Art of Travel: Paris to Madrid
Day Twenty-one
This morning I decided to lounge around the camp swimming pool, reading, writing and cooling down with a swim now and again. Once again I was denied enough sleep last night. The thoughtlessness of some people baffles me. The biker couple next to me had moved on to be replaced by a Spanish couple in a camper van accompanied by a minor bird and two massive hound dogs (who’s breed I did not know but had seen several times in Spain). The bird sat in its cage above the dogs who sat outside, cooling in the shade and chained to the camper van. I do not blame the dogs since it is in their instinctive to be protective, but every time somebody passed their owners’ van they turned psychotic, straining at the lead and barking like their lives depended on it. The particular spot where the dogs and I were situated was on route to the shower and toilet block, so you may be able to imagine how many people passed the dogs by. While their owners were present they would quell the dogs aggressive reactions by shouting Spanish at them. However, each evening the couple would drive off before dinner in their four by four, not returning until the early hours, leaving their hounds in a hyper sensitive paranoid state of mind. It drove me almost psychopathic most nights, bruised fists and fist shaped indentations in the ground upon which the tent was pitched will attest to this.
I needed to loosen up and calm down and my chosen method was to head into Barcelona by train (the train line ran parallel and sandwiched between the beach and the main road to the city, just outside the camp site entrance). By doing so I could completely forget about the bike’s demise and unpredictable reliability, avoid the physical and sometimes mental drain of cycling to and from the centre in the heat of the Summer sun, and plug into one of the two compilation tapes I recorded before leaving Chester. The two tapes have been a great oasis of solace and method of mentally refocusing and re-energizing. The tape chosen for the train journey includes Mazzy Star, Zero seven, Charles Webster, The Strokes and Lee Scratch Perry.
The decision to opt for the train did the trick. My outlook was vastly improved and I found myself enjoying walking the streets (with the purpose of finding new foot ware since the trainers I had worn since the beginning of the trip were falling apart).
Wandering into a small private art gallery showing a solo exhibition of landscape oil paintings, I mentally reprimanded myself for not taking photographs of the Pyrenean landscape. Ideally I would have preferred having a sketchbook full of the sights I had experienced but I felt that there was no way of taking enough time out for drawing when getting from A to B, particularly since finding a camp site upon arriving at “B” was more often than not playing at the back of my mind. Perhaps when I am in Madrid and the mountain town of El Escorial outside Madrid I can rediscover the enthusiasm I briefly experienced in the gallery?
Shortly after two in the afternoon I found an internet café. With a coffee by my side and the trio of Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Neil Young playing alternatively on the sound system I went on line. It felt good to be reading and replying to my e-mails, or rather making contact with family and friends. I always think of myself as being self sufficient and not in need of other people but the uplifting effect of opening my inbox has made me question that assumption. It is simply satisfying to be reminded from time to time that there are people who are interested to know how I am and what I have been doing. It was a good day. I had a good time wandering around and trying out basic Spanish phrases in the various shops I browsed in., although it was spoiled by my confrontation back at the camp site that evening.
The evening I first arrived at the camp site after the struggle of getting out by the airport the young lad at the check in desk asked me to sign a form concerning my stay. Reasonably I told him that before signing I wanted him to confirm how much it was going to cost me per night. To my surprise he replied €4.50, surprising because this was half the price of all the other Spanish sites I had stayed on, and the rough guide suggested that the sites around Barcelona were particularly pricey. To be on the safe side I asked him to confirm this price with one of his colleagues, which he did, € 4.50.
Back to the present. After getting the train back out of the city to Masnou I approached the site owner who was working behind the bar and told him I would like to pay because I was leaving the following morning. He started talking to me in English, asking whether I had enjoyed my stay, where I was travelling on to, and other such small talk. I interrupted his polite conversation to query the € 9 per day he had just written on the bill by explaining how I had signed for the quoted price of € 4.50 and that is the price I expected to pay. He would not budge on the issue. As I laboured my point his grasp of the English language mysteriously and conveniently waned to the point where his only response to my questions became “No comprendo”, and “Policia” while pointing to the telephone while waving my passport held in his hand (it is common practice for the site owners to keep passports in their safe as a form of deposit. He did not leave me much option other than to involve the local Police (who I surmised would side with him) or hand over the money he was demanding together with a piece of my mind (which gave me a certain degree of satisfaction since I knew he understood most of what I said). I was not able to totally suppress my rage and so walked away shouting the only Spanish word that seemed appropriate “Banditto”!
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