Brock { Abroad }

My next movement, at approximately 11.30 p.m. was through more mountains- except I was now hurtling downwards into an actual city. “This is Bilbao?” I ask the guy sitting next to me who I’ve been talking to for most of the ride. He’s been telling me about his city when I prompt him, otherwise he’s been asking me a lot of questions about the United States. He finally arrives at the most common question I get from foreigners. “So, do you prefer Europe or America?”

“ Let me put it this way,” I tell him, “I’ve learned to say the grass is always greener on the other side in a lot of different languages.”  We soon disembark. After telling me where I could possibly find internet at one in the morning, we part ways. I hop on the futuristic tram that gives an eerie green glow and am soon in motion, yet again. Sliding through high buildings perched waterside, I find myself at the last stop, the only passenger left. I step out of the green light, and seconds later, the neon bath powers off.  The engine goes silent. Literally, I found myself at the end of the line. At least I had achieved my mission of a one-day arrival to Bilbao- I thought to myself- give or take a few hours…

I sensed I was in an unsavory section of city, but suspiciously sauntered past street goons until I entered a still-awake cybercafé. Actually, the place seemed to be more like in sleep-mode. The gentleman behind the glass flicked on a power bar that jolted the strip of computers lining the wall into a buzz of beeps and clicks and whirs that only the computers from years ago can make. I said thanks in French, then English, then finally got it right the third time. He got them right every time. The beauty of communication, I thought, as I logged into my email. Suddenly, it did not seem so beautiful when I was disappointed to see that no one in Bilbao had responded to my request to sleep on their couch. Frowning, I realized the drawbacks of digital communication. I was surprised, to say the least, to find myself without a couch offer for the first time in almost three months.

Bilbao didn’t seem that dead. There were still people in the streets at almost three in the morning. Among them, a family walking their dog who ran without a leash far ahead of the couple and not far behind was their little boy going down the incline of a bridge into traffic as the mother yelled at them both. Luckily, unlike the pedestrian traffic, the street was pretty dead. And so was I. I slowly trudged up the stairs of one of the pensiones, cheap hotels, I’d come across in the Casco Viejo, the old center of Bilbao. I could physically move no further, and would soon realize that most of my days would come to an end this way.

Related posts:

1. Why you shouldn’t go to Bilbao, Spain on a Monday:
2. Zen pads
3. On Imagination inMovement
4. And on the fifth day, they showered.
5. a story of pilgrimage