Travel - expecting the unexpected

Clare's time with me here in Malaga has passed all too quickly. This morning, after packing her case we went for a walk, bought and then some fish for lunch before setting off for the airport. She is ever keen to allow more than enough time in getting started on a journey, so we left the apartment at two for a three thirty bag check-in rendezvous (according to her Vueling flight notification on the digital calendar she doesn't use). Normally three quarters of an hour is enough for a walk to the Metro stop on the Alameda and taking the thrice hourly service to the airport. 

Lately I found that the number three bus from the stop outside the apartment stops not only at the Alameda, but goes on to stop outside the side entrance to Estacion Maria Zambrano, very close to the second Metro stop on the airport line, more convenient, a little less challenging if you're tugging a case behind you and the same fare cost either way. Things didn't go according to plan, however.

The number three bus which arrived on time was packed to the doors. The driver let passengers off but wouldn't let anyone one. Rather than wait ten minutes for the next one, we walked over to the Paseo del Parque where there are several bus stops for service across town, including the number one, which also drops you outside the station. This deposited us at the entrance only five minutes later than planned. 

The Metro entrance has several automatic ticket machines and a wide entrance, so rarely is there a queue. On this occasion, the reason for this was that the ticketing network node has crashed and none of the machines were working! Fortunately, there was a real human being on ticket office duty, and we didn't have to queue. A competent human being is far faster than a fiddly slow automatic machine. We then had nearly fifteen minutes to wait for a train, and eventually arrived at Departures half an hour ahead of the recommended time. The check-in queue was relatively short processing thirty odd travellers in a quarter of an hour through half a dozen counters. Impressively efficient.

After a farewell cuppa, we took our leave of each other. An info panel display warned that a French air traffic controllers' strike might cause delays, but the Vueling phone app said Clare's flight was running to time. Not true. As the actual departure time approached, a delay of seventy five minutes was posted. Being prudent, she'd made a picnic meal to take with her 'just in case'. That's my girl, prepared for every eventuality. At nine, I received a text message so say she'd landed in Cardiff, and she was back at home three quarters of an hour later. 

It's amazing to be able to travel such distances with relative ease, despite glitches or delays which can add a couple of hours to a journey time. Such a complex, yet routine operation for millions every day. We are so spoiled. It's such a shame that some travellers seem to make no allowances for things going awry, and get upset about it on social media or in the press.

At our  age, we look back to early back-pack adventures in Greece, and having to wait an extra day for a ferry between islands, as schedules were rarely published and often elastic, according to the demand on local transport. To think - we were so young, but not in a hurry, just taking things as they came, no sense of entitlement, only of the gift of freedom to be and to travel, more or less in an organised way. In those far off days B.C. (before car), we were much blessed.

     

Geneva reunion (1)

After lunch we took the stopping Train Regional to Lausanne, then the non-stop Intercity to Geneva. The latter part of the trip takes just over half an hour now that the third railway track is operational for most of the route. We'd been invited to stay with our friend Yvette in Chambesy, and this meant catching the Train Regional which shuttles between Geneve Cornavin and Coppet at the east end of Geneva Canton, back toward Lausanne. Chambesy station is currently a building site. It's  being remodelled to create along the station length an additional section of rail track, to enable trains on a single line to pass each other. Once done, four shuttle trains an hour will run on the single line.

Hopefully, this will help attract more commuters away from car use. Geneva has a wonderful public transport network, and one of the worst imaginable road traffic congestion problems, as the city has borders with France on either side of the lake, and the only way to pass from one side to the other, and not go the long way round using the motorway bypass, is through the town centre, using the Pont du Mont Blanc, near to Holy Trinity Anglican Church. Debate has gone on since the 1980s about driving a road tunnel under the lake, or possibly building another bridge. Progress has been made on every other possible transport improvement, but not this. 

Recently, agreement has been reached to investigate bridge building possibilities, though how this could be funded remains to be seen, as the cost would run into billions of Swiss Francs. Figuring out how to get a return on the investment is not going to be easy. Swiss railway networks are subsidised, and trains are well used, but revenue is not rising. Fares have risen to compensate, but this tends to drive travellers back into car usage. Not a good idea. Modern economies rely entirely on efficient transport infrastructure. Rarely is this really profitable. Infrastructure running costs are a big social investment, a burden on tax like the NHS, and tax is how we invest collectively in having things work as well as everyone wants to work. But how we resent this!

