Thursday
Aug282008
lisbon: some notes on how not to get there
Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 2:14AM
We were somewhere in Irun, Spain, already late and anxious to get off the train that got us where we were and get on the one that would take us where we wanted to go: Lisbon. It was to be a 12 hour ride, in a luxury-sounding 6-person sleeping car. I imagined oak paneling and comic misadventures with my bunkmate, I pictured staring out the window as Spain rolled by and the sun came up over Portugal, I dreamed of sleeping for hours and hours, rocked into calm by the perpetual motion of a cross-country train.
We shouldered our bags, lining up behind other anxious passengers. Across the platform was our outgoing train, and who knew how long it would wait for us. We didn't even know how late we were or anything about our train except a car number and bunk numbers. When the doors hissed open we walked quickly, through the station and around some obstacles until we came upon the train, people milling about as they waited to get on-board. Our car, 31, was right in front of us and we climbed on.
Train hallways are narrow affairs, and this one featured a stream of people heading in and a stream of people heading out. I didn't even look in the compartments. DC and I in the front, we turned back to ask Vinny, who'd just rounded the corner with Lorena, what our room number was. He gave us 4 sequential numbers and we found it, sliding into the empty room, victorious.
DC and I sat across from one another and took a moment to actually look at our room. Cafeteria lighting cascading down over a top bunk about 6 inches from the ceiling, with some extra racks for bags. Bench seating below it, with a padded back, upholstered like cheap green hotel room chairs. Then Vinny and Lorena entered, getting their bags sorted and we all took another breath and looked around. Really? This was it? It seemed cheap and cattle-car-ish, and it looked short 2 beds. The window refused to open, and printed on it in Spanish and English were the comforting words that there was air-conditioning, contradicted by the pissing stream of cold air that was barely coming out beneath the window.
Then they showed up.
A woman somewhere in her late 40s with a bag or two stepped in, looked around and checked the numbers against her tickets. This was her room. She began talking in french, much to our confusion, and then Lorena, as the only french-speaker in our group, began talking with her. And then her husband showed up. I don't remember his face or much else about him, but I do remember this: he wore sweatpants with suspenders and carried behind him a suitcase that came up to his waist and was just as wide. Somewhere between looking up at him and finding out he was the french lady's husband, something broke inside me. Maybe all my illusions, maybe my sense of hope, maybe joy itself. It splintered and rained down on my brain. My iPod had died on the last train ride and I was forced to listen to him try to navigate how he was going to fit this gigantic case into this ever-diminishing space and her converse with Lorena. I couldn't tell what she was saying, but I could tell she was repeating herself with every line and seemed eager to chat. I folded my face into my hands as the train began moving.
DC asked Lorena to ask the woman where she was headed, and we at least confirmed we were on the right train. In my usual fashion of bad timing, I voiced my displeasure, wondering aloud how much plane tickets to Lisbon would have been and how much shorter that trip would have been. DC got angry with me and I climbed back in my head, stuck listening to a French conversation that barely registered except that it was beginning to already wear on me. I stared out the window, then up at the bunks, figuring out that the seat backs of the benches we were on actually folded up to form beds 5 and 6, measuring the space between each in my mind and determining that people in prison had more space to work with than we did. With the mood darkening, DC excused himself to find somewhere else and I looked back out the window, wondering if the train would slow enough for me to throw myself off of it and not injure myself too badly.
The wife decided to go to bed, her husband setting the middle bunk up as she climbed into the bottom one, pulling a blanket over her. So now I was going to have to sit here and watch an older French woman try to sleep, which could be interesting if the husband didn't shortly declare that now it was time for him to sleep. Which, in non-blithe lingo means, it's time for all of us to go to sleep. As we set up the middle bunk, I grabbed a pillow and climbed into the bottom bunk, figuring if nothing else I could try to sleep through most of this trip, even though I was only clocking 6 hours a night with a far later bedtime than the 11:30pm it was then. Which is when sweatpants and suspenders said in French, "That's MY bed." Lorena translated and I loudly asked how he came to that conclusion, but, realizing I couldn't even argue directly with the man, I grabbed my bag and said something like "Well, I'm leaving before I hurt someone." The hurting someone part might've just been in my brain, or I might've said it, not that he would've even known it.
