My first time
The first, intense hours of my first independent trip
Day 0:
There were we: Bea, Narci, Ariel (that afterwards would make a much more profitable career on travels that I do), four nerd guys, with our backpacks on, standing in the middle of the Terminal 1 of Madrid-Barajas airport, with an Easyjet ticket to Geneva in one hand, and an Two-Zone Interrail ticket in the other one, ready to face a three day adventure to reach our first destination.
For the four of us, it was out first independent travel experience; all of us have been abroad, yes, but with the School, English learning trips, with parents, but never on our own. Anyway, we faced it much more excited than frightened.
We arrived to Geneva with the Sun falling down, and we had no planned time to visit is afterwards, so we hit the streets as soon as we got downtown, well knowing that we didn´t have much time although, in the end, I think we can count as visited this small city, in between of France and Switzerland (it’s so in between that the airport has exit by foot to any of those two countries), even having been with nocturnity aggravation.
As we started to feel that the walk came to its end, it was time to sleep; we were facing a travel with lots of enthusiasm, but little money in our pockets (with perspective, its incredible how cheap the complete trip was), so right starting the adventure, we saw ourselves in a situation that will be common in the following days, but it was new for the four of us: sleeping in a railway station.
One can easily discover that there’s an underlife, creepy underlife, around these places all around Europe, even in Switzerland, where one should have no suspicions and where, in the end, happened to be worst of those underlives. Not without fear we managed to spend the night almost taking turns to pay watch, but finally, nothing serious happened.
Day 1:
We woke up the day 1 really really soon, although, more than soon, it was just late… as the sunrise was still to come when we got in a train destination Milan; a train that, in the future, I have read that goes by one of the most scenic railways in Europe, through incredible places and those things that you really regret when you find about them, just afterwards… because I saw it all just of the color of my eyelids, in the inside. Shame.
We had just arrived to Milano (picture by Marco Mazzone) and we were already booking a place in a train which would take us to Ancona, in the tip of the “leg” of Italy. Nothing except a small walk around the station and we got on the train, but without knowing it, we landed in the fist class coach, why not? So very confortable were we for a while, until a nice conductor opened our eyes and sent us to the place we belonged to, with a cool ticket in the hand. Newby stuff.
The point is that we arrived to Ancona, and we were directly to take the ticket for the ferry in which we would be sailing all across the Mediterranean. A ridiculous ten euro ticket for a thousand kilometers journey. Cool.
Actually we had not in mind to visit the Marche’s capital, but we happened to have a little time before boarding so we decide to hit the streets with the backpack on. And read this… not bad at all hey!. We had no time to visit it deeply, at all, but a quick walk downtown left us (and I think I can speak for the others) really good taste. A very Mediterranean village, around the port, a pretty original duomo, good pizza, nothing spectacular to be Italy, of course, but absolutely worth a little stop if you happen to be in the nearby.
Then we went on board. They call it ferry, but that was a full-right huge cruise. We had no room, but the place had two swimming pools, discos, several bars, a casino, restaurants and a long list of etceteras that a regular ferry does not usually have… at least in my humble experience. We had twenty hours ahead of us and a reserved spot on the deck for our sleeping bag, with plenty of people in our same situation around.
I don’t have a deep memory of that trip (and not beacuse of any ethylic poisoning), but I do remember a group of people in the poop playing guitar that took us in their fun. And I can’t remember how the situation flowed, but one of them, the guitar’s owner specifically, decided that he had some place for us in his cabin and we ended up in his extra beds, enough for the four of us, makinng those twenty hours much shorter. Thank you, personwhosenameIcan’tremember.
Day 2:
Then we arrived to Patras, although the only thing we could see of this city in the left corner of the Peloponnese was the kilometer-long walk to the train station (pretty basic for the third city in the country, by the way), because we were a little bit tight on schedule to take the train to Athens. It wase not really a train you would expect of a country in the European Union… it was more like a 50s country in some country in central Africa. But anyway, we arrived without incident to Athens, when the Sun goes down, with the only time to shut our stomaches up with a perfect Souvlaki, which was one of the best meals I remember of all my life.
This day went on our lives kind of slightly: by noon we arrived to Patras, all the day was spent in the train way to Athens to take another train in Larissa Station (don’t know why, but I remember this name), just in front of the Peloponnese Station, towards our destination. This train was more real, modern, and high-speed looking, although with low-speed speed, and on it, we arrived to the station in the cover picture of this article.
Day 3:
They call it Pythion. A hell place between Greece and nowhere, with a passport control post, a decadent grocery store and a latrine where nobody would want to find himself sick, except for Ariel, who had to suffer it, in a very scatological way. A lot of time of unnecesary stop, with the feeling of having been kidnapped by a group of Kosovan Albanian terrorists (with no offense to this minority) under a terribe Sun and just a small railway stop on our sight.
And the train that arrived a while later was no better. Cabins with sauna functionality and triple berths up to the ceiling. Although with good company, and all of us really fascinated of what was coming. Almost two hours in advance of reaching the destination, the small stops by the railway already had its name, showing us the dimension of megalopolis we were approaching to, and, in the end, we arrived to.
And then we arrived. Three days… not lost, just the opposite, invested at highest profitability. Because Istanbul… Istanbul justifies it all.
This story was originally written in Spanish and published in El viejo continente.
