day 5 - Sud Express

Day 5

Not like the last few days, I got up really early, Peter was going to get a visit from the cable guy to install a new set of services.

I started to get all my gadget stuff fully charged in the morning so that i had plenty to entertain myself on the train to San Sebastian. I noted down my next host address just in case i can't use internet when i arrive at Spain, went to the bank to withdraw some money, had lunch and made some shopping for the trip, apples, cereal bars, a bottle of water and some cookies, how and the wine for my hosts, my mother taught me well :)

When I was going to buy the train ticket there wasn't any more regular seats left, so i had to travel coach, no problem maybe some of my coach co-travels would be interesting people to chat.

Waiting at the train station, I started to image what persons that were in the platform with me was going in the same direction. A few last jokes with Peter and off I go. Thank you Peter and Helena for your hospitality, hope the site helps you my friend.

A Spanish employee with very good manners quickly showed me my bed.
First of all, the ideas that you maybe having, about 5 beautiful girls sharing the same space with me, bahhhh, there were 4 man already installed. I got the top bed on the right, no stress. The train starts to leave and i'm looking at the window thinking, this is it, i'm really doing this. For some moments i even felt a bit weird, some lack of air.

15 minutes gone by, comes a railway employee and starts to play a little but very noisy bell. Nothing special happens after that. At that point I felt that my emotions here on the biggest roller coaster in the world, and does loopings were “umongus”. Looking at a tsuru i made to calm myself standing on the window, I felt that i could write a book so deep and at the same time so insignificant just inspired by my gesture of touching the window.

Listening to Eddie Vedder complaining about society and watching the rural landscape half deserted, there is this strange freedom fighting guerilla feeling.
Two hours gone by and a lot off folded paper, and i'm not the only one in this narrow hallway, among being incredibly small and its greenish hospital look, it now as almost twelve people staring at the running trees outside.

A few more minutes gone by, and some cookies and others small snacks exchanged, we all knew each other destinations in my compartment,two of them are going to Paris, the other two are going to Victoria, one train station before mine. Oh, does going to Victoria told their wife's that they were going to work for two weeks in Spain, well, if they believe that poor lie, i think they deserve the faith they are getting.

One of them, the only white male besides me, is from Luanda, it is a good starting point to keep on talking since Carlos has recently moved down there. Travel story's, family, explanations about some economy phenomenons and so on. Another strange thing is that the light keeps on failing, having a conversation looking at a dark landscape and without lights on the inside its becoming very weird.

When the train stopped on the Spanish fronter, i got a chance to meet a Dutch family, a middle age couple and tree teenager girls. They are heading back home from a vacation week in Portimão.
After spending a few minutes trying to persuade them to come back to Portugal, but this time go north, which helped my rusty english to come out in public, we discover we had something in common, we are (at least I was trying to be) both project managers. He is a project manager in a railway company. After I told a sentence about how the project he is managing are a lot different from mine, he told me this without a blink: “a project is a project, it has a beginning and an ending”, it was like a small pat on my back from which I guess I immediately gain more confident and got a chance to explain my point of view.

We had another thing in common, we know that smaller, underpaying jobs are as important as the others, and we should respect everyone. It is becoming late, and he wished me luck for my sabbatical year trip, and told me i was being very brave. That is my middle name, Brave.

I'm writing this seating on the floor of the hallway, because in the compartment the lights are out. Not very sleepy, i'm practising my introduction to my host tomorrow morning when i arrive.

Now i'm trying to figure out one more thing, what the hell was the bell sign for?