Squeezing thru the narrow hallways, I came to spot at the end of the car, right next to the bathroom door and the door leading off the train. The window wouldn't open and I wondered if I could just fold myself into the rounded corner for the next 12 hours, briefly contemplating again just stepping off the train and spending the rest of my trip and possibly the rest of my life ekeing out life in Spanish Basque country. From there I kept going, where I found DC standing in the middle of the hallway, with his head out the open window. Later on he told me "I thought maybe I could just spend the next 12 hours with my head out the window. That would be fine." I accosted him, hoping to move past the unpleasantness of the sleeper car and we went looking for the bar.
Moving through the 2nd class sections, we saw people having what looked to be a good time on their leather benches in roomy cabins without beds, but windows that opened. This was when dc mentioned bribing someone to get into their room, bribery becoming a major theme of the rest of this ride. Into the bar car, which was mostly dining tables and a sad back end with a standing bar that served beer in cans to people who looked pretty interested in getting drunk. We tried moving past it, into a car whose contents seemed to contain that mythical oak panelling I'd dreamed of. This was the promised land. Then a train employee came and shouted at us in Spanish not to go back there, which we as ignorant english-speakers only took as some form of admonishment. DC asked why and the guy rattled more Spanish off to us, which we took as sign enough we should turn back. Any hopes of an observation car were quietly dashed and we sat down at one of the tables. Vinny and Lo joined us and all 4 of us sat there, each of us quietly wondering to ourselves how we were going to make it to Lisbon.
The waiter brought us a 'menu', which was a stapled piece of paper with a handwritten list of the majestic dinner in question, along with 20 EURO written above it. Beef, legumes, fruit and coffee.
"Jesus, what are we gonna do?"
"Well, maybe we can get dinner and kill a few hours here."
The waiter told us we could not share a dinner, that in order to sit at the deserted suite of tables, we had to each order the full meal. If we wanted just one part of it, we had to go to the bar to order it and eat it there, or take it back to our cabin, where Mr. and Mrs. Terrible were already on their way to sleep.
"Lorena, ask him if I can just give him 20 euro to sit here. I don't want any food. I just want to sit here for like 6 hours."
My offer of a bribe was rebuffed and dc suggested again we find someone and bribe them, grease a palm or two to get something better than what we'd been saddled with. We pretended to deliberate over the menu, hoping that would buy us some time. Maybe if we just kept staring at the menu, we could sit here for an hour. My math was now solely devoted to how much time I could chisel away from the grand amount while not stuck in that hotbox. Here was as close to a clean, well-lighted space as I was going to find, and I would've been content sitting here reading my book or making lines in the tablecloth with a fork. But to pay for food I wasn't hungry for, and which was so overpriced — giving yet more money to a company that had seen fit to shove us into coffin storage space for 12 hours — felt like thanking my captors for cutting off my thumb.
When we were finally told to order or go, we went, sadly, our sprint from train to train now forgotten, our steps slowing to a crawl to put as much time between us leaving here, a spacious car with no people in it, back to our quarters. We marched down the narrow hallway of the next car and suddenly someone found a compartment with no one in it. The door got slid open and me, Vinny and dc piled in. Lorena was nervous or needed air, or both, and chose to stay in the hallway, standing in front of an open window. We lowered the window in ours and I slid the door open, telling her so and to get inside. She ducked in, we turned off the lights and drew the curtains.
"Won't they come check our tickets?"
"No, they already came through the train and checked tickets."
"Well, there's no luggage in here, it must be empty."
"We should just stay in here until they kick us out. If they come and ask us why we're in here, we should just pretend to be completely confused."
I chimed in, "Honestly, the worst thing that could happen is they kick us off the train."
"Or make us go back to our car." We all shuddered a bit as we sprawled out in the 8 person berth. I sat next to the door, holding the curtains shut with my fingers as I tried to fall asleep. Lo borrowed me a hair clip to hold the curtains and the car went silent as we all struggled to sleep.
Just as we all began to doze off, the door slid open and the lights came on. "Tickets please?"
We didn't need to act confused, we were all in that twilighty stage of sleep and not sleep. But DC flubbed his own plan by looking over at Vinny, "Vince, you have our tickets, right?"
Vinny dug them out and handed them to the train man who pointed out we were in the wrong car, that our car was 31 and was several cars in the other direction. To which DC responded, "But we don't like it there."
