I’m going to use this space to bitch. You might find it entertaining; you might find it irritating. I hope it’s the former.
The plan was so simple! How could it go wrong? Get from Spain to France. I mean, they’re neighbouring countries, right? There has got to be a train connecting them! For god sakes, I went from Paris across Belgium to get to Amsterdam a month ago, I figured this was routine!
I wish you could hear how loudly the guy who worked at my hostel in Bilbao laughed when I told him that I was planning on sleeping in Marseille the following night. “Wow, never going to happen.”
“Thanks,” I tell him, “but couldn’t you have warned me about this before I booked my hostel there? It’s less than 24 hours before my arrival, now, I can’t cancel it without giving up the first night!”
“You didn’t ask.”
Thanks, Valter. Anyhow, I already knew there weren’t any trains leaving Bilbao going straight to Spain. Though I had picked the city for it’s location, so close to the French border, when I arrived and inquired at the train station (in broken travel-Spanish) the man said that there was no way out, that I would have to take a (cheap) bus to Hendaya (in France) and that I could catch a train from Hendaya to Marseille or Nice easily.
“No problem,” I thought to myself. I looked up trains leaving Hendaya and found that I could make it to Marseille in 7 or so hours if I connected at Bordeaux. There was also an option to connect in Toulouse. The first train left at 10AM, I’d get there at around 6PM, including the connecting times.
I tell Valter, “look, I just need to get to Hendaya for 10AM.” Again, laughter. After much googling and help from a local who lived near Hendaya, we find me a bus that will take me. It left at 7:30AM every morning.
So I take the bus, triumphant and confident.
Travel total: 1 bus, 9 Euros
I get to Hendaya at 9:15 AM, almost an hour early for the 10:10 train. 
I walk up to the ticket booth and am pleased to (finally) hear a language I can actually understand. (Could I just segue for a moment and bitch that in every station there’s a ticket booth, an information desk and a tourist office, and each swears that what I’m asking for should be done at the other, inconsistently from city to city..? I digress.) I tell the kind lady that I’d like to find myself in Marseille that evening, and that I’ve done my research, that there should be a train leaving for Bordeaux at 10:10AM.
“Complet,” she says. “Oh,” I reply. “So… what do I do?” After much discussion, it’s decided that I catch a (free) bus to Bayonne and take a (free) train from there to Toulouse, where, she says, I will stay that night. “But.. I don’t want to stay in Toulouse.” “Well, you should have reserved in advance.” “But I was in Spain, and have a Eurail pass… you can’t reserve using a Eurail pass online in advance!” She doesn’t answer.
I find an internet cafe (the only one in Hendaya) and pay my 3 Euros to write a bitching e-mail to my girlfriend. I also look up hostels in Toulouse. 50 Euros! Not to mention I’d lose the 20 I already spent in Marseille! I cancel my Marseille reservation in the hopes of getting the money refunded. Defeated, I opt not to make any reservations and to try my luck. I take my bus to Bayonne.
Travel total: 2 buses, 9 Euros
On the bus, I had a nice conversation with a Portuguese woman who had just moved to France with her husband. It was interesting, because she spoke Portuguese
and a bit of French and Spanish, and I spoke French and a bit of Spanish, and we were able to hold almost an entire conversation. (If you’re interested in how far the conversation got, it turns out that both she and her husband are truckers and that they’ve both lived all around Europe – which is odd, seeing as how she didn’t speak a word of English. She was from Porto, and had a 23 year old son. She was on the bus to Bayonne to get to the French Medicare office.)
Once at the train station, I book my way to Toulouse. She tells me that I didn’t need to book the train from Bayonne to Toulouse since it was a local regional train, and so my Eurail pass granted me access to it without reservation. We book my train (3 Euros) from Toulouse to Marseille for 7AM the following day. (I really didn’t want to spend any time in Toulouse. Valter had told me that it was a horrible city to get stuck in.) She tells me that a full train ticket from Toulouse to Marseille that evening, a seat that’s not available for Eurail pass holders, is 55 Euros. (Wow.) I debate to myself whether it would be more worth it to pay the money that would be spent on a hostel in Toulouse anyway and try to salvage my cancelled hostel booking in Marseille, or to save the money, stay in Toulouse, and just skip Marseille altogether. I opt, again, to try my luck.
