THROW GRANDPA FROM THE TRAIN

It wasn’t until the train doors closed and all our luggage started to hurtle down the tracks toward Barcelona without us that I started to feel a wave of panic.

Fortunately the Spanish policeman (to whom we had been remanded by the conductor) chased the train, forcing it to stop so I could retrieve our bags from the overhead rack while Ken talked animatedly to the English speaking officer and his backup with the giant muzzled Rottweiller on the platform.

“Vamanos!” (“Get out of here!”) the nasty conductor snarled at me and pointed his finger to the door as I struggled with the bags. “Welcome to Spain,” I muttered back (the elbow I gave him to his gut as punctuation was intended to seem purely accidental, as I dragged a bag over his foot). The previously noisy train car, full of vacationing teenagers from Spain, Norway, Australia, USA, and France fell silent with wide eyes as they tried to guess what crime these harmless-seeming old gringos could be guilty of that would merit being banished from a train 4 stops outside of Barcelona.

But I’m getting ahead of myself……….
The trip from France to Spain began the day before when we went to the train ticket office. The purchase had been a triumph of the high school French classes. I was able to request the two tickets for the following day (future tense) leaving from the next station down the line, and even remembered to ask for the Senior Discount (“Reduction pour age, s’il vous plait?) - my crowning glory of our French-speaking sojourn. The clerk looked skeptical that Ken could be as old as I said (701), but she seemed a little less incredulous when I corrected that to 71. We left with tickets in hand with Ken patting me on the back for the fete.

The next day with sandwiches packed we boarded the train in Perpignon in France, hugging the Mediterranean coastline and marveling at the old castle ruins on the hills. We made a smooth connection in Port Bou, Spain, bound for Barcelona on a 2 hour ride through the countryside in a train car loaded with teenagers headed home from holiday camp. About a half hour before the train was scheduled to arrive in Barcelona and the view had changed to suburbs, the conductor stopped by our seats to collect our tickets. With a nice smile Ken handed them to him and we watched as he sniffed audibly and straightened his shoulders to the official position, his little moustache twitching. While I speak a little bit of Spanish from our trips to Mexico, I couldn’t understand anything he said, but noticed that his face had clouded and his demeanor had changed after looking at our tickets. The spittle from his fast moving mouth formed a mist around his head. “No comprende.” I said hopefully with a small shrug, trying to arrange my features into something lacking in criminal malice.

The more we repeated that we couldn’t understand the nature of his displeasure, the angrier and more animated he got and the faster and louder he spoke. As if that would help….

The first word I understood fully was “Policia” as he brandished a cellphone like a weapon and punched the numbers for the police with full force and vigor. The train car fell silent. “Passeports!” he barked at us after conversing with the police. “No.” Ken said calmly to me. “We won’t be giving our passports to him, he’s not even giving us our tickets back.” To the conductor Ken requested an English-speaking employee. “Policia!” the little tyrant barked back. “Okay, English-speaking police then,” Ken said reasonably, arms folded in a final gesture of defiance.

At the next stop the little train tyrant hurled Spanish invectives that indicated a very strong desire on his part that we leave the train and meet the police who had assembled to meet us on the platform. So we did. The train car fell silent. At full Spanish volume the conductor enlightened the English-speaking policeman about the nature of our ‘crime’. On and on he went with spittle flying and hands flapping. The policeman’s face had developed a quizzical expression as he nodded and dismissed the conductor so he could speak to us privately. Not only did the conductor leave, apparently sensing that the police lacked sufficient enthusiasm for incarcerating or torturing us, spinning in a huff on his heel as he went, but he immediately gave the go-ahead for the train to leave us there --- without any of our luggage from the overhead rack!! The doors slammed shut and the train startled to rumble away.

After the policeman took charge, by running to the engineer (leaving the muzzled Rottweiller and his associate to guard us) I was able to drag everything off the train while Ken listened and nodded to the policeman. Both of them were smiling now. What could this mean?

The crime? The ticket agent had given us the Senior Discount we had requested of 3 Euros (about $5.00) on our tickets but the conductor chose to interpret that as some form of cheating the railway on our part. Making us ’banditos’ apparently. The policeman rolled his eyes and immediately arranged for us to transfer onto the next train, apologized profusely, and welcomed us to Spain. He and Ken talked soccer for a couple of minutes and we were on our way. I resisted the temptation to pet the doggy, probably wisely.

“Oh, by the way,” the policeman said in heavily accented English as we were parting, “Who is this Senor Deescount hombre anyway?”