As I pondered this with no small satisfaction, I noticed that the bus had slowed down, and that we were in what appeared to be a small city. This, I thought, must be Figueres. The bus circled about through the extremely narrow streets for around twenty minutes, giving me an opportunity to gain a first impression of this new environment. Figueres appeared to be a medium-sized city, with a centre full of shops, restaurants, and hotels, all of which (except for the hotels) were closed for the night. The signs were virtually all in Catalan, rather than Spanish, as is often the case in Catalonia. Fortunately, I had at least a decent reading knowledge of Catalan.

Even more fortunately, virtually all Catalan speakers are bilingual in Spanish. While I had never before been to a country in which Spanish is officially spoken, it is essentially my second native language, one I often find easier to speak than English. My Spanish is decidedly Latin-American in flavour, an improbable mix of Venezuelan, Chilean, and Mexican. I was rather excited at the prospect of being in a place where everyone spoke it.

Meanwhile, the bus had at last come to a stop at what appeared to be the city’s bus station. It, too, was dark, with the exception of a kebap window in the back. My stomach, which had lapsed into lethargy out of sheer exhaustion and despair, began making demands on me with a newfound vitality. Alas, it was going to have to wait yet longer, as we only had a few minutes to get the Figueres railway station.

Everyone else seemed to know where they were going. I decided to take the optimistic view and assume that this was because they did in fact know where they were going, and that they were going to the same place I was.

On our way, which was fortunately quite short, we passed through the Plaça de l’Estació, which must look quite striking by daylight. On the end we first entered, there was a well-maintained playground, which was deserted, of course, at this hour. The centre of the square was occupied by a stately palm tree, with a trunk at least three feet thick. Were it not for the complete lack of light, I would very much have liked to photograph it. From here, the station was clearly visible and only about 100 feet away.

The Figueres station was a small, quite tidy affair, staffed at the moment by a single fiftyish man behind a Plexiglas window. After my experience in Perpignan, I was positively ecstatic that, when asked for a ticket to Barcelona, he actually gave me one (for only €10.00). not only that, but he actually knew what platform the train was leaving from, and was kind enough to let me know – in a rather friendly tone – that I would have to run to catch it, as it was leaving in less than five minutes.

I did not need to be told twice. I took my ticket and my luggage, which was getting heavier by the minute, and ran to the platform. Fortunately, this did not involve hidden doors, long flights of stairs, or any of the other dubious pleasures I had encountered during the last 24 hours.

The train to Barcelona was a sleek commuter model, only a few years old. Upon getting aboard, I was quite happy to see that it was equipped with vending machines for snacks and drinks. My stomach approved grudgingly, as if to say: Am I to understand that there will be no chicken kebap with hot sauce and chips on the side?

At least there was no trouble finding a seat. I stowed my things quickly, and eagerly returned to the vending machines. I selected whatever seemed the most substantial, though I no longer recall what it was.

This is because, whatever it might have been, I didn’t get it. Instead, the vending machine returned my coins, rather stroppily, it seemed to me.

Dejected, I returned to my seat. Evidently, there was to be no snack for me on this train. This news I took with a surprising degree of aplomb. If there’s one thing you learn from Perpignan, it’s resignation.

“There must be at least a hundred people here”, remarked one of my Aussie companions.

“I hope we’ll all fit”, nodded another.

I silently thanked her for putting that thought into my head. This had never once occurred to me as I sat across from the station, my hopes of getting to Spain seemingly evaporating with each Non. I had not allowed myself to think that, after spending almost 30 hours without real sleep or food to get here, almost breaking my neck to catch my connection out of Montpellier, nearly getting kicked off of that train for having an insufficiently French MasterCard, narrowly avoiding an aneurysm in the face of the incompetence of the “Information” staff, and just barely stopping myself from disemboweling Mr “No Change for You!” and selling his entrails to the nearest brasserie, that I could possibly have gone through all of this in order not to get a seat on the bus.

Which is to say that my gleefulness at my young Australian companion’s words was somewhat restrained.

“Wait a second”, interjected the guy who didn’t speak French, “How many seats in a bus?”

“Well, it’s four to a row”, I replied.

