This post is a bit delayed, since yesterday I did not find the time to write it down.

After spending the night in the hostel in Narbonne, I checked my phone for connections to Barcelona. One suggestion was to go from Narbonne to Port-Bou which is just a few kilometers from the border, already in Spain and to continue from there. During my ride on the train, I checked again and it suggested me to switch trains in Perpignan. Since I had read that name before in the app, I spontaneously decided to leave the train there.

At the train station I went to the ticket office, since I needed a reservation and all online tickets were apparently already sold out. After some waiting in the queue, the person at the help desk told me that I should continue to Port-Bou and go from there, as the TGV which would go from Perpignan to Barcelona directly was cancelled. I rechecked my phone and it did not show me any connections from Port-Bou to Barcelona. The only connections it showed would go back to Perpignan and then from there to Barcelona. Strange.

I entered the queue once again and wanted to ask for confirmation or at least information about the train form Port-Bou. However, this time another employee told me that there was no chance to get from Perpignan to Barcelona today, as all connections were busy. So Perpignan it was for today.

I headed out the train station and located a youth hostel not too far away. I was just about to adjust my backpack when a man who was sitting at a café asked me whether I was staying over night. A bit disoriented I said I was trying to find a place in the youth hostel. Then he told me he was the manager of that hostel and that he could stow away my luggage, as the hostel was currently closed. I was skeptic. What would be the odds of this being a scam?

I replied that it was okay and that I would just hang out somewhere with my luggage until the hostel would open. He nodded and I continued my way.

I found another park where I could lay down in the grass and listen to some podcast. There weren’t many people here, so it was quite a quiet, peaceful place. After 2 hours or so, it was time to continue to the hostel. Et voila! In front of the entrance sat the man from before. It really was the manager 🙂

I booked my room and then head out for a walk. On OpenStreetMaps I had seen a larger area of green which I wanted to check out. However, it turned out there was no quick way there which wouldn’t involve walking over a highway bridge, so at some point I decided to give up and return.

Back at the hostel I grabbed my laptop and went outside to get some work done. The OpenPGP specification was unclear in a few spots and so I opened some tickets to track those issues. Then it was time to relax a bit in a hammock.

Later, another guest arrived by bike at the hostel. It turned out his name was B. and he was from Germany as well. He explained that he wanted to travel all the way to South-America with his bike! Impressive. He also wanted to go to Barcelona next.

Later in the evening we went out to get some beers together. After 4 rounds and some chips I felt rich and when the bar closed we went back to the hostel. It was a good evening and I am very thankful for B. to invite me to head out with him 🙂