The train ride was pretty pleasant. Seeing as how I got up at 6 to catch a 7:30 bus, I took an awesome nap. I was in one of 
those stereotypical private little coachette rooms that I’ve only seen in the movies, but I had it almost to myself, so I could lie down on all four seats and pass out.
Travel total: 2 buses, 1 train, 12 Euros
I got to Toulouse at 5:40PM. There had been a 13 minute delay to the train, and I was at risk of missing the connection to Marseille 
at 5:51PM. Sure, I didn’t have a reservation, but I figured it might as well be worth at least asking to get on. I find one of those train controlling guys, you know, with the whistles, and I ask him if I can get on. He tells me to wait, and that it will probably cost me about 4 Euros. I look at the 5 remaining Euros in my pocket and smile. This is awesome news! I might actually make it to Marseille after all! The train arrives shortly after, he introduces me to another man, and they let me onto the train.
I want to take a moment to point out that I actually only spent 11 minutes in Toulouse. It felt amazing. I had such a negative feeling towards the place that it felt great never to get out of the station. I also met this guy:
For context, this all happened the day after the Habs eliminated the Capitals. “Go Habs!” I yell, and the guy looks at me like I’m crazy. Turns out that he had been in Montreal years ago, and that he bought the t-shirt there, but that he really couldn’t care less for the team. The nerve.
Back on the train, a new man, who was clearly of a higher authority than the chubby controller guy, cracks a bunch of jokes I don’t understand and then tells me to sit down. There are three other people in my situation. He, along with a younger, newer, guy deal with them first, then the younger guy turns to me. He tells me it’s 10 Euros.
“10 Euros!?” I exclaim. I didn’t want to be ungrateful for just being let onto a train that I was clearly not supposed to be on, but I didn’t have that much money in my pocket. “I’ll have to pay with a credit card,” I say.
“No worries,” New Guy says, and so we wait for his boss to finish with the other laggards so that he can use the only credit card machine. In the meantime, I tell New Guy my story, about how I began in Bilbao, was repeatedly told that I would never make it to Marseille, and how I was so grateful that I was actually let on. He smiles.
When the boss finally finishes, New Guy has a short word with him and is given the credit card machine. New Guy takes a minute, mutters something under his breath, says to me, “C’est beau!” and walks back into his office to sit down. Was there something wrong with the equipment? I (again) in my naïveté walk into his office and ask him what’s going on. He says that he feels too bad to make me pay the full reservation fee (of 10 Euros) when it’s supposed to be only 4 for a holder of a Eurail pass. He says that I wasn’t treated properly by the original Spanish man and French lady at the ticket booths I went to, and that I had already paid over 900 Euros for my ticket, that there really was no point in making me pay any more. I thank him and walk out. I get to Marseille without a hitch at about 11 o’clock (25 minutes late).
Travel total: 2 buses, 2 train, 12 Euros
tl;dr, I was between cities for about 17 hours, and on the move for about 12 of them. After I’ve already vowed never to have another day like this (before I got to Paris from Dublin) I go ahead and have another one. I’m not sure if it’s poor planning on my part or if the train system is poorly planned. Whatever it was, I was glad and grateful to make it.
Finding my hostel wasn’t so easy since the metros were closed (what kind of city closes its metros before 11?) but at least the walk was pleasant. Also, I didn’t lose my bed when I cancelled my reservation. Unfortunately, I lost the 3 Euros for my early morning Toulouse-Marseille train ticket, but that obviously didn’t bother me seeing as how I got to ride that very same train earlier, for free. I was just really glad to get to sleep. (I was in a 3-bed private ensuite, too! Awesome!)
Maybe I’ll tell you about Marseille tomorrow.
The program was designed by a bunch of French kids, which is why the pylon in the logo has white horizontal stripes.