Yvette met us at the station and drove us to her house. It's all so familiar, it doesn't seem like five years since we were last here and staying with her. In the evening, our friend Manel came over to join us for dinner, full of excitement about a guided tour of her native Sri Lanka she's organised for a church group visit, leaving this week. Doing detailed background research for this trip has been an absorbing and interesting experience for her. She discovered that a Chaplain of Holy Trinity Geneva in the 1930s, W S Senior, had previously ministered in Sri Lanka. This led her to research his biography with great interest. I learned that Holy Trinity Archive material is now being assembled to deposit in Geneva's Cantonal archive. It's another interesting process of discovery, but well worthwhile, given that the origins of the chaplaincy as a Church of England entity reach back into the late eighteenth century. 

  

When the technological failure is yours

We were fortunate yesterday's weather was warm and fine, allowing us to walk and talk with Colette along the lake shore to the Chateau de Chillon and back. Today's morning weather was ominous and overcast. Clare and Colette went for a walk after breakfast, but I stayed in to work on producing a baptism certificate ready for Sunday. I'll also need to take with me a suitable large bowl to use as a font, the St John's Paschal Candle and a decent plain baptismal candle for the child. Aiglon Chapel is simple Vaudois Protestant in its furnishing, and doesn't have a font, only an altar table.

After an early lunch, we walked with Colette along the lakeside to Montreux gare for her return train to Basel. It began to rain, lightly at first, but we arrived at the station and were under cover as the full downpour began. After waving Colette off, we made our way, dodging the heavier rain to the COOP supermarket in the centre of town. Several days ago we made some food purchases here. Clare paid with a preloaded currency Mastercard containing Swiss Francs and Euros. As the transaction was completing she noticed on the terminal display that the CHF bill amount was converted into Sterling, and then back to CHF for debiting from the card. Later inspection of the relevant smartphone app confirmed that this procedure added one and a half Swiss Francs to the bill, due to differences in currency purchase and sale rates in those few fleeting seconds. 

Something was wrong, and we formed the opinion that the default for UK Mastercard must be to convert CHF to ££ automatically. Anyway, Clare decided to tackle the store manager about this, and returned next day. He was puzzled, and promised to investigate and report back, when he had found out what happened. She forgot to give him the Church House phone number however, so we popped in to give him this, and buy a few food items, with cash if needs be.

After spending a while inspecting the wine shelves, curious  to learn where apart from Switzerland the store obtains its produce (I didn't actually buy anything), I found Clare chatting to a charming checkout lady. It seems others in the sales team were aware of the card issue. We checked out our purchases, and Clare inserted the card. It showed a menu she'd not noticed when punching in her PIN on our first visit. It showed payment options possible with the card - CHF, Euros, and Sterling. The latter was shown first in the till menu, given the card's origin and use with UK currency pre-loaded as well as other kinds. It's an option a card user has to remember to reject in favour of the currency desired. So it was, in reality a simple case of caveat emptor. The purchaser must instruct the card how to behave. It's not automatic. Clare had, in fact, automatically treated her new multi-currency card as she would use a normal debit card.

Still, it wasn't quite as embarrassing an encounter as it may sound. Her conversation with the store manager aimed to suggest staff be reminded to check with foreign customers about their choice of currency, when a multi-use currency debit card was presented. With so many foreign clients from all over the world, it must happen from time, retail staff are generally keen to follow best practice and remind clients of the options in front of them. As we cheerfully parted company with the checkout lady, the store manager appeared, bearing a bottle of Pinot Noir du Valais (one of our favourites!) as a good-will gift. I was astonished by the generosity of spirit this displayed. After all, we made our own mistaken, due to lack of experience in using the card. How marvellous!