We asked if we could just stay here since no one was using it and he explained that people were scheduled to show up at the next stop and occupy this space, with more coming as the night progressed. We asked if we could stay til they showed up, but he didn't seem to understand us. DC and I stayed glued to our seats while Vinny and Lo conceded that they'd go back to the bunk and Lorena, who'd gone along with the 'act confused' plan to where she pretended not to speak Spanish, looked over to me and asked "Should I just speak Spanish and ask him?" We had nothing to lose at that point. She asked if DC and I could stay there til the remaining people showed up and he said that would be fine. Vinny and Lo then trudged off to take the bullet for us, to sleep in that car with those people.
DC and I each took a bench and tried to get what sleep we could before we got kicked out. Another of my illusions, that the tranquility of the train's rocking and droning could only assist in sleeping was already proving false as I tried to doze off in the weird green half light that came from above and the full moon that came from outside the window. We woke up to observe the squalor of some random Spanish town and make jokes about it before trying to sleep again. At the next stop a couple came into our car, the overhead lights now at full blaze. They didn't speak English and they didn't seem very interested in wacky train friendships, so I tried reading while a friend of theirs came in and they all chatted for a bit before all of us tried sleeping in the harsh fluorescent light. I would wake up occasionally and peek out from my hoodie to see everyone asleep and then doze back off, my eyes already squinting from the light. The next time I woke up the lights were off and we were all asleep and the next time I woke up, our compartment mates were grabbing their bags and getting off the train.
Left alone again, DC tried to find Vinny and Lo, but gave up after entering a compartment or two of sleeping people who were not then, unsure exactly where they were. We sat there, chatting in the dark, falling asleep and waking up at every stop. I hopped off and smoked a cigarette at an extended stop, getting back on as the whistle blew and then finding myself with extreme drymouth and the bar car locked up. I remembered an empty bottle of Coke in my bag and pulled it out, taking extreme pleasure from a few remaining drops of soda, a taste I can still recall, equal parts magically delicious and amusingly bleak.
Eventually morning came about with no warning, heralded by our door opening and a train man asking us where our tickets were. We said they were back in our actual car and he retreated, content with that explanation. The door closed and quickly reopened as his Nazi-ish co-worker entered our compartment.
"Und vere is your tickets?"
"Well, they're back with our friend. Another guy said we could stay in here."
"Your friend, vat is his name?"
"Francone."
He checked his manifesto. "Ah yes, Mister Francopolis?"
"Who?" DC checked the manifesto and confirmed that was him while I chimed in, "There's a man and woman also in there, sleeping on the bottom bunks."
"Oh yes," the train man chimed in with a note of recognition and perhaps disgust, like my description was enough for him to recall those particular two specimens.
He eyed us warily and then left, apparently content with our story and having no reason for us not to stay there. I went and found the bar car open and got a juicebox and a bottle of water and being giddy as I re-entered the compartment with them. I'd been dreaming all night of beverages. DC went to check it out and shortly after that, I saw Vinny walking by the compartment. He stopped and looked in at me as I was reading and I could read a whole rainbow of emotions on his face just then. Strangling me being one of those brief glimpses.
At the bar, Vinny and Lo explained what they'd just gone through. Mr. Sweatsuspenders apparently suffered from sleep apnea, because he wheezed and gurgled while he slept. Which was apparently not much as he would wake himself up every 20 or 30 minutes when he stopped breathing, get up and pace the narrow space between the bunks, drink a beer, open the door or talk loudly to his wife. Vinny slept with his umbrella and at one point, woken up by Sweatspenders slamming the door open, shouted "What the FUCK?" According to Lorena, the whole room smelled like his breath and he was prone to being rude to his wife. Vinny kept breaking into maniacal laughter, driven to the edge and tossed right over it by the night's events. The wife entered the dining car and took a table and refused to meet our eyes. After we finished our drinks, all four of us went back to the hijacked compartment and resumed our sprawl of the evening before, uninterrupted and unchased, the sun coming up over Lisbon — shadowed by the escaping moon.
The rest of the trip was actually kind of sweet in that picturesque way I'm sure all of us contemplated a cross-country train trip. DC and I ate a sparse but enjoyable and enjoyably cheap breakfast, contemplating everything that'd gotten us to where we were right now, treating the last 9 hours like they were distant tragedies. They felt further away, if only because the trip had stretched time to its breaking point, turning minutes into hours and hours into eons. We fell asleep and woke up, we joked about the trip and stuck our heads out hallway windows, sneaking into empty compartments to smoke out the window.
Finally, 2 hours past forever, the train ground to a halt, producing one last time that distinct smell of burning metal. Our trial by fire over, we strode triumphantly down the walkway, breathing it all in, here we were: Lisbon. Nothing was going to go wrong anymore. We were to spend our remaining days drinking wine and listening to fado music and absorbing massive doses of sunlight. I felt immune to defeat.