“Plus the extra two seats in the middle of the back row”, one of the Aussies chimed in.

“And it’s, what, 20 rows to a bus, right?” I added. “That would be room for 82 people.”

“So we might be all right.”

“Isn’t it 24 rows?” asked I Don’t Speak French.

I agreed.

“So then there are 102 seats.”

“So we’re fine!” one of the Aussies summed it up.

At that point, another Aussie noticed that a second bus was pulling up. There would definitely be more than enough seats, I concluded, sighing with relief.

This was the best news all day. At that moment, I couldn’t think of any place I would rather leave than Perpignan.

I checked my pocket to make sure that the hard-won ticket was there and joined the queue in front of the baggage hatch to hand over my suitcase. That done, I joined my travelling companions at the back of the bus.

As it turned out, no one ever asked for my ticket, nor anyone else’s, come to that. In other words, I had gone through the orgy of frustration with the most unhelpful and incompetent railway employees in France just for the privilege of spending seven euros that I could have just as productively used as rolling papers.

The excitement in the bus was palpable. After all those hours of uncertainty, of wondering whether we were at the right bus stop, and, indeed, whether the bus we needed actually existed, we were finally on our way. Spain beckoned!

We occupied ourselves scanning the darkened landscape for signs that the border was near. Given that there are no border controls within the European Union, we had to rely on other things, in particular the language of the signs. Behind me, two of the Aussies were discussing the strike that had shut down the French economy, and the French railway system, more than once in recent weeks. One of them wondered what the whole thing was about.

“Sarkozy’s trying to gut their super”, I explained, having just spent a few hours on trains reading the latest on the strikes in Le Monde, Libération, and L’Humanité. “All along, the workers have been saying that all they want is to sit down and negotiate a fair arrangement, but Sarkozy won’t even answer their letters.”

The fact is that I was quite excited to be in this part of the world at this particular moment in history. All over the world, from Washington to London, from Paris to Berlin, from Madrid to Athens, governments were using the global financial crisis – for which the perpetrators, deregulated investment bankers gambling with the socioeconomic wellbeing of the world, were richly rewarded – as a pretext to impose harsh “austerity” measures, decimating hard-won wages and benefits, and destroying essential social welfare protections right at the moment they were most needed. In essence, the holes ripped in national budgets by the trillions of dollars in taxpayer spent to restore the profitability of the financial sector were to be paid for by shafting the rest of the population.

However, there was a difference between France and Spain and the US: In France and Spain, workers were doing something about it. Workers in the US have, by and large, forgotten how to go on strike. Unions are virtually nonexistent in the private sector, and the leadership of the unions that do exist are generally happy to rubber stamp ever greater concessions in wages and benefits. The union bureaucracy in the US are as afraid of strikes and other militant worker action as their supposed adversaries, the owners.

Not so in France. In France, when government and business get together to screw workers sideways, working people fight back, and shut down the economy. Whatever inconvenience I might encounter as a result of that, I was too impressed to feel put out.

As I pondered this, another of my companions spotted the first Spanish-language sign. A cheer went up in the bus: “We are in Spain!”

I experienced the first degree of fuckedness – where you`re fucked, but don`t realise it, or things can still be fixed fairly easily – at about 9 AM at Gare de Lyon in Paris. After staring at the table with the listing of all of the departing trains and not finding mine for about 20 minutes, I went to the information desk, where I discovered that the train had been cancelled, and I would have to wait for another one at 10:20 AM. This did not seem so bad. I could relax a bit, check my e-mail, and experience the joys of sitting still for a bit. I didn`t have to be in Perpignan, by the border with Spain, until around 5 PM. This cancellation was a blessing in disguise!

Unfortunately, however, I ended up having to run after all, because my train to Montpellier was leaving from a track that was rather far away from the rest of the tracks, almost hidden, and it took about ten minutes to find it. Even so, I found my reserved first-class seat, which had a point for my computer, and a window clean enough to take pictures through. The trip was comfortable and blissfully uneventful.

