Miscellaneous Stories

It's been a pretty uneventful week here in Copenhagen, so I'm going to tell a few more short stories from my travel break.

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#1) In Barcelona, as in many cities, you can take busses, trains, and metros cheaper if you buy a T10, which is a ten-trip pass. In Barcelona, this is an especially good deal, because the T10 pass costs roughly the same as three train trips, or five bus trips. Usually these things are only a 10%-20% discount, at least in the cities I've been in. So, that's how I was getting around.

When I arrived at the airport to go to Cork, I realized I had a half-used pass, which I was not going to be able to use. So, I quickly used my wits and a pocket Spanish-English dictionary to figure out how to say "I am going to fly, but I have a T10 with six trips left on it, and I would like to give it to you." My plan was to approach the first person who looked like s/he was about to walk up to the ticket machines and give it to that person. For some reason, though, I spent a long time just standing there, watching people buy tickets.

There's some part of me that is still nervous about approaching people and breaking up their routine, even when I'm trying to do nice things and be a generous person. I felt like the awkwardness of me trying to explain myself in broken Spanish would not be work the five euros I'd be saving them, and all these pointless fears and insecurities started cropping up. I had a full four hours before my flight, so I was in no rush. So I just stood there watching people buy tickets for about ten minutes. It was just a pointless thing to be scared stiff about. Again, this was me being insecure about approaching people with a gift.

Finally, a group of about four people stopped, and I know enough Spanish to be able to tell they were trying to figure out which pass they were supposed to buy. I decided that it was time to make my move. Me feeling ridiculous outweighed me being nervous about the conversation, so I went for it. I said my line. The guy paused, looked and at me, and said (with a Spanish accent) "You speak English?"

So, that's how badly I botched my line.

I explained myself in English, and he at first thought he was misunderstanding me, that maybe I was trying to sell it to him (which makes sense; how often do people give stuff away at a train station?) But I assured him that there were six passes left on this, and that it was his. I was flying to Ireland, and wouldn't be back in Barcelona for a long time, so I would have no need of the pass. He and the folks he was traveling with seemed happy, which was my goal in all this, so as soon as he took it and thanked me, I told him to have a nice day and went for my flight. It was every bit as awkward as I expected, but I consider it a worthwhile experience.

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#2) In Cork, on the way back from one of our day-trips, Scott and I ran into a crazy old drunk guy. I think I mentioned in a previous post that this happens to be on a regular basis. Our conversation started when we asked him, in Cork, if we were at the right stop. He nodded and mumbled something, then all of us got off. On the way out of the station (which, thankfully, was the right one), I thanked him for the directions, which was either polite, or a huge mistake, depending on how you view the next fifteen minutes of my life.

He opened his mouth, as if to say something relevant, like maybe "you're welcome," "no problem," or even "enjoy your trip." But no, after a moment of what looked like deep thought, the words that exited this man's lips were "I got drunk." I believe the next line out of his mouth was "...but god bless ye, yer still young yet." Apparently "young" is an antonym for "drunk." This guy had obviously not been around many college campuses.

He then proceeded to explain (drunkenly) that the large cruise ship out in the harbor was being repaired because it had scraped some rocks. The guy is the navigator, and as such, got an unexpected week off, which he was enjoying spending in a stupor. He explained that the crew could still come back to the ship, so he could go there to sleep and get food while it was in harbor. At first he made it sound like he was going back to the ship now because it was going to depart soon, which made me a little nervous (remember kids, friends don't let friends navigate cruise ships drunk).

He repeated the phrase "god bless you" several times during the conversation in a tone that made it sounds like a farewell, so we started walking away, at which point he kept talking. There were many opportunities for us to get out of there if we really wanted to (I'm sure we could have outran him) but my view was that this was all funny enough to make a good story, and we were in no rush. The highlight of it may have been a phrase I alluded to a few posts ago. He said "god bless you," I responded "yeah, you too, nice meeting you," and he responded "yeah... it's nice... to be nice... to *mumble mumble*." Yes, it's nice to be nice. God bless you too, drunk old navigator guy.

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#3) I mentioned in my last post that we had the 6-bed room in Belfast all to ourselves the first night. Well, the second night we were joined by a very international group of travelers. There was a Brazilian guy, a Slovenian girl, and an American girl who appeared to be dating the guy, although he kept referring to her as his "friend," much to our amusement.

When they arrived in the room, the guy asked us if we knew where any good nightclubs were. He was talking about how much of a party animal he was, so we were all a bit concerned that they were going to come back at 4:00AM and throw up all over the place, as party animals are wont to do. We were discussing this possibility and how annoying this would be, and even went so far as to move our stuff from the middle of the room to one side where it would be less likely to be in the line of fire. Yes, we were that paranoid. To be fair, the guy was talking about his previous Crazy Nights, and it sounded like he was like looking for another. The Slovenian girl was not interested, however, which may be an explanation for what happened next.

We had gone to bed around 11:30, because we had to get up early the next day. EC and Annie fell asleep almost instantly, but I was up reading a bit. At around 11:45, our roommates returned, much to my surprise. They got ready for bed right away, and were out by a little after midnight. I overheard them saying that they had an early start the next morning, which would explain it. I went to bed at the same time, happy to know that they decided to take it easy.

At about 4:00AM, I woke up to the sound of the guy throwing up in the bathroom. Yeah, I was surprised too. I'm guessing it wasn't alcohol-related, since he had slept peacefully for several hours before throwing up. I'm guessing it was a bug, or maybe food poisoning (probably the latter, but I say that mostly because none of us got sick over the next few days).

So, that was a night of double-irony. We expected them to be irresponsible, and they were responsible. Then I expected them not to throw up because they had been responsible, and the guy threw up. He cleaned up fine, and in the morning there was no sign of anything. No harm done, really. It was just a series of weird expectation-defying twists. Just another reason I should stop trying to predict the future.