The Train to Spain - Part Two

We've been to Paris so many times over the past few years that it has a homely feel to it. I get on the Eurostar at Ashford International without the usual trepidation I feel when I travel, and when I disembark at Gare du Nord I know where I need to go. I know where the metro station is, where to buy a ticket and which lines and stations will get me closest to a decent lunch. The familiar is indeed comforting and thus revelling in it we spent a delightful afternoon in the French capital. The sleeper train to Spain departs from the Gare d'Austerlitz, which happens to be very close to the Rue Mouffetard and all the parts of Paris that we know extremely well. Once we'd had our fill of food and drink in a couple of our favourite cafes and stopped off to do a spot of shopping, we knew we could hang out in the Jardin des Plantes just across the street from the station until it was time to catch our onward train. Getting the mid-morning Eurostar from Ashford left us just enough time to enjoy a taste of Paris and a break from travelling before continuing onward.

Catching the Eurostar involves passing through barriers, checking in and getting your bags x-rayed in the same manner as if you were flying. The Elipsos from France to Spain has a lady standing on the platform who checks that you have a ticket and a disinterested train guard who confirms that you have a passport. That's it. After these briefest of formalities we wandered into the first class compartment that was to be our home for the next 13 hours. The décor was very green, with more than a hint of 70s British Rail about it, and the seats looked rather battered. Many a rotund businessman's behind had squeezed itself into them for the cross-continental jaunt and they had not coped well with the experience. The poor seats were not so tired as to be unable to perform their reclining function, however, and it was great fun to sit down and play with all the buttons to see what they did. There was plenty of room to stretch out and I had no-one sitting in the seat behind me so I could recline fully without guilt, but we'd ended up with two seats across the aisle from each other, rather than together, so any kind of romance or even conversation was a challenge. At this point it's probably best to mention that first class reclining seats are probably not the best option for travelling overnight across Europe by train. A couchette, with the seats that turn into a bed, would have been far better, but we couldn't afford the couchette for two. This train travel lark, whilst wonderful and civilised and all that, is quite expensive. The cheapest option would have been for us to book into a couchette for six, but these are either for male or female travellers. Mixed sex couchette-ing in the cheap seats is not allowed (the commoners must be controlled, presumably). It might have been acceptable for me to travel in the women's dorm and him in the men's back when we were students, but in our thirties I don't think we would have coped. We needed a little more refinement. We needed to be together. So first class seats were our only option.

There must have been about fifteen people in our carriage and it was a wonderful opportunity for people watching. My beloved's neighbour was a young man with dark hair and a floppy fringe who had brought an enormous bag of pastries on board. He scoffed the lot before donning headphones and dropping off into a deep slumber for most of the journey. Opposite him were two large Mexican gentlemen huddled up in coats, one of whom snored extremely loudly but had an incongruous peaceful look on his face while he did it. The other one got up and left on one occasion, only to be replaced by an equally large, elderly Mexican lady who talked constantly at her male companion, who I assumed by the dynamic between them to be her son. I had to look twice when she came in, as I thought she may have been the man returned in drag. It seemed perfectly logical to me that somebody might be a man in Paris but change into a woman for a new life in Spain. I shared my space with a tiny, bird-like, middle aged lady travelling with a large carrier bag. She didn't come all the way to Madrid, but alighted at a station in the middle of nowhere. I don't even think it had a platform, just a sign. There were a lot of places like that. I opened the twee little green curtain by my window, hoping to watch one country turn into another, but mainly it was dark. I still got very little sleep, though, because the train stopped often and I couldn't help but try to see where we were. I counted off a few stations going through France: Orleans, Poitiers, and others, but the actual point at which we crossed the border was lost on me. Next morning my restlessness was rewarded with dawn breaking across the plains, with parched rocks and scant vegetation glowing orange in the emerging light. A trip to the restaurant car for breakfast revealed vast picture windows and the mountainous outskirts of Madrid, me perched on a bar stool and the train perched above vertiginous gullies, slowly wending its way onward between precarious drops.

Breakfast showed that there was a world outside the train again, because for so many long hours our world had been the inside of the train. This had naturally involved adjustment. An adjustment of gait, predominantly, for moving about something that is in itself moving is actually very difficult. The Elipsos has been designed to travel long distances at moderate speeds and I wouldn't say it's been engineered to give a particularly smooth ride. We were in carriage 84, right at the back, and the trip to the restaurant car was a long one. I was buffeted on the way to the buffet and I still have the bruises to prove it. The movement when seated could be very soothing, though, and the husband-to-be commented that it had rocked him off to sleep. There were also the adjustments to routine and having to adapt to doing private things in a public environment. Getting up and going for a wee in the communal bathroom at the end of the carriage almost felt embarrassing, the openness of the coach at first feeling like a stage whenever I got up even though the actual bathroom was obviously behind closed doors. Thankfully the facilities were clean and spacious – so unlike train lavatories in the U.K. ! By the end of the trip I'd cleaned my teeth with the help of a bottle of Evian, had a bit of a wash with the assistance of some wet wipes and was merrily combing my hair, putting plasters on my heels and changing my socks without batting an eyelid. So much had been out of our control on the train. That's part of the beauty of it, in a way – you just sit back and go with the flow, but it's not all peaceful relaxation. The lights unceremoniously went out at around 9.20p.m., with no warning, provoking an odd generalised twilight groping for the reading lamp switches. Now, suddenly we were being placed at the helm of our own lives again. Pulling into Madrid's Chamartin station was a little disorientating, with the train being left behind and normal life resuming; normal life where the ground doesn't move and your personal space is your personal space. Bright sunshine and city life, getting on the metro and making terrible attempts to speak a language you don't really understand, as opposed to the dim light of the train and the embarrassed hush of humans thrown together and trying not to offend each other. Let loose in Madrid, all we had to do was find Atocha station and the train to Malaga.