Which is when I discovered I couldn't withdraw any money.
We shouldered our bags, lining up behind other anxious passengers. Across the platform was our outgoing train, and who knew how long it would wait for us. We didn't even know how late we were or anything about our train except a car number and bunk numbers. When the doors hissed open we walked quickly, through the station and around some obstacles until we came upon the train, people milling about as they waited to get on-board. Our car, 31, was right in front of us and we climbed on.
Train hallways are narrow affairs, and this one featured a stream of people heading in and a stream of people heading out. I didn't even look in the compartments. DC and I in the front, we turned back to ask Vinny, who'd just rounded the corner with Lorena, what our room number was. He gave us 4 sequential numbers and we found it, sliding into the empty room, victorious.
DC and I sat across from one another and took a moment to actually look at our room. Cafeteria lighting cascading down over a top bunk about 6 inches from the ceiling, with some extra racks for bags. Bench seating below it, with a padded back, upholstered like cheap green hotel room chairs. Then Vinny and Lorena entered, getting their bags sorted and we all took another breath and looked around. Really? This was it? It seemed cheap and cattle-car-ish, and it looked short 2 beds. The window refused to open, and printed on it in Spanish and English were the comforting words that there was air-conditioning, contradicted by the pissing stream of cold air that was barely coming out beneath the window.
Then they showed up.
A woman somewhere in her late 40s with a bag or two stepped in, looked around and checked the numbers against her tickets. This was her room. She began talking in french, much to our confusion, and then Lorena, as the only french-speaker in our group, began talking with her. And then her husband showed up. I don't remember his face or much else about him, but I do remember this: he wore sweatpants with suspenders and carried behind him a suitcase that came up to his waist and was just as wide. Somewhere between looking up at him and finding out he was the french lady's husband, something broke inside me. Maybe all my illusions, maybe my sense of hope, maybe joy itself. It splintered and rained down on my brain. My iPod had died on the last train ride and I was forced to listen to him try to navigate how he was going to fit this gigantic case into this ever-diminishing space and her converse with Lorena. I couldn't tell what she was saying, but I could tell she was repeating herself with every line and seemed eager to chat. I folded my face into my hands as the train began moving.
DC asked Lorena to ask the woman where she was headed, and we at least confirmed we were on the right train. In my usual fashion of bad timing, I voiced my displeasure, wondering aloud how much plane tickets to Lisbon would have been and how much shorter that trip would have been. DC got angry with me and I climbed back in my head, stuck listening to a French conversation that barely registered except that it was beginning to already wear on me. I stared out the window, then up at the bunks, figuring out that the seat backs of the benches we were on actually folded up to form beds 5 and 6, measuring the space between each in my mind and determining that people in prison had more space to work with than we did. With the mood darkening, DC excused himself to find somewhere else and I looked back out the window, wondering if the train would slow enough for me to throw myself off of it and not injure myself too badly.
The wife decided to go to bed, her husband setting the middle bunk up as she climbed into the bottom one, pulling a blanket over her. So now I was going to have to sit here and watch an older French woman try to sleep, which could be interesting if the husband didn't shortly declare that now it was time for him to sleep. Which, in non-blithe lingo means, it's time for all of us to go to sleep. As we set up the middle bunk, I grabbed a pillow and climbed into the bottom bunk, figuring if nothing else I could try to sleep through most of this trip, even though I was only clocking 6 hours a night with a far later bedtime than the 11:30pm it was then. Which is when sweatpants and suspenders said in French, "That's MY bed." Lorena translated and I loudly asked how he came to that conclusion, but, realizing I couldn't even argue directly with the man, I grabbed my bag and said something like "Well, I'm leaving before I hurt someone." The hurting someone part might've just been in my brain, or I might've said it, not that he would've even known it.
Squeezing thru the narrow hallways, I came to spot at the end of the car, right next to the bathroom door and the door leading off the train. The window wouldn't open and I wondered if I could just fold myself into the rounded corner for the next 12 hours, briefly contemplating again just stepping off the train and spending the rest of my trip and possibly the rest of my life ekeing out life in Spanish Basque country. From there I kept going, where I found DC standing in the middle of the hallway, with his head out the open window. Later on he told me "I thought maybe I could just spend the next 12 hours with my head out the window. That would be fine." I accosted him, hoping to move past the unpleasantness of the sleeper car and we went looking for the bar.
