Preparing to Live Abroad by Going with the Flow

When I grow up, I want to become the Postmistress of Castrojeriz, Spain.

Imagine a job where you come in Monday-Friday from 9:30-10am.  You get to enjoy a bit of "office" camaraderie, interact with a few local residents, help out struggling tourists who want to send a postcard from their Camino route, and then go home in time to have a proper breakfast and really start the day.

Of course, if you are a tourist--or, for that matter, a resident--who needs the post office to be open beyond 30 minutes in the morning, these hours could be a bit frustrating.  And--gasp!--what if I needed something on the weekend?  Then, I might be missing the Chicago-area suburbs with their 24-hour grocery stores, Saturday hours for the post office, etc.

We have had enough adventures with European ideas of public services to know that all will not be smooth sailing if and when we finally do move there.  In fact, in just about every country we are contemplating living in, we've had some memorable mishap occur.  Our trick now though is to plan ahead to prevent major disruptions, go with the flow, and enjoy kindness of strangers when we come across it.

ITALY

In summer of 2009, we arrived in Rome for a short jaunt before our train reservations took us to Naples (with Sorrento being our final destination).  Since our red-eye flight landed in the morning, we had almost an entire day to re-acquaint ourselves with this beautiful city before moving on early next morning.  We were raring to go!

As we stood with a crowd of people on the airport terminal platform for the commuter train into town, we realized that there wasn't as much noise as we were expecting.  Something wrong with the trains?  Surely not, since we had just purchased our tickets without being informed of any problems...

Of course, it turned out that the commuter rail workers were on strike.  It could be for an hour, a few hours, or the entire day.  No advice about what we could do nor offers of refunds.  Nothing.

While the majority of the other would-be passengers waited on the platforms in the hopes of further information, we decided to chalk up our losses for the train fare we'd already paid for.  Instead, we went over to the now-growing taxi queue and then asked the young American couple who next joined the line if they wanted to share a cab into town with us.  They seemed even less certain about what to do, so they were glad to have us take the lead on the cab ride.

SPAIN

We were supposed to have three days to relax in Santiago after the conclusion of our Camino (de Santiago) walk in 2013.  It turned into five since we were scheduled to fly from Santiago to Paris on a Wednesday but ending up traveling on a Friday instead.

We cannot really blame our low-cost Spanish airline for the fact that French air traffic controllers decided to go on strike Wednesday and Thursday--which, by the way, seem to be favorite strike days in France, as we were to find out later.  In fact, Vueling was quite accommodating and let us re-book the flight to Friday at the original bargain prices.

But, of course, that meant that we were staying in our Santiago hotel for two days longer than we planned--fortunately, easily arranged--and also that we were wasting part of the two weeks we had already paid for on our Marais apartment in Paris.

At least we had the luxury of time to be able to pick from different options about how we would handle the situation.  A foursome of camino pilgrims we knew in similar situations but who had tighter international flight schedules had no choice but to travel by train and rental cars for 28 hours in order to get to Paris in time for their flight back to the U.S.

FRANCE

Our last trip to France brought us up close and personal with (the normally very reliable) SNCF on several occasions.  We had no fewer than three fairly significant train debacles on this trip, but I'll just go straight to the one that caused the most anxiety.

After traveling in a few not-so-luxuriously appointed regional trains, we were really looking forward to our TGV reserved seats to depart from St. Jean de Luz around 11am.  Our plan was to enjoy our final breakfast in this lovely southwestern resort town (see below), stop by their le halle market to pick up a gourmet lunch, then leisurely stroll over to the train station, plop into our plush seats in the always on-time TGV, and then relax and read in comfort the 5 1/2 hour trip to Paris.

Our train reservation to Paris was for Thursday, and our flight back to the U.S. was on Friday morning, so it was imperative that we get to Paris some time Thursday.  But, alas, we discovered on Tuesday that SNCF had scheduled a strike for Wednesday and Thursday--Wednesday and Thursday again!!!--and that they would have "limited service" overall.

What limited service?  About 50% of train service from the southwest region.  Which 50%?  Not ours.

After hours of frantic internet searching on our last days in St. Jean de Luz, it was determined that we could get on the earlier 7am train to Paris and attempt to sit in unoccupied spaces until someone with reservations for those seats kicked us out.  It didn't sound relaxing--and it wasn't.

Instead of our original plan, we had to wake up early, hurriedly consume pastries we bought the day before (since even bakeries don't open before 7:30am in this resort town), rush over to the train station, hope that a Paris-bound train would in fact arrive, attempt to find seats that others already wouldn't have claim to.  Sadly, all that turned out to be the easy part!

Sure enough, after a couple of anxious stops, we were indeed booted out of our seats by someone who had reservations for those seats.  And, with others in our same situation, we were playing musical chairs in an increasingly crowded train--after each stop, going back and forth between the cafe car (which had no seats) and the train car.  Especially after having gotten up so early, 5 1/2 hours of this was exhausting and wearying.

Finally, it seemed that we arrived at the last major stop before Paris.  We snagged the seats of two departing passengers, and we were hopeful that our quest for 30 minutes of unmolested rest had ended successfully.  Then, in a gesture that belied all those unfounded criticisms of the French being unfriendly (which, by the way, we've never experienced), a lady who was leaving said to me (roughly translated): "I'm very glad to see that you have finally found seats.  We've been feeling bad for you as we saw you go back and forth in this car.  I think this is the last stop, so hopefully you should be ok now."

We were very touched by her sincerity and concern, and then promptly sank into 30 minutes of sleep once the train took off.

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We were reminded of these experiences when we heard a few weeks ago that French SNCF rail workers would strike periodically--announcing their strike days in advance and varying them each week--for three months.  Suddenly, we weren't too broken up about the fact that we didn't already have European travel plans for the spring...