Acquaintance from Canada

This was my first time in a night train in Europe, and the name of the train itself was Trenhotel. I couldn't wait to see how it would be. It turned out all right. Each couchette is pre-designated for either men or women (berths being allotted at the time of booking based on the sex of the passenger). This carried a lot of oomph for me seeing as I was used to sharing the bay with पराये मर्द (Oh, to even think of such a thing anymore :P !) in Indian Railways. A hand towel, a 500 ml water bottle, a toothbrush (foldable, complete with plastic case), a set of ear plugs and a coat hanger each were provided for all four of us. All this, and a sink within the "roomette". Whistle whistle! Clap clap!! Unfortunately, it was central air conditioning (not air cooling) in the Tourist class, which meant the temperature was well up there - centrally.

An elderly lady was already occupying a place when I entered. She began to speak to me in Spanish, but soon as she realised my ignorance of the language, contented herself with eyeballing me. Throughout. Even as I was lounging with a borrowed Agatha Christie in hand. I tried startling her with a sudden smile, which did nothing to relax her stare. And I fervently began to hope she wasn't one of those who slept with their eyes open.

One of my fellow-couchettes was thankfully a 23-year-old backpacker from Montreal. The fourth passenger was a nice enough old lady, who was very merry about the fact that there were two who spoke only Spanish and two who didn't - like I said, a nice old lady.

Out of the blue, the grumpy one cornered me with a question that totally stumped the Canadian. She asked if I spoke Catalan. How on earth would I? I understood her import a day later when I was in Valencia. The thing is, I seemed to be the only brown-skin in Granada and Valencia. There were a few blacks yes, but mainly Caucasians. So, finding a foreigner who looked like me must have been like being stuck with an alien. I wasn't sure if I should have been flattered.

The other holidayer and I struck up a conversation that started with her being paranoid about ensuring the door's locked, but went on to travelling alone, old people, disabled people, abortion, religion, well-knit families - DEEP topics, as you may have gathered. The conversation was nice while it lasted, before we were shushed by one of the old women (who by the way, had turned out the lights without asking us).

For whatever it's worth, if you chance to come across someone who answers to this description (One defining feature is she was wearing a light blue polo t-shirt and off-white shorts on the night of August 2, 2011), do attract her attention to this blog post. She might wish to drop me a line - you never can tell.

The train was to Barcelona and the scheduled arrival at Valencia was 5:05. At 4:30, one of the staff knocked on the door to wake me up (I still can't get over how service-minded Renfe is!). That simple knock rang alarm bells for the girl and she got up with a sharp "Who's there?" The man's feeble voice must have calmed her down, because I don't know what she'd have done if had been gruff instead. At any rate, I switched on the lights and packed my shoes in a plastic bag with much deliberation and noise (something evil in me was intent on waking up old Mrs Xenophobe), stepped out on the corridor and promptly fell asleep soon as I sat on a chair near the door. (What else, there was half hour more to go!)

The feeble-voiced man was herding all of us bound for Valencia towards one door. All at once it struck me that the day broke very late in this part of the world and I should be in the train station for a greater part of three hours before I can step out and sight see. It was at this stage a Leonardo di Caprio-lookalike spoke to his girlfriend in English. And at that very moment I fell in love with the language. I had only been 3 days in Spain and words uttered by an Englishman were like music to my ears (Errmm... Canadians have a different accent). Spirits buoyed, I alighted from the Trenhotel ready to take anything that the party destination of mainland Spain may throw at me.