Moving through the 2nd class sections, we saw people having what looked to be a good time on their leather benches in roomy cabins without beds, but windows that opened. This was when dc mentioned bribing someone to get into their room, bribery becoming a major theme of the rest of this ride. Into the bar car, which was mostly dining tables and a sad back end with a standing bar that served beer in cans to people who looked pretty interested in getting drunk. We tried moving past it, into a car whose contents seemed to contain that mythical oak panelling I'd dreamed of. This was the promised land. Then a train employee came and shouted at us in Spanish not to go back there, which we as ignorant english-speakers only took as some form of admonishment. DC asked why and the guy rattled more Spanish off to us, which we took as sign enough we should turn back. Any hopes of an observation car were quietly dashed and we sat down at one of the tables. Vinny and Lo joined us and all 4 of us sat there, each of us quietly wondering to ourselves how we were going to make it to Lisbon.
The waiter brought us a 'menu', which was a stapled piece of paper with a handwritten list of the majestic dinner in question, along with 20 EURO written above it. Beef, legumes, fruit and coffee.
"Jesus, what are we gonna do?"
"Well, maybe we can get dinner and kill a few hours here."
The waiter told us we could not share a dinner, that in order to sit at the deserted suite of tables, we had to each order the full meal. If we wanted just one part of it, we had to go to the bar to order it and eat it there, or take it back to our cabin, where Mr. and Mrs. Terrible were already on their way to sleep.
"Lorena, ask him if I can just give him 20 euro to sit here. I don't want any food. I just want to sit here for like 6 hours."
My offer of a bribe was rebuffed and dc suggested again we find someone and bribe them, grease a palm or two to get something better than what we'd been saddled with. We pretended to deliberate over the menu, hoping that would buy us some time. Maybe if we just kept staring at the menu, we could sit here for an hour. My math was now solely devoted to how much time I could chisel away from the grand amount while not stuck in that hotbox. Here was as close to a clean, well-lighted space as I was going to find, and I would've been content sitting here reading my book or making lines in the tablecloth with a fork. But to pay for food I wasn't hungry for, and which was so overpriced — giving yet more money to a company that had seen fit to shove us into coffin storage space for 12 hours — felt like thanking my captors for cutting off my thumb.
When we were finally told to order or go, we went, sadly, our sprint from train to train now forgotten, our steps slowing to a crawl to put as much time between us leaving here, a spacious car with no people in it, back to our quarters. We marched down the narrow hallway of the next car and suddenly someone found a compartment with no one in it. The door got slid open and me, Vinny and dc piled in. Lorena was nervous or needed air, or both, and chose to stay in the hallway, standing in front of an open window. We lowered the window in ours and I slid the door open, telling her so and to get inside. She ducked in, we turned off the lights and drew the curtains.
"Won't they come check our tickets?"
"No, they already came through the train and checked tickets."
"Well, there's no luggage in here, it must be empty."
"We should just stay in here until they kick us out. If they come and ask us why we're in here, we should just pretend to be completely confused."
I chimed in, "Honestly, the worst thing that could happen is they kick us off the train."
"Or make us go back to our car." We all shuddered a bit as we sprawled out in the 8 person berth. I sat next to the door, holding the curtains shut with my fingers as I tried to fall asleep. Lo borrowed me a hair clip to hold the curtains and the car went silent as we all struggled to sleep.
Just as we all began to doze off, the door slid open and the lights came on. "Tickets please?"
We didn't need to act confused, we were all in that twilighty stage of sleep and not sleep. But DC flubbed his own plan by looking over at Vinny, "Vince, you have our tickets, right?"
Vinny dug them out and handed them to the train man who pointed out we were in the wrong car, that our car was 31 and was several cars in the other direction. To which DC responded, "But we don't like it there."
We asked if we could just stay here since no one was using it and he explained that people were scheduled to show up at the next stop and occupy this space, with more coming as the night progressed. We asked if we could stay til they showed up, but he didn't seem to understand us. DC and I stayed glued to our seats while Vinny and Lo conceded that they'd go back to the bunk and Lorena, who'd gone along with the 'act confused' plan to where she pretended not to speak Spanish, looked over to me and asked "Should I just speak Spanish and ask him?" We had nothing to lose at that point. She asked if DC and I could stay there til the remaining people showed up and he said that would be fine. Vinny and Lo then trudged off to take the bullet for us, to sleep in that car with those people.
