Through Windows

Arrived back in Barcelona at 8.30 last night with, I thought, ample time to spare to make a coach connection to Gerona for the final hop of my journey back from Scotland.

The coach was rumoured to leave from outside terminal 2, but a casual gallop up and down revealed not a sign of intention to provide a service. I enquired of a driver of another bus, a surly fellow with a magnificent and utterly dismissive shrug which conveyed "don't know, don't want to know and don't care, now piss off and stop bothering me" all in one heave of a shoulder. Two other drivers, a local polis, a taxi driver and the guy collecting the luggage trolleys all managed in their various ways to make me feel in varying degrees, stupid, inadequate, ignorant, feeble and in one case firmly in my dotage, but none of them could indicate where the mythical conveyance was to be located.

So I trudged back to the terminal, gently glowing by now in the twilight 20 C temp, and fetched up at the Tourist Information kiosk, only to be confronted by a notice saying;

"We do not give any information on Alsa bus"

Another trek up and down the forecourt of T2 produced no elucidation so taking my courage in both hands, I approached the hatchet faced guardian in the tourist kiosk and pleaded with her just to whisper to me the location of the Alsa bus stop, nothing more, no state secrets such as departure times, no holy writs involving fare structure, no tablets from the mount regarding routes, just the simple stopping place. She regarded me with all the enthusiasm of a rabbi in a salami judging contest, sniffed, gestured to her left and told me to turn left which confused me further, and to wait under the footbridge.

Feeling like a poor extra in a second rate spy thriller I lurked beneath the footbridge and lo and behold a Blue Alsa bus appeared, the driver popped from his seat, like a white rabbit from a hat and locked the bus and ran, literally, ran into the terminal. Peace descended once more, the time of departure came and went and the bus remained as inactive as a tomb, I began to worry, having no other means of getting home I envisaged spending the night in the terminal or having to stay in Barcelona until the trains ran in the morning.

I also appeared to be the only passenger and as one does had begun to question the location and even the existence of a coach route to Gerona. Then a miracle happened, a fresh chauffeur unlocked the bus, announced that this bus was the Gerona bus, and turned out to be English speaking, which saved my tortuous enquires in Catalan.

I was the only passenger, Geordi, my driver had obviously graduated from the Fernando Alonso school of Barcelona Bus Driving and we weaved our way at breakneck speed through the tangled streets, although subsequently on the AP7 motorway he did moderate the momentum to about 130 kph. I related the details of my search for information and surprise at the lack of any signage to indicate the stop and the fact that the previous driver had abandoned the bus like a cartoon anarchist with a ticking bomb. He explained that Serge, the running driver, had been taken rather unwell, " he got 'the English stomach' " he explained proudly.

As we passed rapidly through downtown Barcelona I suddenly remembered I was blipless. Then a band of angels began line dancing beyond the window of the bus and here is the result.