Episode 6: Gavin 0-3 Barcelona

So today (Friday 28th) was the third time I’d be in Barcelona since starting my year abroad, surely a la tercera va la vencida, right? Wrong! This time it was for a meeting at the Departament d’Ensanyament’s main building.

Thursday afternoon I still didn’t know if I was actually meant to go to the meeting or not, hopefully not given that it would be almost literally impossible to get to Barcelona at 11am, but then I got ‘es importante que vengas’, well that’s just fantastic, so it’s a case of get up at stupid o’clock to get a bus at stupid o’clock to get a train at slightly more reasonable o’clock to arrive at Sants-Estació at something past 10 giving me time to get on the Metro etc. etc. Or alternatively I could ask pretty much anyone who lives in Barcelona “help! Can I sleep at your place? Like, tonight, in 4 hours?” Thankfully Karina, an American girl, said I could, so that’s the bed sorted, now the getting there.

The buses from Amposta to L’Aldea run at 20 to the hour on weekdays, getting me to the train station on the hour, or 10 minutes after the train leaves to Barcelona, there was one at 19:50 or another at 21:44, I decided it best to get a taxi only by the time it had showed up, picked me up, got stuck behind a bus that didn’t stop in Amposta and would still have got me there late, I missed the 19:50, fantastic. So now I’m waiting here for nearly 2 hours and the 19:50 was 11,25€ as opposed to the 21:44 being 24,30€, now this presents a problem as I took out 40€ to last me the two days, the taxi was 13 plus 24,30 = 37,30, leaving me a whopping 2,70€, this was to get me round Barcelona’s Metro system twice and then back home. This is not good. So I’m sat there in the train station wondering just how I will manage this (to this day I’m still not entirely sure) and suddenly it occurred to me: my credit card! That’s got some money on it and I brought it just for this sort of emergency! And it’s in my room. FUCK! Not bueno, not bueno, not bueno, not bueno, but it wasn’t like I could do anything about it, so I got on the train when it eventually arrived and just sat down watching whatever film it was showing, got into Sants and rung Karina to find out the stop, and it was on the same line meaning it would only cost me 1,45€ so that’s a plus, got to the machine and it turned out I could pay by card (on which I couldn’t withdraw money because I didn’t have 10 euros) so this helped a fair bit, bought the ticket, got to Vallcarca and met Karina, went to her flat and got a decent night’s sleep, knowing that I could get up at a normal time the next day as opposed to 5 or 6. Woke up the next day, had breakfast, showered, etc. then set off from Vallcarca to Diagonal, another 1,45€ then I bought another ticket on the way across Diagonal to get to Muntaner, tried getting through the barrier onto L6 and it wouldn’t let me, tried again, wouldn’t let me, on the third time of trying it turned out I’d got the wrong ticket, BCN has 2 underground systems, there’s the Metro and the FGC, meaning I’d just wasted 1,45€ at a time when I really could have done without doing that. Ended up buying an FGC ticket which was exactly the same price (so a bit of a middle finger if you ask me) and got on the train and arrived at the meeting, where there were a grand total of 7 people, and it wasn’t even in a meeting room, it was one of those open plan offices where there’s about 100 people with their own desk, I just travelled 90 miles for this? I was highly unimpressed, also at the fact that 3 of the other lived in Barcelona and the other Reus. But anyway we had the meeting and then I set off back to Sants and I figured I’d walk to save money, which wasn’t actually that difficult, found the train station and then this is where the fun began, I got to the ticket office and had 8,70€ and my card to buy an 11,25€ ticket, only it’s not like England where you can pay some by cash and put the rest on your card, so this meant I had to then find a Bancaja in Barcelona given that I couldn’t just nip to a cash machine, so first of all I had to find someone who knew where one was, then find Carrer de València on a map, then figure out where I was on said map, and this bit took a good 15 minutes. Eventually found Carrer de València and after walking for what felt like about 2 miles I thought ‘surely I would have found it by now’ so I asked someone who thankfully knew where it was, and I got to the other side of the road I saw a sign saying Avinguda de Roma, meaning I was never on carrer de València. Smooth. So I got to the Bancaja and then came the one tiny glimmer of good luck that comes with every one of my trips to BCN: they asked for my passport to make sure I was the cardholder (it’s standard in Spain for some reason) which they’d only gone and told me to bring so I could get into the building where the meeting was in the first place, so I withdrew what I had and set off back to Sants, and it’s always a lot quicker when you’re going back to a place, got there in seemingly no time (looking on Google it was an exact 2 mile round trip) and got my ticket, now just to wait for the annoyingly infrequent trains to L’Aldea for nearly 40 minutes. Then when I finally got to the station my luck wasn’t to end there, I now easily had enough money to cover the bus to Amposta, only some twat had ripped the timetable down from the stop so I didn’t know if I’d be waiting 50 seconds or 50 minutes, as it happened it was 50 minutes. So eventually at half 6 I got into Amposta, having left the meeting at about 11:45 that morning, this was meant to be a short, simple day.
Well, now to wait until the next time that I have to go (November 8th), if i don't pull one back this time it may well just be game over.