The second degree announced itself in Montpellier. There was one train leaving for Perpignan, the French town on the border with Spain from which I intended to take a train to Barcelona, but it was one of France`s high-speed TGV trains, and required reservations. The queue at the ticket counter was at least a hundred people long, and my only way to get to Perpignan in time was leaving in ten minutes. Despite there being six windows open, the queue didn`t seem to be moving at all. I looked at the people in front of me, and briefly, but seriously, considered knocking them out of the way one by one. Of course, they had no way of knowing that they were standing between me and my last hope of getting to Perpignan today, but fuck ‘em. I did, wisely, reject this option upon realising that several of them could easily kick the shit out of me, and that an arrest would likely further delay my progress towards Perpignan, and ultimately Barcelona.

Finally, it was my turn. I walked up ot the window of a thirtyish man whose nametag identified him as “Fabio“, and explained about the cancellation of my train to Montpellier and my need to get to Perpignan.

“Just run down there. It’s on track D. And hurry, because it’s about to leave!“

I ran as fast as my 100 lobs of luggage would permit, and stopped only upon discovering that there was no sign saying anything about any track D. I did, however, see a group of cops standing around, unwittingly confirming the wisdom of my decision not to plow down the people in front of me.

“Excuse me, where’s track D?“ I asked breathlessly.

“Bonjour“, one of the cops said with an air of admonition for my failure to greet them first. Like the people in the queue, this cop did not even know to be grateful for my favour of not kicking him in the nuts.

“Bonjour“, I replied, and one of them pointed to a corner behind me.

Upon arriving there, I found myself staring at a long staircase with no lift or escalator in sight.

Well, shit, here goes nothing. Again. I ran down the stairs, barely noticing the weight of my suitcase,about  and found that there was still a large crowd trying to get aboard. Even though my Eurail pass entitled me to travel first class, I decided to get on the first car I found. This turned out to be a bilevel second-class car. The seats were narrower, and the colours uglier, but I didn’t care – I was on a vehicle that would take me to Perpignan.

About twenty minutes after I’d settled in on the upper level, just as we had passed Narbonne, a conductor came by to check tickets. I showed him my Eurail pass.

“Have you got a reservation?“

I explained about my conversation with Fabio.

“Then you haven’t got a reservation. Ten euros, please.“

I checked my wallet, and found that I had no cash except for a few euros in coins, so I handed him my Mastercard, which worked everywhere else. He scanned it in his hand-held device.

“Declined. It doesn’t have one of those chips like French cards do.“

I considered musing with him on why the people who designed and bought his hand-held device didn’t consider that a railway that travels internationally and services droves of foreign visitors every day might need compatibility with overseas cards, but thought the better of it.

“You know what? Just give me the four euros and we’ll call it a day.“ I did, and he printed out a reservation confirmation.

And so I was able to spend the next ninety minutes relaxing and taking photos of the scenery, which had changed dramatically since Paris. For one thing, things were rather a bit more run down (though hardly dilapidated, just to be clear). The style had changed, as well. While much of downtown Paris could easily pass for any major German or British city, the south of France looks a lot more like Naples than Stuttgart. For another, scattered palm trees had begun to make their appearance, and more and more water was visible. I had entered the Mediterranean region.

And thus it was with a sense of excitement that I entered the Perpignan station, where Level Three awaited. It was about 5 PM, and, after taking out 60 euros at a nearby ATM (I wasn’t going to make that mistake again), I proceeded to the ticket sales desk, which had just closed. The information desk, on the other side of the main hall, was still open. Here, I was to meet some of the most imbecilic, hopelessly, almost inspiringly incompetent people I have ever had the privilege of encountering.

I explained my situation, emphasising the causal role of the cancellation of my 9:20 AM train to Montpellier in hopes of awakening a sense of responsibility, or at least concern, and my need to get to Barcelona today to the young man behind the window.

“I see, well, hm,…the only possibility is, well, the sales desk, hmm, they’re closed, aren’t they? OK, the only possibility is, well, to take one of the buses.”

“Where do we buy a ticket?”

“Well, hmmm, the sales desk is closed now, isn’t it…” he replied, returning to familiar ground, “…so, I guess you need to just go over to one of the ticket machines.”

I thanked him and did so. At the machine, I quickly discovered that Barcelona was not on the list of possible destinations. I returned to the information desk, where I spoke with the young man’s colleague, a pleasant-enough forty-something woman.

