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The train to Bilbao should have taken less than an hour. But passing green little valleys scarred by the proliferation of high rise blocks and desolate industrial projects, it ended up being closer to four.I arrived hot, sweating and without the slightest idea of where I was staying

Chicas!! Chicas!!

James Taylor
2006-08-23 12:26:28

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sense of levity: plus, everything, the walls, the floor, the stone, is smooth. Unbelievably, supernaturally, laser-cut smooth. I didn't even realise it was possible for a rock to be that smooth. I spent ages, just running my hand back and forth along it.

Most of my time in Bilbao seemed to be spent trying to find things. I was there Sunday and Monday. Which, as I know by know, are the days everyone goes into hibernation in South-western europe. My first morning was mostly spent trying to find an Internet Cafe, only to discover two hours later that there was Internet access in the Subway Sandwhiches right opposite the toursist office. I spent almost an hour trying to find the train station. I mean how hard-to-find,should a train station be. Even if the actual station is not in sight, one just follows the track until the station is reached. Well, I did this, and found the station but not the door, which took be a further fifteen minutes to locate.

On my final afternoon, as seems to be par-for-the course, I had left it rather late to catch my train aswell as get some food. I was hoping to just grab something from a local shop to eat on the train. But in Bilbao, when you want something, you can't have it. I spent a frantic ten minutes in the general vicinity of the train station looking for any open food shops. Surprise, there were none. I was resigned to my fate. In the train station, instead of useful shops, they had establisments like; a laundret, or a shop selling exclusively chess boards. I was eating in Burger King or the at the Peanut shop.

In Burger King, the guy behind the counter was either in some sort of collusion with the ticket office to make me miss my train, or was sarcastically mocking the whole fast-food concept. He spent five minutes chatting to his mate before taking my order; and then, when it was ready, my artificial chicken sandwhich lying forlonly in the chute, he did nothing. There was my Chicken Burger; there was me checking my digital watch every ten seconds; and there was him. Standing, doing nothing. When he eventually got his act together, he came to the conclusion that I wasn't in
a mad rush to catch the once-a-day,seven hour train to Madrid; and that I wanted to sit down and eat my "meal" in a nice leisurely fashion. When I motioned for a paper bag instead, rather then letting me stuff everything into it (which would have taken all of 5 seconds) he made a great show of deftly placing everything inside like he was the head waiter or something.

Running to the ticket barrier I realised I couldn't get through.My ticket was the wrong type and didn't fit. So I tried to catch the attention of a guard, who seemed to be quite deliberately not looking at me. He made some sort of gesture which I didn't understand so I tried to unsuccessfully to barge my way through the barrier. He was less than happy with this and after multiple hand signals and an incomprehensible Spanish tirade, I was made to understood that my train was not behind the barriers, but on the other side of the station. So after a short sprint,a slip and a baggage check I was on my train. Speeding away across the barren, warmly-lit Castillan plains.