Jamie Fehr

Having traveled as much as I have in the last twelve months I sometimes feel like I know all the in’s and outs of travel via any means, at least that is the case during preparations, actually travel has proved my inability to plan every time.

How not to get to Madrid …

Strangely enough, it’s considered a good idea to reserve seats for the mode of transportation that you would like to take from point A to city B. On my recent excursion out to Madrid I had deemed it unnecessary to reserve tickets online or in person at the bus station. I just didn’t have time to go to the station and get the ticket beforehand and at the same time I really didn’t feel like paying the 1€ booking charge to do it online. It looked like apathy was going to be the option that best fit my schedule, since when do you need to plan ahead to take a bus anyway? I most certainly had never up until that point.

So a week after deciding what bus to catch I showed up at the bus with a bag and a travel companion (Brandon from the Video department) in tow. We were a good ten minutes early for the bus we wanted which left plenty of time to buy tickets and throw the bags underneath. I went up to the ticket window and asked for a ticket for the 2:15 p.m. bus to Madrid, the lady behind the window said no problem. Next Brandon walked up the same ticket window and made the same request and at that point we found out that there was only one seat left on the next bus and that we would have to wait two and a half hours for the next one. Bummer. Anyway, it didn’t take long to change my ticket to the 4:30 p.m. bus and for Brandon to buy his. We walked around for a while and visited the nearby mall, the time passed slowly but eventually we did get on a bus to Madrid, where begins the next lesson.

How not to lose your cell phone …

I had a cell phone. Notice the past participle in the last sentence. I was on a bus to Madrid with the explicit purpose of seeing two spanish cities and a few friends that I had not seen in the last five months.

While riding the bus I sent out some text messages to the people that I wanted to meet to make arrangements and after sending out a barrage of messages and recieving a few back I decided to catch a little shut eye before arriving in the spanish capital. A short while later I awoke, not shocking news, I know, but what shocking was that I couldn’t find my cell phone!

Where could it have gone? I wondered. I was sitting in a window seat and Brandon was sitting in the aisle seat, surely no one could have removed from my person while the bus was driving and I was sleeping, it just wouldn’t be logical. It must have fallen to the ground, what else could it be? It wasn’t in any of my pockets nor perchance sitting on my lap. So I got down from my seat and started scouring the floor, I couldn’t find it.

I asked the man sitting behind me if he had seen my phone, he replied no but what was willing to help me look but after turning up nothing during an exhaustive search of his sitting area I was still phone-less. By this point I had attracted a little attention and the lady sitting across from me seemed interested in what was going on so I asked her if she had seen my phone, she said no but was also willing to search some. Nothing.

At this point I was really starting to get a little confused, we hadn’t stopped since the last time I used it so it had to be on the bus. I asked the lady beside me if I could use her phone to ring mine. If it’s still on the bus it will ring and I will hear it I thought, nothing but silence. How very frustrating indeed.

At that point I decided the only logical thing to do would be to wait an hour and half until we arrive at the destination. The bus will stop moving, the lights will go on, everyone will clear out, and I can do a real search I thought. And that’s exactly what happened, the lights went on, the bus clear out, and even the bus driver helped me look, but to no avail. My phone was gone.

How not to get to Segovia …

My first day spent in the Madrid area was going to be spent visiting some ancient roman ruins in the town of Segovia which is only ninety kilometers away Madrid or a four and a half hour journey by the route that I took. I hadn’t had time to do the research into getting to Segovia before leaving for Madrid which proved to be the king pin in my failure to reach my destination quickly, and as a result of my lack of knowledge I asked the Madrid local who was working the front desk of the hostel I was staying. He said go to the bus station.

I went to the bus station to find that not a single was traveling to my desired destination, how could this have happened? I went to the lady at the information desk and asked her how to get to Segovia. She told me I wasn’t going to get there by bus and that I needed to go to the metro stop “Principe Pio” to catch a train. Reasonable advice. I spent the next forty minutes of the morning crossing the city to get to Principe Pio and when I got there I found that the trains ticket office was closed. The short distance or Cercanias were running but the medium distance or Medianas were not. The meant that the trip had to be broken down into two separate and as I was buying tickets for the first half the train pulled out of the station. No problem these trains come by every half hour at least, even on the weekends I thought.

Nope, I waited and waited, no train. Waited some more, a train did show up, but wasn’t sure if it was going to the right stop. I asked an elderly looking gentleman if the train was on its way to Villalba, the intermediary stop. He said no and that he was waiting for the same train. Little did I realize, he wanted to talk.

I had a while before the next train showed up and there was nothing I could do to accelerate things so I listened to this old mans rant on how foreigners are killing the Spanish economy, on how he hates the Japanese, on how Spain would be much better if it had a king, on how religion is terrible and if were it legal he would like to kill priests and rabbis, so on and so forth. The only thing that gave this man joy was that he could by a Big Mac™ from McDonalds for €3. Most definitely a strange encounter.

A train did come to save me from this man, he didn’t get on despite saying this was the train he was waiting for. An hour later I was in Villalba and a after a short hour long wait there the train to Segovia did arrive and whisked me off to my destination.

The conclusion of the matter …

I don’t know what I could have done to prevent the loss of my cell phone, it was a really bizarre set of events, but the theme that runs through these stories is preparation. A quick trip to the Internet could have accelerated both journeys and probably increased the enjoyment experienced at both respective destinations.

Overall Moral: Buying tickets online before making the trip is good. Checking the schedule may not always be enough.