“Aha, well, what you’ve got to do is, you have to just enter Portbou as your destination.”

I returned to the machine, found Portbou (a tiny Spanish border town), and requested a second-class ticket. The machine informed me that this would cost the modest sum of € 7.80. However, the machine only accepted coins or cards. I did not have enough money in coins, so I tried my card, hoping that at least some French machines were as internationally compatible as their German counterparts. It wasn’t.

So, I returned to the information desk.

“Bonjour encore,” I smiled ruefully at the forty-something woman. “Your machines won’t take my card, and they don’t take banknotes. Is there any chance you might be able to give me change?”

“There’s a shop over there. Just buy something.”

I did as I was told, and found a chocolate bar (Ritter-Sport, which, incidentally, is highly recommended), and asked the woman at the till if she might be able to give me the change in coins instead of a five-euro note.

“Non.”

And thus, rather than two 2-euro coins and one 1-euro coin, I was stuck with a 5-euro note that was totally useless for my purposes. No problem, I thought, even if she can’t change a twenty, certainly she can do a five, especially given her employer’s role in my predicament.

“No, sorry,” was the answer to this very simple and reasonable request.

Desperate, I decided to ask my fellow travellers. However, I was stopped rather brusquely by a railway employee:

“Ici on ne fait pas de monnaie!” We do not make change here.

“You don’t operate trains that actually come when announced. You don’t help people who miss their connections because of your cancellations. Your machines, unlike every other such machine on the continent, don’t take banknotes, and you don’t make change so that people can actually use those machines. I really must ask, because at this point I am dying of curiosity: what exactly do you do?” I wanted to ask, preferably followed by a severe beating and what airlines would call “the unlikely event of a sudden change in tracheal diameter.” But I was beyond words, and, indeed, even beyond homicide. I was just fucked.

I went outside, smoked, and quietly fumed, near tears, for a minute. I went back to the shop and looked for the cheapest thing there, which turned out to be a packet of Mentos for € 1.00. I returned to the machine, and, amazingly, discovered that I indeed had enough change to buy the ticket, which I did.

I then returned to Mme Blondine-Inutile, and asked her when the bus was leaving and from where.

“7:30 PM. It’s going to be outside. You’ll see a lot of people standing about, using that peculiar French locution “beaucoup de monde” (“a lot of world”).

This certainly seemed simple enough. However, upon closer inspection, I found that there were a total of two places, on opposite sides of the street, with a lot of world standing about. Hoping to narrow things down a bit, I decided to ask some of the bits of world standing at the alleged bus stop across from the station. As I was conducting my survey, a dark-haired French woman with a highly active five-year-old son stopped me:

“Is this where we wait for the bus to Barcelona?”

“So far, “ I answered, “I’ve got one tentative ‘yes’ and one ‘I don’t speak French’.”

She laughed, and began trying to exhaust her kid with that “warmer/cooler” game that appears to be a cultural universal. Meanwhile, the second pocket of world, opposite us, began growing, its size inversely proportional to my degree of serenity.

I would like to claim that I was witty enough to begin coming up with marketing taglines for Perpignan as I waited for the bus either to come or fail to come, but honesty requires me to admit that the following occurred me to me only days later:

Perpignan: Hell if we know!

Perpignan: Your rendezvous with uncertainty.

Perpignan: The only town to have started as a brief layover.

Perpignan: Perfect your coping skills!

Perpignan: We don’t do that, either.

Perpignan: Spain’s biggest selling point.

Perpignan: Braindead on the Med.

Perpignan is for fuckers.

Actually, however, I just stood around nervously, and listened to the conversations around me for any reference to Spain.  I’m sure Perpignan is a lovely city; certainly, what I saw outside of the station was gorgeous, and in no way adequately reflected by the mélange of idiocy and outright bloodymindedness exhibited by the station staff. However, I wanted nothing in the world more than to get the hell out of there and across the Spanish border. I passed the – hopefully brief – time by asking the driver of every passing bus if the bus was headed to Barcelona, and felt like more of an idiot with every successive Non.