We then went to the nearby Metro centre for a cup of coffee in a place with a balcony window which overlooks the lake, and watched the rain slowly diminish and the sky start to lighten. Eventually we caught the bendy trolleybus back to Territet to avoid getting wet. We asked the driver if we could buy a ticket and he pointed to a ticket automat in other half of the vehicle. Then I realised when the bus drove so far from the shelter before stopping. People got on via the back entrance, somewhat counter intuitive. 

By the time we reached the machine, walking up a fast moving bus, two of the four stops had been passed, and we were speeding the last leg to Territet. Neither of us could make sense of the picket purchasing routine, nor how much of a ticket we needed. There are no machines at bus stops, just an information panel which would make more sense to locals, the primary users, than to foreigners. 

Bus ticket machines also have an entirely different user interface from the ubquitous CFF ticket machines, almost identical to others of its kind, at least, all over Europe. Since we couldn't figure out how to pay, we decided to get off at the next stop. It turned out to be our stop. I felt bad, getting off without paying, and humiliated by being unable to read or work the ticket machine while the bus was moving about vigorously. Welcome to old age, I thought. 

This is likely to happen increasingly, given the pace of technological innovation, as our responses to change of any kind slow up - the way my sister June complaining about. The world about us just seems to get quicker, leaving us on this occasion bewildered and embarrassed, not yet helpless.

From Rincon by bus

This morning, with enough dirty clothes to make up half a load, it was time to figure out how the washing machine works. It's a different model from ones I've been used to in other places, so I had to read the instruction booklet. Thankfully, once I'd mastered its language of logos and symbols, it was straightforward enough for a quick wash cycle. Not being sure if it was such a good idea to put an airer full of washing out on a street side balcony, I made use of a spare bedroom on the sunny side, with the window open, which did the trick nicely. 

Then it was time to do the rest of the week's shopping, cook lunch and have a siesta before driving out to Rincon del la Victoria to rendezvous with Rosella at the Tamoil Gasolinera just above the autovia junction. When I put this in my Google calendar and typed in 'Tamoil', I was surprised to see that it immediately suggested the correct one at Rincon, 15km away, even though I had not yet typed in 'Rincon'. Rosella said that there are few Tamoil stations around the area, so all Google was doing was helpfully suggesting the nearest one to me. Which, as luck would have it, was correct.

After meeting up, we drove to an auto service garage a kilometre away and left the car. Rosella then dropped me, as planned in Rincon, so that I could catch the bus back to Malaga. This gave me an opportunity to purchase my own Tarjeta Consorcio - a fare card to use in paying for rides at a discount on the ticket cash price. It's still €1.07 for the half hour journey. The rechargeable card costs €1.80, and you need to put a minimum of €5.00 on it to start with. I now have the means to get on one of the buses which stops outside the apartment and see where it takes me.

I got off the bus at the hospital stop, ten minutes walk from St George's, rather than go all the way to the terminus next to the Muelle heredia, in the port which is twenty minutes walk to St George's. I needed to go back there to retrieve my outdoor specs with added shades from the sacristy table, where I left them. I can see well enough to drive without them, but it's hardly a pleasant experience. I turned out into the traffic by the time I realised my omission. Finding a short way back to collect them would certainly have made me late. I was so annoyed with myself. Will I ever get really used to wearing specs, I wonder?

When I finally got back to the apartment, I had a phone call from Curate Doreen, asking how the weekend had been, and it gave me an opportunity to solicit her help in finding a place to stay in or near Salinas when Owain comes for the weekend, since I'm up there celebrating the Eucharist on the weekend he's with me. We have plans to visit Nerja, and then drive up to Granada on the spectacular A44 autovia, which runs for part of its length on viaducts through a valley with a succession of lakes. It'll be great to have someone with me who is happy taking photographs. I've done the trip now several times and never been free to take pictures which do justice to the scenery.

Clare and I had a long conversation later, with both of us using phone headsets, which gave both of us far better reception than when using speaker boost. It's taken a long while for us to realise this. Before turning in for the night, I walked along the east arm of the port to savour the beauty of the port and city skyline at twilight. La Farinola is floodlit, and changes from blue to green at frequent intervals. Curiously, I didn't notice if its was performing its designated duty. Much check tomorrow.