure. Our tickets were for the AVE, a very nice high-speed run, and there's a security checkpoint before the AVE platforms. We ran up, panting, and the green-suited guards said, "Your tickets, please?" I said, "We're on the 13:00 for Madrid!" and they leapt and said, "Oh, then you'd better get going!!" Tickets (and security) were forgotten as we threw our bags onto the metal detector's conveyor belt, grabbed them out the other end, and ran. The next checkpoint was at the top of the escalator leading down to the platform, where we finally did present our tickets to two agents who scanned them and said, "Get down there!" We ran down the escalator two steps at a time...

...and there was our train, waiting, doors open. We scrambled in, and the doors were shut not more than 60 seconds later. The train left at 1pm exactly, with me and Charlie onboard, grinning to ourselves and wondering how the heck we'd ever managed it. That's the second time that the powers that be saved my neck that day.

The AVE really was a nice run -- the opposite of the Estrella. Less than three hours for the same trip that had taken almost nine hours a few days before! Whereas the Estrella could have been pulled by a steam engine, the AVE would have been better suited with rockets. Literally, the design of the thing was lovely and did look like a spaceship -- if the designers of the Starship Enterprise had been asked to come up with a train interior, it probably would look very much like the AVE. Beautiful curved glass doors that slid back into the wall with a pleasing pneumatic swoosh automatically, red LED displays under semi-slivered glass showing current speed (300 kph / 186 mph), temperature, destination, and messages in four languages, a movie playing with headphones airplane-style to listen at your seat, and even at top speed, a ride much, much smoother than Amtrak's ever been. I bought a baguette sandwich and it too was excellent, and not even very overpriced.

That was Marseilles. The next day when I was going to work, a violinist in the metro station where I transfer was playing the Shire theme from Lord of the Rings. In a way, it's good to be 'home' in Madrid.

Last note for what has already been a very long update: Another American student (also doing an internship in my same program) just moved into the apartment downstairs this week. Her name's Megan. I met her a few days ago, and yesterday she randomly asked me, "Did you ever find the sour cream you were trying to buy?" I said yes, I did, but I wondered who told her that story. (Those of you who have read my other entries may remember something about my quest to find sour cream.) Turns out her dad had been reading the Adelante website before she actually left for Spain and had been following my journals. Apparently he's a fan. A day or two ago he realized that Megan had met the note-writer, which is why she asked me about the sour cream. For the record, yes, I did succeed in my sour cream quest, and yes, it was very fulfilling. But it's even better to know that some people read these journals on the Adenante site, and therefore, a shout-out to Jody!

That's it for now. Until next time,

Andy