DC and I each took a bench and tried to get what sleep we could before we got kicked out. Another of my illusions, that the tranquility of the train's rocking and droning could only assist in sleeping was already proving false as I tried to doze off in the weird green half light that came from above and the full moon that came from outside the window. We woke up to observe the squalor of some random Spanish town and make jokes about it before trying to sleep again. At the next stop a couple came into our car, the overhead lights now at full blaze. They didn't speak English and they didn't seem very interested in wacky train friendships, so I tried reading while a friend of theirs came in and they all chatted for a bit before all of us tried sleeping in the harsh fluorescent light. I would wake up occasionally and peek out from my hoodie to see everyone asleep and then doze back off, my eyes already squinting from the light. The next time I woke up the lights were off and we were all asleep and the next time I woke up, our compartment mates were grabbing their bags and getting off the train.
Left alone again, DC tried to find Vinny and Lo, but gave up after entering a compartment or two of sleeping people who were not then, unsure exactly where they were. We sat there, chatting in the dark, falling asleep and waking up at every stop. I hopped off and smoked a cigarette at an extended stop, getting back on as the whistle blew and then finding myself with extreme drymouth and the bar car locked up. I remembered an empty bottle of Coke in my bag and pulled it out, taking extreme pleasure from a few remaining drops of soda, a taste I can still recall, equal parts magically delicious and amusingly bleak.
Eventually morning came about with no warning, heralded by our door opening and a train man asking us where our tickets were. We said they were back in our actual car and he retreated, content with that explanation. The door closed and quickly reopened as his Nazi-ish co-worker entered our compartment.
"Und vere is your tickets?"
"Well, they're back with our friend. Another guy said we could stay in here."
"Your friend, vat is his name?"
"Francone."
He checked his manifesto. "Ah yes, Mister Francopolis?"
"Who?" DC checked the manifesto and confirmed that was him while I chimed in, "There's a man and woman also in there, sleeping on the bottom bunks."
"Oh yes," the train man chimed in with a note of recognition and perhaps disgust, like my description was enough for him to recall those particular two specimens.
He eyed us warily and then left, apparently content with our story and having no reason for us not to stay there. I went and found the bar car open and got a juicebox and a bottle of water and being giddy as I re-entered the compartment with them. I'd been dreaming all night of beverages. DC went to check it out and shortly after that, I saw Vinny walking by the compartment. He stopped and looked in at me as I was reading and I could read a whole rainbow of emotions on his face just then. Strangling me being one of those brief glimpses.
At the bar, Vinny and Lo explained what they'd just gone through. Mr. Sweatsuspenders apparently suffered from sleep apnea, because he wheezed and gurgled while he slept. Which was apparently not much as he would wake himself up every 20 or 30 minutes when he stopped breathing, get up and pace the narrow space between the bunks, drink a beer, open the door or talk loudly to his wife. Vinny slept with his umbrella and at one point, woken up by Sweatspenders slamming the door open, shouted "What the FUCK?" According to Lorena, the whole room smelled like his breath and he was prone to being rude to his wife. Vinny kept breaking into maniacal laughter, driven to the edge and tossed right over it by the night's events. The wife entered the dining car and took a table and refused to meet our eyes. After we finished our drinks, all four of us went back to the hijacked compartment and resumed our sprawl of the evening before, uninterrupted and unchased, the sun coming up over Lisbon — shadowed by the escaping moon.
The rest of the trip was actually kind of sweet in that picturesque way I'm sure all of us contemplated a cross-country train trip. DC and I ate a sparse but enjoyable and enjoyably cheap breakfast, contemplating everything that'd gotten us to where we were right now, treating the last 9 hours like they were distant tragedies. They felt further away, if only because the trip had stretched time to its breaking point, turning minutes into hours and hours into eons. We fell asleep and woke up, we joked about the trip and stuck our heads out hallway windows, sneaking into empty compartments to smoke out the window.
Finally, 2 hours past forever, the train ground to a halt, producing one last time that distinct smell of burning metal. Our trial by fire over, we strode triumphantly down the walkway, breathing it all in, here we were: Lisbon. Nothing was going to go wrong anymore. We were to spend our remaining days drinking wine and listening to fado music and absorbing massive doses of sunlight. I felt immune to defeat.
Which is when I discovered I couldn't withdraw any money.
file under Uncategorized, solipsism, travelogue
Uncategorized, solipsism, travelogue
Reader Comments (2)
wow.
Will always have their own dreams forever! Believe in yourself!
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