Thinking back, I do, however have to wonder why I felt like an idiot. After all I wasn’t the one providing thoroughly useless answers to questions within my supposed area of expertise. I was merely trying to fill in the Mediterranean-sized gaps in the maddeningly inadequate information I was given by people who could quite reasonably be expected to know more. They worked for the SNCF (French railways). The bus was operated by the very same SNCF. It was not asking too much to expect them to know where their own bus stopped. No it seems to me that I felt like an idiot because I had been constrained to ask questions guaranteed to make me look daft, which, thinking about it, is even more absurd.

The sun began to set, and I began to worry. Maybe the bus didn’t even exist. Maybe I had just wasted € 7.80 on the opportunity to stand around impatiently. I studied the bus map yet again, and once again couldn’t find any reference to Portbou, Barcelona, or, indeed, any indication that any of these buses went past the border with Spain. I decided to take my luggage and cross the street. Perhaps someone over there knew. I had just crossed over when a bus stopped in front of me.

“Bonjour, is this the bus that goes to Barcelona?”

“Non.”

The last Internet connection – or, in any case, the last one that worked properly – I had found was in Paris, during much happier times. The Montpellier station claimed to – and, perhaps, on some theoretical level, actually did – offer wireless Internet, but offered no way to access it. When I tried to buy some Internet time, as the website that automatically appeared on my browser had invited me to do, it turned out that there was no way to purchase Internet time. The “buy time” link was to a page that did not exist. I would not be at all surprised if the site was designed in Perpignan.

The people standing around at the other bus stop had no more answers than those at the stop I’d come from, so I decided, for no particular reason, to return to where I’d spent most of my time in Perpignan, where a new infusion of world was now standing around. As I approached, I heard something that I hadn’t heard in quite a while: people speaking English.

A group of Australian women in their early 20s had joined the group, completing the initiation ritual of asking about the train to Barcelona. Once again, I was able to confirm one of the little truisms I have discovered: Every country or region has a repertoire of cultural references that (almost) always serve to break the ice if properly used by an outsider. In this case, it was a variation on every Australian’s favourite: Canberra is boring. Sydneysiders like to take the piss out of Melbourne; Melbourners love to take the piss out of Sydney. However, they all come together on two-self evident cultural truths: “Queenslanders are nutters” and “Canberra is the world’s largest open-air mausoleum.” References to the fact that former Australian Prime Minister John Howard is a colourless, bent, arselicking wanker who gives the yanks whatever they want used to be just as effective in breaking the ice, though they have become less so since Howard was slogged out of office a couple of years ago, to much rejoicing (the refrain of the quasi-official theme song commemorating this historic event was: “Am I ever gonna see your face again?/(No way, get fucked, fuck off!”).

“Is this the stop for the bus to Barcelona?”, a woman asked me.

By this point, I hadn’t spoken English in over a week, and had just spent an entire day speaking French breathlessly. Under those circumstances, my English is a bit odd to begin with. This is compounded by the fact that I have the tendency, quite unconsciously, to pick up whatever dialect is being spoken around me at a given moment. This is particularly true when I’ve been around quite a few different dialects and languages in a short time. This, as you might guess, can lead to some rather odd situations.

“That’s the working hypothesis”, I replied, smiling apologetically.

The crowd continued to grow, and it became clear that every one of them wanted to know whether this was the bus to get to Barcelona.

“All they told me”, I told more than one of them, “was that the bus was somewhere outside.” As it turned out, we had all received the same “information”.

This revelation, everyone agreed, was about as useful as it as surprising. We had all expected the bus to drive through the wall and right into the waiting room. If it did, I am certain that the asshole who shoo’d me away when I needed change would say “Ici on ne fait pas des collisions mortelles”.

From underneath the bus, one sincerely hopes.

One of the young women, I found out upon asking, was from a suburb of Canberra.

“Where the excitement is, eh?” I smiled.

“Yeah, it’s a real party town”, she grinned in response.

Canberra, you see, is considered so dull that even being elected Prime Minister isn’t sufficient cause to actually live there. Hating former Prime Minister and current darling of the US far right John Howard may be a popular pastime, but not moving to Canberra is his one decision as PM that everyone seems to agree with.

