It took over 32 hours, but I made it to Burgos in one piece. My plans with my friend in Marseille fell through, so I made the trip in one shot. Five trains in total. I'm glad I'll be here for a few days; I don't really feel like seeing the inside of another train for a little while.

I was sad to leave Torino. I was able to walk around the city a little near the end of my visit -- it's a nice place. Aside from the horrible man at ticket booth number 3 in the Torino train station, who screamed at me in Italian and made me cry, every single person I met in Turin was really nice. Seriously -- super people. Even the men who make kissing noises at you from across the street (hey, at least they stay on the other side of the street, unlike the creepy guy in Nice) were kind of nice when they did it. Anyways, go there. Good place. Here are my best photos from Turin:





Because I had to change trains in Nice, I got to experience the special Hell that is the Nice Ville train station again. Here's an idea of what it was like:





Scaffolding, tons of people, really hot, ugh. If I never see that place again, it'll be too soon. (Just the station. I liked the old part of Nice a lot.)

Because I'm still sore from dragging all my stuff on and off 5 different trains and I want you to share in my pain (or it's just a blatant plea for sympathy), here's another shot of everything I'm carrying around:



I made a friend while waiting for the Irun-Burgos train -- a French student studying something (I don't know what, she was talking very fast in French and I was sooo tired at that point, so I just kept nodding and saying, "oui") in Vittoria, Spain. It was great to have someone watch my bags while I found the only clean bathroom between Turin and Burgos. She was really very nice, but it was soo hard to stay awake and pay attention to what she was saying to me. (Negro, I now totally understand how you feel when you're too tired to speak English anymore.) She just kept talking and talking and doing it so very fast in French. I think she caught on that I wasn't paying attention, because after a while she kept poking at me and asking, "Tu comprendes?" (Or however it's spelled.) Oui? Oui?" I passed out the second she left the train.

Now I'm here in Burgos, but I can't start working until my flash arrives. It's still at customs in Madrid, but the customs guy thinks it'll take a day or two for it to get to Burgos. Hopefully I can get everything done on either Thursday or Friday. I'm meeting with the anthropologist-in-charge this afternoon. So far, they've been really understanding. There are a few people whose schedules I need to fit into, so I hope it works out. I'm glad I scheduled the full week here.

On Sunday I'll take the train back up to Paris. It's an overnight trip again, but at least it's just one train, direct from Burgos to Paris. I'll spend 2 days in Paris, followed by a few days in London (kind of excited to take the Eurostar, but don't like the idea of traveling under all that water), and then another few days back in Paris before flying back home. It'll be good to get back, I think. I've missed my beans.

Oh hey - if anyone's looking for a good book to read, I just read Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I read the whole thing on this last train trip. It was fantastic. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats, etc. Totally heartbreaking, but really, really great. It's about a little boy who's father died in the 9/11 attacks (tj, you might find it really interesting.) It's actually about much more than that, and you should read it. Go. Now. Stop reading this blog and go read this book.

I like book recommendations from friends, so if any of you do too, two other books I've read on this trip are Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Neither of these are the most recently published of books, but in case you haven't read them already, I highly recommend them. (I also read the Da Vinci Code, but I figure so has the rest of the world, too :)