The train wasn’t moving. The conductors were shouting at us but we didn’t understand what they were saying. Tensions rose and people started to shout back, but it didn’t look like we were going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, it was starting to look like we might have to stay in Spain for the rest of our lives.

We’d left Barcelona two hours earlier and were one stop away from Cerbère, where we would change trains and I would continue on through Switzerland to Freiburg, Germany, while the friends I’d made in Barcelona traveled to Nice and Italy. The train ride had been smooth except for the realization that I didn’t have a bottle opener for the three bottles of Rioja wine stowed in my backpack. Now, however, the train filled with American tourists was stopped and conductors were walking the length of the train, shouting. Unfortunately, they were shouting in Catalan, the dialect of the Basque region of Spain that’s closer to Portuguese than to Spanish.

From the front of the train, someone shouted, “I think they said the train’s on fire!”

A handful of people screamed and began shoving their way out the door.

“No!” Someone else shouted. “I think the track’s on fire.”

The people screamed and shoved their way back in the door.

Just then the train moved. Only a foot. Backward.

“What just happened?” I asked, but no one seemed to know. Still the conductors marched back and forth, shouting in Catalan.

Another train pulled in alongside ours. A wave of passengers streamed out to board, only to turn around less than a minute later and rejoin us. “They’re going to Paris,” we were told.

We waited a few more minutes and then a young woman in a ski parka appeared at the door and shouted, “Hey! You better get off. This train’s going to Barcelona.”

“No,” I said. “We just came from Barcelona.”

“I don’t know. That’s just what I was told.”

So we got off the train and walked to the front of our car, where the hitch had been disconnected and the rear end of the train moved a foot backward. The moment the last person touched ground, the train began creeping away, heading back toward our point of origin. Unsure of what else to do, we all piled onto the last remaining car. Now there were twice as many people crammed into half as much train and still the conductors were running back and forth, yelling in Catalan.

“Oh!” said someone near the front of the car. “Now I know! They’re saying the station at Cerbère is on fire.”

“Oh,” the rest of us said.

“And the train’s not going anywhere. We have to take buses to the next station.”

“Where’s the next station?” I asked.

“Perpignan.”

“Where’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does anyone know?”

No one knew. Since there didn’t seem to be any option other than staying on an immobile train, we filed out and followed the trail down a hill to a parking area. Waiting in the parking area was a bus. Not buses. A bus. For an entire train full of people. In front of the bus stood the bus driver, waving his hand and shouting at everyone in – you guessed it – Catalan.

Everyone getting on the bus seemed to be heading toward southern France or Italy. My friends said goodbye and boarded. I tried to speak to the bus driver in a rough equivalent of Spanish and ask whether there were other buses coming, but the only thing he said was, “All trains go to Perpignan.” Afraid that I’d be stranded in wherever I was, I got on the bus and took a seat next to a wizened Spaniard with wisps of white hair barely covering the top of his head.

As the bus started driving, the Spaniard showed me his train schedule. “See?” he said as he pointed near the bottom of the graph, where it said “Perpignan” in big letters. With a smile he said, “We go there.”

My stomach knotted when I saw that the next stop for him after Perpignan was Florence. My train schedule to Geneva showed Montpelier, not Perpignan. All I had was a rough picture of European geography in my mind. I had no idea whether Perpignan was in France or Spain. It was too late to alter my course, though – I was just a leaf caught in the current.

An hour later we crossed into France. Since I could speak French, in a worst case scenario I could demand the train officials find some way, maybe by helicopter, to get me to Germany. Twenty minutes more and we entered Perpignan. As I leaned over and peered out the window I could see a sign with directions, including “GARE”, the French word for train station.

Unfortunately, the bus driver couldn’t read French.

Around the roundabout we went, 2 ½ times, finally taking one of the exits. We drove for half a mile, then stopped and turned around, returning to the roundabout. Another 1 ½ times around and we took another exit. Another half a mile before turning around again.

We went around that roundabout nine times. By the sixth I was getting nauseated. On the eighth pass I checked my watch. My connecting train was supposed to leave at 8:10pm; it was now 8:15. I yelled out, “Is anyone else going to Geneva?”

Someone in the back yelled, “We are. But I think we just missed our train.”

Ten minutes later we arrived at the train station. Back in Spain, there had been only one bus; everyone who missed the bus had to ride taxis. Over an hour. Into France.

The first thing I did when I returned to the U.S. was look on a map to see where the heck I’d been. Cerbère and Perpignan are 25 km apart along the Mediterranean coast, both north of the France-Spain border. Montpelier is two hours to the north. In order to get to France or Switzerland from Spain, all trains in fact must pass through Perpignan.

When we entered the station and checked the enormous overhead schedule boards, we saw that all the trains were delayed by at least two hours, and those of us going to Geneva now had another ninety minute wait. Everyone going to Italy had two hours. After a long and harrowing race against time, we took the most logical course of action: we all went to the bar across the street and drank while we waited for our trains. The occupancy of the bar exploded from five to fifty.

After a few drinks, the Switzerland and Germany crowd said our goodbyes and we made our way to the boarding platform. The moment we arrived, the schedule clock clicked and flipped again to reveal another thirty minute delay. While we waited, the rest of the group arrived as well, bringing with them bottles of wine and beer. By the time our trains arrived, we no longer minded the cold.


Eighteen hours later, I arrived in Freiburg, where my German friends met me at the station. I was only an hour late, but they all had their bags with them.

“Oh, so good that you made it,” one of them said as I was hoisting my backpack, laden with bottles of wine, off my shoulders. “You can join us.”

“Join you?” I asked. “Where are you going?”

“The Black Forest. Come with us.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling a tingle at the back of my neck. “Do I have time to shower first?”

“No, you can shower there. We need to go.”

“Well,” I said as I glanced at the heavy backpack. “How are we getting there?”

“Oh, it’s only an hour train ride.”

I fainted.

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