As I listened to the crowd that had gathered at the alleged bus stop, I realised that no less than forty people were milling about, all asking each other whether this was the stop for the bus to Barcelona. It seemed that not a single one had been able to get an answer from the station employees – employees of the SNCF, which operated the bus! – on the vaguely important question of where to wait for the bus.

In the midst of all of this, I realised that I had no idea when I was going to be arriving in Barcelona, and no way of contacting Ana, the mother of a good friend of mine, with whom I would be staying whilst there. The last reliable Internet connection I’d had was back in Paris this morning. I had dashed off a quick note to Ana then saying that I would be leaving for Montpellier an hour later than expected, “but it doesn’t look like this should affect my arrival in Barcelona, since I ought to arrive in Perpignan with plenty of time to catch my train.” Those had been more optimistic times.

In other words, I had no idea when I was going to get to Barcelona. I had no real idea whether I was going to get to Barcelona, really. After all, it isn’t exactly a leap to assume that people who don’t know where their own buses stop might not know when and if they’re coming on a given day, either. Not only that, I might very well end up in a new city in the middle of the night with no one to pick me up. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. There were no stairs to run down, no SNCF employees to stare at plaintively in hopes of special dispensation. I had hit bottom. All I could do was sit here, gaze at the palm trees, talk with the similarly stranded people surrounding me, and hope for the best. At least the weather was pleasant.

I had reached a whole new level.

I was hungry, but I didn’t dare look for food and risk the bus showing up and leaving without me, so I tried to enjoy myself.

A young guy, whom I recognised as the one who had told me he didn’t speak French when I asked him about the bus, joined in the conversation.

“D’I hear you say you were from Cincinnati?” he asked me.

“Yeah.”

He eyed me sceptically.

“Um, no offence…”, he began.

Lovely.

“But can you tell me what state Cincinnati’s in?”

“It’s in Ohio, just across the river from Newport and Covington in Kentucky.”

As I continued rattling off Cincinnati factoids – the nightlife is in Newport, the Klan takes part in the annual Christmas festivities, the Bengals are crap, etc. – I heard my accent, and began to realise why he had looked at me so suspiciously. Being scrutinised for either having or lacking an accent was becoming something of a recurring theme on this trip.

And so we continued, until, shortly after dark, a sixtyish American woman who looked to be from California came across the street.

“I think the bus might actually be stopping over there”, she announced, pointing to a spot directly in front of the bus.

I never did find out the source of her information; however, it did sort of make sense. Every bus that had passed “our” stop was either a city bus or a private charter. Plus, it figured that the right bus stop would be one completely different from the ones we had gone to based on the “Information” provided by the station staff.

Thus, we all crossed over in the faint hope that this new place would offer us better chances.

Google maps will give you directions from the station to the Großes Fenster, but these directions need to be taken with a grain of salt. In the directions, Google describes footpaths as if they were streets, and, by naming them (Wannseebadeweg, Am Großen Fenster). However, they are not marked in any way, so the names are meaningless. For another thing, if you list the destination as “Am Großen Fenster” (the path that the Großes Fenster is on, surprisingly enough), it stops short of where you actually need to go. Indeed, the only way to get accurate directions is to list the destination as Schwanenwerder, an island a short walk away from the actual destination.

Once you arrive at Nikolassee, just follow the signs to the exit. You will almost immediately see a pedestrian bridge (Rosemeyerweg). If you look for Rosemeyerweg, you will miss it, as the street sign is parallel to your line of sight coming out, and you will add an extra 15-20 minute bonus walk to your hike as you walk back and realise that all you actually had to do was keep going straight.

Eventually, you will come to Kronprinzessinnenweg (Crown Princess Way). Turn right, and walk about half a block until you see Spanische Allee. Turn left there. The Google directions describe the street you are turning into as “Wannseebadeweg”; however, there was no sign (that I saw, anyway) indicating that that was indeed the name of the street. You will cross the street and come to a warning sign indicating that no motor vehicles are permitted and that pedestrians enter at their own risk. Walk past this, and keep going for about half an hour.

At this point, it is important to get gradually more apprehensive that you are going the wrong way. At least, that is what the people who did the signposting in the forest (Grunewald) seem to think. You will see various turnoffs. Keep going straight. After about half an hour, you will see a white painted stone listing various destinations and distances. One of them will be “Großes Fenster”. Follow the arrow. You will be staying on the same path, but it will veer off to the right. You will see one more of these stones about another half an hour later.

