That One Time I Almost Died. Just Kidding. I Just Got Lost in the Mountains.
After a few months of studying abroad in Paris, my friends Mary, Deena, and I decided to visit Barcelona for semester break. Years of my parents’ incessant arguing had led me to believe that planning a vacation was akin to quietly trying to barf. But I soon realized that vacation preparation was actually easy if you’re not bull-headed, drunk, or belligerent.
We planned to take the overnight train to Barcelona to spend a few days there. Then we would be off to Madrid and finally Seville before returning back to Paree. Since we were still poor upper-middle-class students, we decided to forgo couchettes[1] and sleep sitting up.
Word to the wise, sleeping sitting up on a train is not a smart idea, no matter how broke you are. I didn’t even have any Ambien handy. I could barely doze off even after a couple of glasses of Chateau St. Whatever I was drinking, so I woke up with a majorly stiff neck and a numb arm. Needless to say, my mind wasn’t exactly with it the next morning when we had to transfer trains in La Tour de Carol.
Mary and I woke up from our pathetic slumber in a daze.
“I think we have to transfer soon,” I said.
“Yeah, let’s get our stuff. Where’s Deena?” Deena’s stuff was gone and so was she. Leave it to her to leave and not even wake us up.
“Whatever, let’s get our stuff and find her.”
We meandered towards the exit. We were supposed to make the switch at La Tour de Carol at 7:10 am, and it was already 6:55 am. We walked along the train not seeing any sign of Deena.
“We’ll find her when we get off at La Tour de Carol. We’ll see her on the platform. ” Mary offered.
“Yeah makes sense. Geez, she’s such a space cadet. I don’t understand how she could just walk off when we’re about to leave.”
Mary shrugged. The train pulled to a stop. It was now 7:00 am. “I think this is where we get off,” Mary said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, Deena said we get off at La Tour de Carol at 7. This is it.”
We hopped off the train. Still no sign of Deena anywhere.
“Where the fuck is she?” I asked.
Mary and I walked to the other end of the train car looking for Deena. We saw her conversing it up with some Spanish dudes near the exit of another train car.
“What are you guys doing out there?” Deena asked.
“We have to change trains here,” I said.
“No, not here, I was talking to these Spanish guys, and they said it’s the next stop.”
“Are you sure?” Deena looked smart (she was Indian too), but had all the brainpower of a pebble. You know how you see deer maniacally running into cars without realizing what they’re doing? That was Deena. During our recent wine trip to Chablis, she mixed antibiotics and profuse amounts of alcohol only to vomit all over the place 2 hours later. And she was going to med school. Her dim-wittedness was the running joke of our little study abroad group. She was funny and sweet, but I sure as shit didn’t have much faith in her opinion.
Mary, on the other hand, was like a mother hen crossed with a librarian crossed with Johnny Ramone. She had a predilection for cigarettes, wine, possessed a razor-sharp wit, and cursed more than a Brooklyn mafioso. As someone with a strict Catholic upbringing, she was also paradoxically (or so it seemed to me) scared of the wrath of Christ and was always guilty. Somehow that didn’t stop her from smoking and drinking. She was also paranoid about her weight and figured if all she ate was bread with salt and Swedish fish she wouldn’t gain any extra poundage. Unfortunately, this was before Atkins became popular and we all found out that carbs are the devil. If only she had known.
I looked over at Mary, who offered: “Well they are Spanish, so they must know.” Then I glanced over at the Spanish guys who were waving us into the train.
“Good point.” As I said this, the train slowly started to chug forward. Oh FUCK.
“Oh shit!” Mary’s eyes bugged out of her head as she quickly jumped on the moving train. Now anyone who knows anything about trains knows that they pick up speed very quickly. In the five seconds, it had taken Mary to hop aboard the train, it had already started moving pretty fast. So fast, in fact, that I would have had to do a running long jump, Jackie Joyner-Kersee-style. With a twenty-five pound backpack on my 5’1”, 100-pound frame. As I started running, I knew this was never going to happen. Unless my goal was to slam into the train and kill myself.
So I stopped running and watched as the train chugged off into the distance. Oddly enough, I wasn’t worried. Surely Mary or Deena would be sharp enough to pull the emergency stop. Well, maybe not Deena, but Mary would.
Just kidding! I watched as the train kept going and going until it was out of sight. I couldn’t believe it. Thank goodness I hadn’t been sick or dying, then I would really be fucked. Now I was a little concerned. This was before everyone had a cell phone so it wasn’t even like I could call Deena or Mary up and ask them what they were doing.
Quick what would MacGyver do? I thought to myself. My dad used to be obsessed with MacGyver so I had watched plenty of reruns. I looked around for help. The platform was entirely empty. Turns out I wasn’t at a train station; I was at a pit stop in the middle of the Pyrenees. To my right, there was a giant electronic sign that informed me that it was now 7:10 am, and the next train would arrive at 8:30 am. In front of me about eight feet down, lay the train track. On the other side of the track was the rest of the mountain. At the bottom of the mountain was a freeway with people in typical European fashion driving at breakneck speed. There was no way out. No stairs, no station. Nothing. I was SOL unless I came up with a plan of escape ASAP.
