Journey to Catalunya

After finally getting my student loan and having all my mates return to Aix after the Christmas holidays,   we finally got together and booked our trains to Tarragona in Catalunya (Spain).

I'm really excited about getting to Spain and being faced with something different: finding a new life, apartment and potential job in Spain, with the language barrier and the fact that, at the moment, I speak no Spanish at all. It'll be one mad adventure though!

We're travelling there by train, via Montpellier, and staying the night because of a lack of a connecting train. Good excuse to have a look around Montpellier, which is fashioned as a very friendly, good-looking and very gay-friendly Mediterranean city in France. I originally wanted to go to Montpellier for my year abroad, but our university didn't have any specific Erasmus relations with their universities.

So there you go, one week and a bit left until I move to Spain!

Going home.

In 4 days I am going back home, and I'm quite excited actually. I always thought I'd be the last person to be homesick,  but i've kinda caught the bug of missing creature comforts like Mum's Sunday dinners and lovely things like that.

I'm gonna make an absolute whirlwind tour of as many places with as many of my friends back home as possible. I'm stopping off in Leeds, York and then Newcastle (and possibly Liverpool at the start of November), which should be exciting! Might be going to Blackpool too, to go ride on some scary looking rollercoasters with a few friends from York.

I'm not sure what to expect from being back home, so I think i'm just going to try to not expect anything. I want to do as many cool things as possible which won't make me homesick but  will really remind me of home. I think Greggs and saveloy sandwiches are definitely in order.

This is all reliant on the fact that I can actually get to the airport to catch my flight. France does not like things going smoothly.

A different perspective on some of the buildings in Newcastle City Centre. The nice one is a Waterstones and the modern glass building is a shopping centre slap bang in the heart of the Toon.

What the French do best...

I've just found out that there is to be an SNCF [train company] strike in France (as well as Air France) on the day that I have to take the train from Marseille to Montpellier to get back to England, so i'm seemingly fucked. As much as I complain about Ryanair being the crème de la shit of air travel, I would rather like to take my flight on the 25th thank you very much.....

Now the biggest problem is that it really isn't that far to Montpellier from around here, but I don't think there are any buses that go directly there, so my only reasonable way of getting there is by train. That and i've already booked my train tickets in advance to take advantage of the cheaper prices. So yes. Thanks France!

It is my opinion that the national hobby of France is to find as many legal ways of not working as possible throughout the year......and they couldn't have stumbled upon a better time. It's Toussaint holiday at the end of October (spanning through to the beginning of November) and most schools/universities will be out for 'half-term' because of this.

Now the clever part:

Most schools/unis will end classes Friday 26th until around Monday 5th November, giving just over 10 days with weekends of holiday, some schools may give an extra week.

But the strikers are planning to cut services completely from the Wednesday 24th- Friday 26th October, effectively only giving them two working days through that week. If you're a train driver and you don't have to work [solid] hours through the weekend then you're absolutely laughing.

You've got to hand it to them, if there's one thing they know how to do well, it's to create carnage through deprivation of public services!


It could be cynical to say that the French don't like working, but rather enjoy pleasure, or it could be true. Who knows. Given the choice between sunbathing in my back garden with a mojito and working a long, arduous shift on the trains I know which I'd choose......