Saturday morning, I was standing at the train station when my mobile started vibrating and making a racket. I stood up brought it out, took a look at the display and read Basma on it. The moment I was about to take the call the phone calmed itself. This certainly meant that she had arrived and could see me. Right I was. She soon came into view and we greeted each other with the usual Salams.
“I need to buy the ticket. What’s the destination again?” She questioned me.
“Ovronnaz, it’s a small town in the canton of Valais.” I gave her more information than she had asked for.
“Aren’t you gonna take the day pass?” I continued.
“No. I think it’ll be cheaper for me if I take the normal ticket. I’ve got the half-price card.” She explained.
She bought her ticket and asked me when Adrien was coming. I gave Adrien a call and found out that he was on his way in a bus and would arrive shortly. We waited and when there were only a few minutes left we moved towards the platform. I called Adrien again.
Adrien: “Yeah! I’m still in the bus but we’re almost here.”
Me: “There’s only five minutes left before the departure!”
Adrien: “I think I’ll make it if I run. You guys get to the platform and what platform is it?”
Me: “It’s 6. All right we’ll be close to a door and jump on when we see you running into the train.”
I hung up.
“Well, he’s gonna come running.” I told Basma.
We went up to the platform, stood next to the door of one wagon and looked out towards the other end of the train hoping to spot Adrien soon.
“One more minute left.” I said out loud.
I was now watching the second hand of the suspended clock.
“Swoosh, slam.” A noise came all of a sudden.
The doors of the train had been shut close and there we saw Adrien on the platform twenty meters away.
“Hey! He shut the doors 15 seconds early.” I said angrily.
“There goes the train.” Basma concluded.
“So close yet so far.” I replied.
Ten seconds more would have been more than enough to catch the train. Adrien came up to us panting.
“Sorry.” He apologized.
That’s ok. We’ll take the next one.” Basma asserted him.
“According to the timings I printed, the next one is in two hours.” I told them.
“But a train circulates on this route every hour.” Basma argued.
“True, but the bus we needed to take from Martigny doesn’t run every hour.” I explained.
“We could go somewhere else instead. How about Lac de Joux” I suggested.
“I’ve already bought my ticket.” Basma reminded me.
“Oh yeah. We’re going to Ovronnaz then.” I stuck to the original destination.
Adrien on his side had come up with the master plan.
“We can take the next direct train to Lausanne. It reaches Lausanne five minutes before the one we just missed. If the direct one is on time then we can switch at Lausanne.” He told us.
He seemed to be very well informed. It was a seductive plan. We could still save ourselves two hours. We went for it.
On the train I showed them the hiking routes which I had planned. Adrien made us listen to a few African tunes. Some of them sounded catchy. The closer we got to Lausanne the slower the train seemed to move and the more anxious we got. When we had reached Lausanne Adrien informed us that we only had three minutes left to find and hop on the next train. It seemed tough. We got up and got ready for the sprint. The moment the doors opened and we saw an opening in the human jungle we sped. I was in the lead. Upon sighting the train I ran up the platform and the moment I had reached the platform I heard it again.
“Swoosh, slam.”
I took a look at the clock and turned around.
“You can stop running. We missed it.” I yelled out.
When everyone was up I spoke again.
“It left ten seconds early!” I was furious on having missed it yet again by so little. I couldn’t see why the conductor was so pressed. If he had to go to the toilets they were present in the train as well.
Once again we searched for other plans. There were none to be found. We moved on to the next thing in the agenda. We had two hours to spend. How and where were we to do that?
After a few arguments and having checked with the train people for further details we came to the conclusion that we should go check out Martigny.
At Martigny the first thing we did was go to the tourism office. There was a girl sitting at the desk. I went to the other side looking at the various brochures on display. Basma and Adrien followed suit and went to the same side.
“Good day.” The tourism girl finally spoke.
I turned around walked to her and answered politely, stopped a while and continued again.
“We were heading towards Ovronnaz and were wondering if you would have any information on what we could do over there?” I asked
“I don’t have many details on that, but let me take a look.”
Soon enough she had produced a pamphlet showing the major hike routes, followed by a 50% off coupon for the only chairlift in town. We bid the tourism girl goodbye and went off wasting some time in Martigny. From Martigny we took a bus to a midpoint town, where we waited again for the bus to Ovronnaz.
At Ovronnaz we got off at the wrong stop and had to walk some more. By the time we got to the chairlift we realized that it was going to shutdown in ninety minutes. This was bad news. It had taken us more than three hours to get here and we wouldn’t even be able to stay up for two hours. The original plan was for a three hour thirty minute hike. The back up plan was for one hour thirty minutes. None of those could be taken as the times were approximated and it could take more or less time.
After a discussion we decided to go up anyway because otherwise we would have traveled all this way for nothing. We went to buy tickets at the booth.
“Do you give any reductions to holders of Swiss pass and half-price cards?” I asked the vendor.
“No sorry. We are a private company.” The vendor told us with a smile.
We took out our fifty percent off coupons and presented it to the vendor.
“Where did you get these?” The vendor asked us. His smile had faded into a small frown and his voice seemed rougher all of a sudden.
“At the tourism office in Martigny” We informed him.
“Six francs per person!” He replied without adding please or smiling.
We thanked him anyway, paid and took the chairlift up. On the way I noticed that Adrien looked pale. I realized then that Adrien was always reluctant in going somewhere whenever it was mentioned that a cable car would be used. This time I had forgotten to mention that.
“You ok?” I asked him.
“I don’t like heights!” He gave a quick short answer.
“Oops… I had forgotten that you didn’t like heights.” That was the only thing I could think of saying.
Adrien remained crisped and didn’t talk till we had reached the top. I’m sure he was glad to have touched the ground again.
Up there we just walked around a little, took a few pictures and headed back for chairlift to start the return journey. It wasn’t even a proper hike. It was more like a stroll in the mountains.
Disclaimer: Some accounts have been slightly modified and dialog's added to make the tales more interesting. Besides, I had to translate :-)
Copyright © 2005 Kazim Rehman
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
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