To Barcelona

Barcelona

Hey all – left very classy Formula 1 Hotel in Cahors at about 9:00 AM – had been raining overnight and was up to a balmy 4C, so at least no snow to deal with.  Spent a bit of time getting coffee and ambling around some important historical bridge, which neither of us knew anything about, but looked pretty cool.  Then headed off towards Barcelona, via some obscure in the middle of nowhere French mountain village (forget how to spell it - started with the letter L) that K wanted to see because it featured in a documentary she had watched about a 99 year old woman who lived there in pastoral bliss until she was run over by a truck a few days shy of her 100th birthday.  Found the village and wandered around it for a while – a lovely little place full of medieval things and complete with a warm and friendly anarchist community centre, which we wandered in to, found a heap of anarchists sitting around in an orderly kind of way, keeping the anarchist kitchen clean, returning anarchist books on time, taking turns using the anarchist internet and so on.  Am pretty sure that if the 900 animals surging around the carpark in Paris in the middle of the night had been anarchists they would have formed an orderly queue.  Then pushed on to Barcelona – a big drive even though we took the toll roads (130 ks a lot less harrowing when it is not snowing).

Interesting going over the border – the French prize a minimalist approach to road signs, reflectors, flashing lights – the roads themselves are so chic they disdain accessorising (given that a lot of their farms don't have boundary fences it is difficult to know exactly how they find the roads in order to clear them of snow) – but as soon as you cross the border into exuberant Spain: reflectors every 50 centimetres, flashing lights to let you know the reflectors are there, flashing lights to warn you about flashing lights on other flashing lights: Spanish roads are a lot like Vegas, except less restrained.  Like the French they also seem to regard speed limits as some kind of metaphor for gayness than actual limits – in an 80 zone I was doing 110 and was well and truly the slowest thing on the road.

None of which made finding Barcelona any easier – it looked like it was going to be pretty straightforward with only 10 kilometres to go at about 7PM.  The first problem was that we got stuck on this endless loop of ring roads for what seemed like forever – none of the sign numbers corresponded to any of the road numbers on any of the maps we had...  When we finally pulled off in desperation at the first thing that looked like an actual exit and asked for some directions it turned out we were in the Barcelonan equivalent of Frankston – people were clearly inbred – it was all very disturbing.

Finally sorted that out and eventually ended up on one of the big roads that runs through the centre of town.  A simple matter of finding our turn-off.  The first problem here was that this was near a big roundabout that google maps showed but which did not seem to exist.  The second problem was that it was Friday night and the traffic was simply insane.  Third problem was that when we turned off just after the roundabout that we thought was where we were supposed to be it turned out that we were nowhere near where we were supposed to be and instead got stuck forever in increasingly tiny one-way gridlocked alleys full of pedestrians and honking cars.  Same problem at the next roundabout once we finally managed to get back to main road.  Fight our way with increasing desperation back to main road again.

We weren't alone – a terrified carload of people pulled up beside us at one point and started asking us directions in broken English...  We shouted back that we were lost too – it was like a nightmare – we were all going to die of exhaustion, probably still in our cars.  They laughed (slight edge of hysteria).  It was about this time that K suggested driving back to France.  I would have if I could have figured out how to get out of Barcelona.

Finally, finally, found our hostel at 10:30 PM... which was the start of the next set of problems:  There was absolutely nowhere to park.  Several parking garages existed, but they all had red neon signs beneath them saying “Completo,” which was not at all encouraging, and even if they hadn't, it would have costed us somewhere north of $100 AU to park in any of them for 24 hours.

Back to the maze of gridlocked one-way alleys full of insane motorists and solid rows of parked cars with no more than a hand's-breadth between them (or the moving traffic, for that matter)... Finally find what we think is a car space about a mile or so from hostel.  K checks with local woman in process of parking her car as to whether this is a legal place to do so.  Local woman also in the middle of parking space nightmare.  K and local woman spontaneously hug each other – at least one of them cried   It turns out we are allowed to park there, but only until 6AM, when it becomes a bus lane.  Unpack gear, trek back to hostel, have some dinner, hit bed around midnight...

At 5:30 AM next morning suggest to K that she would find walking through the nightclub district of Barcelona on her own to the car a challenging yet ultimately rewarding experience.  Also suggest that driving the car by herself through the still dark streets full of lunatics until she found another park would be character building – something she would be able to look back on doing with pride.  Promise that if she does this and lets me go back to sleep then I will write a blog about it called “Hero K: What a Legend.”  K less excited by  prospect of being immortalised in this manner than might be expected, so I went with her (aside from this hick-up, turns out that K is a very good person to be with when things go pear-shaped.  But then I already knew that from the previous day.  And the day before that).

Photos.  1.  The bridge at Cahors.  2.  Shot of K on the bridge.  3.  The church in the little village.  K, who had a bad case of high-head that day, can be seen in the bottom left corner.  4.  The central square there – liked what they had done here.  5.  Pigeons.  6.  K looking over the village.  7.  A typical street.  8.  Horror:  the red neon under the parking places: Completo.

Cheers, B.