To my left was a payphone. I didn’t know who on earth I was going to call, but I figured something would come to me by the time I got there. I pulled some change out and stood there staring at the phone. Hmm I know, I’ll phone the police! I picked up the receiver. No dial tone. I put the change in hoping that would make a difference. Still no dice.
Goddamn it! I turned around and stared at the track. What. The. Fuck. I was stranded on the top of a damned mountain. By myself. At 7 a.m. It wasn’t like there were even any hiking trails I could walk down. Besides the obvious lameness of the situation, there was still the fact that I had to catch a connecting train to Barcelona. I sure as hell couldn’t wait for another hour for the next train. I looked around for a solution. That’s when I noticed a little toll booth on one side of the freeway.
Since the next train wasn’t coming for another hour, I figured it would be safe to jump into the track. From there, I could climb down the mountain. But with my ginormous backpack strapped on combined with the steepness of the mountain, I might end up doing more harm than good. The sheer weight on my top half would probably cause me to propel down the hill rather than slowly descend slowly. Turns out I did learn something in physics class after all.
So I took the backpack off and dropped it into the track. Then I lowered myself to the edge of the platform, dangled my legs, and jumped off remembering to bend deeply so as not to injure my knees, (thanks cheerleading coach). Slightly jarring, but not too bad. Next, I re-assessed the situation. The mountain (or large hill?) was not too precipitous, but steep enough so that even without the backpack on I would end up slipping and tumbling down if I walked. I was going to have to slide down the hill. In a skirt. I was a bit nervous but also excited for the adventure of it all. I felt like Sir Edmund Hillary. I unloaded my backpack and set it in front of me.
“I’ll see you at the bottom. God Speed,” I whispered.
I pushed it ahead of me, praying it didn’t get hit by a car at the bottom. It held all my clubwear for Barcelona. Then I sat down at the edge of the train tracks at the top of the hill. I pulled my skirt down and said a silent prayer.
“God, please don’t let me die. Or worse yet break a limb and get stranded on the side of a mountain.”
I used my hands to push myself off down the hill. I caught a little momentum, a few rocks, and a lot of dirt, but I finally made it to the bottom several minutes later. Triumphant, I picked up my bag and waited patiently to cross the freeway. There was a blind curve to my left, which made it impossible to see if any vehicles were coming so I had to cross my fingers and hope that I didn’t turn into roadkill as I ran across three lanes to the toll booth on the other side. I summoned all my might and booked it. Please don’t let me get hit by a car! Oooh, this is exciting! Huffing and puffing I walked up to the toll booth operator who in typical French fashion acted completely blasé as if it were totally normal to see a random person walking around on a freeway in the middle of nowhere at 7:30 in the morning.
“Bonjour.” Thank God I was still in France and therefore able to communicate. “I got off at the wrong train stop, and I need to get a taxi to La Tour de Carol.”
“Ah yes. La Tour de Carol. That is only five minutes away. I will call you a cab.”
“Thank you!”
The driver arrived in a little under five minutes. But regrettably, for the driver, I only had a bit of loose change on me. No time to tap an ATM when you’re marooned on a mountain top. I sure as hell hoped that was enough to get me there.
As luck would have it, we ended up behind some slow-moving truck, which did not help my cause. I watched as the meter ticked higher and higher. Better come up with Plan B quick. We finally pulled up at La Tour de Carol ten minutes later, and I swear to God I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It was like being an orphan and finally finding a home.
“25 Euros, si’l vous plait.” What the fuck? Twenty-five Euros for a five-minute cab ride? Whateves.
“Um, I don’t have that much cash on me. I can write you a check.”
This did not sit well with Mr. Cab Driver.
“A check? You want me to take a check? Why would you take a cab if you have no money? Oh la la!”
Um, hello I was stranded! What did he expect me to do? Hang out on the freeway? He could at least cut me a little slack.
“Well, I was stranded. Listen the best I can do is to write you a check.”
I tore it off and threw it at old sourpuss; running into the station before he could continue arguing with me. I am the fucking shit! I had just climbed down a mountain, sprinted across a freeway, narrowly escaped death at the hands of an angry cab driver, and freed myself from withering away on a mountain top. To think I was thisclose to be eaten by hyenas.
I breezed into the train station now almost forty-five minutes later, brimming with confidence.
“Reshma!” Mary and Deena screamed with relief. The two of them were standing in front of me, tear-stained faces, luggage piled around them.
“What up guys?” I said rather nonchalantly.
They rushed over and hugged me so hard I thought my organs were going to pop out of my throat.
“We were so worried! We called the cops…“Mary started explaining.
“We told them you were wearing a red sweater and a black skirt” Deena interrupted.
“We were totally freaking out. Omigod I feel terrible. It was so awful!” Mary continued.
“Well hello, why didn’t you guys pull the emergency stop?” I asked. I was still puzzled as to why they didn’t do anything.
They looked at each other in confusion. “We didn’t think about that” Deena said while scratching her head.
I couldn’t be angry at them. Not with the tears and all. At least I knew they gave a shit. They were just too emotional at the thought of my strandedness and they couldn’t think straight. “Well whateves I’m here! Barcelona here we come!”
[1] The bed compartment which was an extra $20.
