Rumbo perdido

Surely the best way to get from St Petersburg to the Basque Country was not to train to Moscow and then fly to Barcelona via Warsaw, wait in Barcelona for seven hours, and then fly to Bilbao. But I planned things in stages and each leg of this particular meander seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Flying to other countries from Russia is a huge pain in the ass if you don't leave from Moscow, and if I hadn't gone back to Moscow I would have missed out on making friends with Igor and Yegor while drinking beers outside the subway station, and Shane would probably have missed the chance to finally impress some Russians with his knowledge of the Russian word for cunt. And the Barcelona layover was so ridiculously long that I had time to go into the city and get a bocadillo de jamon. "Jamón cerrano with pan con tomate?," the cute grandmotherly woman at the cafe asked. I love Spain. And then she brought me a newspaper, which felt like a huge compliment although it really only means that I appear to speak enough Spanish that I can maybe read a little. No one in Russia ever offered me a newspaper. And then, on the way to Bilbao, there was a beautiful sunset out the window for the whole flight. For what was supposed to be a big hassle at best and a huge disaster at worst, today turned out to be sort of a lovely day.