Eventually, you will start to see water through the trees, and the path will start going down hill. You will go down some stairs that have been built discreetly into the path and arrive at a T-intersection. On the left, you’ll see a small marina. Go to the right, and walk another fifteen odd minutes, and you’ll be at the Großes Fenster.

On your left, you will notice that there is a fence and a sign. In case you do not understand German, the sign states that it is prohibited (subject to prosecution) to go beyond the fence, as the area is used to obtain drinking water, and any disturbance of the ground and the plants on it could adversely affect the quality of the groundwater.

When you reach a small clearing on your left, bordered by two large trees, you’re there. Off to your right, you will see Spandau in the distance, and somewhat farther to your right, you will see a tower jutting out of the trees. This is the Grunewaldturm, an observatory tower providing a panoramic view of the forest and a restaurant at the base, approximately 4 km (2 miles) away. The same stones that you followed to get to the Großes Fenster will direct you there.

The Autobahn to Magdeburg, as seen from the Rosenmeyerweg pedestrian bridgeSpanische Allee ("Wannseebadeweg")

The sign at the entrance to the Grunewald

The first of the very sparsely distributed signs

Das Große Fenster

Los donativos se pueden enviar por PayPal a elise.hendrick@gmail.com

Algunos habrán oído de mi proyecto actual y primer libro, Reunión – crónica de viaje. Para los que oyen de ello por primera vez (la gran mayoría), el proyecto se resume a continuación:

Reunión – Crónica de viaje es una crónica tanto instrospectiva como graciosa de un recorrido por Alemania, Austría, Polonia, la República Checa, Italia, España y Francia que durará aproximadamente un mes, y que se iniciará en el otoño del 2010.

Reunión se va a tratar tanto de los espacios intermedios – las estaciones z los trenos  – como de las ciudades que se van a visitar. Es que muz a menudo suceden las cosas más interesantes – una parade alucinante, un encuentro casual, un momento de una absurdidad sublime – en el camino y no el destino. En la crónica también se les echará un vistazo a los activistas, amigos viejos y nuevos, y conversaciones y entrevistas espontáneas que se producen mientras recorro el continente. Unas partes del prólogo se pueden leer navegando a http://reuniontravelogue.wordpress.com.

Según lo tenía planificado, el proyecto se iba a financiar en parte mediante los ingresos percibidos por mi actividad de traducción multilingüe, y en parte mediante los donativos recibidos por l@s amig@s de las buenas lecturas y l@s lector@s de mi blog Meldungen aus dem Exil (http://meldungen-aus-dem-exil.noblogs.org). De acuerdo al plan, la fecha de partida era el día 1 de octubre de 2010.

Cabe puntualizar que existen buenos motives para tener palabras distintas para lo planificado y lo efectivo. En un momento crítico para el financiamiento del proyecto llegaron dos meses en que no recibí más que unas traducciones pequeñas, y tampoco había muchos donativos (lo que es muy entendible – en estos tiempos el fomento de jovenes satiristas no constituirá una prioridad presupuestaria para la mayor parte de la gente). La idea era de juntar por lo menos US$2500, preferiblemente entre US$3000 y US$5000, para cubrir los diversos gastos de viaje (vuelos, Eurail Pass, etc.).

Al fin de cuentas recibí aproximadamente US$150 por el camino de los donativos.

Quisiera agradecerles a todos los que ya donaron. Desgraciadamente debido a la economía que tenemos, necesito $2000 – $2500 más, para poder lanzar el proyecto. Sé que eso es mucho, sobre todo al pensar que se trata de US$2000 más de lo que reciben los compañeros del metal rojo por sus 70 días de calvario, y por supuesto lo entiendo. Por otro lado, si 45 personas donan US$44 cada una (o 90 personas donan unos US$22 cada una), ya habré juntado la cantidad mínima. Y si se encuentran tant@s lector@s generos@s hasta el fin del 14 de octubre, podré empezar a viajar – cosa esencial para el proyecto, dado que se trata de una crónica de viaje – ya el 15 de octubre.