The Not-Trip to Barcelona

So this entry will be more of a recalling our misfortunes on our attempted trip to Barcelona. Sara and I decided to try to travel to Spain, despite the uncertainty created by the French train strikes and the requirement of traveling through France to get there. Sara planned and printed out our entire journey, which would be solely by regional trains, as we figured that these would be less likely to be canceled. Our trip would be as follows: Freiburg to Basel, Basel to Bern, Bern to Geneva, Geneva to Lyon, Lyon to Avignon, Avignon to Portbou, and Portbou to Barcelona. It would take from early morning until evening, but we booked a cheap hostel in Barcelona for the night and decided to try it. We wouldn't let a silly French rail strike prevent us from visiting Spain.

The trip went smoothly up until Geneva. Here, we found out our train to Lyon was canceled. Of course. But the helpful train employees finally managed to tell us that we could ride the TGV train leaving 20 minutes later because of the strike, even though our Eurorail passes aren't supposed to be could for them without reservations. It was apparent by the packed nature of the train (we stood in the restaurant cart) that there would be no checking of tickets, and we made it to Lyon just fine. In Lyon, we took our train successfully to Avignon, making the connection despite the delay on our previous train.

Avignon is a different story. Upon arriving, we found out that our connecting train to Portbou, the one that would finally get us out of France, had been canceled. What's worse is that there were no other trains even going that way. In frustration, I tried to find a train going back to Freiburg. That was also too much to ask for, but the man at the counter informed us of an overnight bus to Barcelona. Upon finding the bus station, we found no such evidence of this bus, and gave up on that. His other recommendation was to take a bus from the train station to the town of Nimes, and then take a train from there to Narbonne, which would at least put us closer to the border the following day. With no other options, we opted to do this.

Upon getting to Nimes and struggling to figure out what was going on, we realized Sara left her Eurorail pass on the bus. This was a serious problem. What made it worse was that we had next to no way to communicate with anyone, and after many frustrated attempts we got our message across, but there was little they could do to help us. We ended up staying in a hotel, and in the morning we struggled to find a way home. After waiting in line forever, we discovered a train going to Geneva, and despite the lady's insistence that we could not get to Freiburg that night, we asked if we could at least get to Geneva, figuring once in Switzerland we could get home. She told us that she couldn't book us reservations, but we could get on and hope that it was too crowded for them to check tickets. This is what we did, and we spent a train ride to Geneva cramped in the corridors with dozens of other people.

In Geneva, again, Sara purchased a ticket to Freiburg through Basel (Of course we could get home once in Switzerland) and the rest of our evening was spent traveling by train back to Freiburg. I was never so happy to see the wonderful city. I also learned my lessons. Don't travel if you can help it without reservations or assurances that your trains will run. And never trust the French train system. This not-trip was quite a headache.