Barcelona!

Barcelona, part 1

My trip out of Montpellier was actually somewhat notable. I had a connection in Figueres (a town in Spain that I'm pretty only exists to serve as a transfer point between French and Spanish regional trains), and a 10-minute delay coming out of Montpellier cut my 15-minute connection time down to 5 minutes. Luckily, due to the facts that the Figureres train station only has about 2 platforms and the train to Barcelona was literally about 20 feet away, I didn't have to spend the night in some tiny town in Spain.... Which is what I had feared would happen.

As I was getting ready to switch trains, I overheard two people, a guy and girl of about my age, talking about Barcelona. I found out that we were all making the same tight connection, and that the guy and I had been assigned to seats right next to each other on the train!

Over the next few hours, I found out that not only had we all been in Nice for the same period of time (stuck an extra day because of Easter Monday), but the guy and I had stayed in the same hostel and had just never run into each other. Upon arriving in Barcelona, we then realised that we were all going to the same metro stop and that our hostels were roughly about 2 blocks from each other. What are the chances?!

After checking into our respective hostels (at approximately 11:45pm), we decided it would only be appropriate to hit the town and experience Barcelona nightlife. We walked down La Rambla, the main pedestrian strip that serves as Barcelona's tourist center by day and bar scene by night. Not having yet eaten dinner, we found a restaurant still serving tapas and ordered a pitcher of sangria and some food (I ordered a plate of olives, which I promptly devoured).

Upon finally going our separate ways, we realised that we had never gotten each other's names. I guess it might have seemed a little out-of-the-ordinary at the time, but now that I'm looking back on that night, it makes me really think about the value of a name or a formal introduction. These two other travellers and I shared an almost instant bond, even though we never officially 'met' each other. Our conversation began with my asking if they were also going to Barcelona, continued with asking where each was from, and was kept alive by sharing our travel experiences.

And what's in a name, anyway? Our names are our most basic form of identity, yet I feel like I learned just as much about each of these individuals without knowing their names than I would have if I had introduced myself when we first met. Are names really a necessary part of our relationships with others? Perhaps if one had a name that had some sort of significance to me (say, the same name as a close relative, close friend, or a significant other), then I maybe would have thought of that person and linked their identities whenever I had to reference them by name. Would I think of these new friends differently? Would I remember them differently now? These are things I think about when I'm sitting on the train for hours on end.

By the way, their names were Joel and Cynthia, and they were both awesome.



Random sidebar - I'm currently on one of the five (5) trains I'll need to take to Berlin, and the little boy sitting in front of me is throwing up. I'm not sure if I'm more sorry for him or just grossed out, but either way.... Yay.