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Tag: Spain

  • Please God let Deutsche Bahn run Spain’s trains

    Tudela to Vitoria on August 29. Renfe’s route planner:

    00622 ALVIA 12.12 14.08 1 h. 56 min.

    DB:

    dep 07:13 arr 09:50 2:37 1 R
    dep 12:12 arr 14:08 1:56 0 A
    dep 15:12 arr 17:49 2:37 1 R

    You see, those scheming Germans have used the same data but added a hundred lines of code to include train changes in the results, and it’s been that way for a decade.

    Both companies currently have the ability to add another hundred lines and enable cyclists to select a bike-permissive service. The German site says they can do it but then backs off with the feeble excuse that they can’t invoice the result. The Spanish site doesn’t even mention the topic, and customer service in Barcelona may actually give you false information about availability in other parts of Spain.

    No guesses as to who will crack these nuts first, whatever the cost to German taxpayers. Even better would be to copy some aspects of British liberalisation and open up data access so that more or less anyone can set up a timetable and ticket purchase site, but neither the Spanish nor the German state operates like that.

  • Located, the fifth fanny / Encontrado, el quinto coño

    “El quinto coño” refers, for reasons unclear even to connoisseurs of Jamesian multivulvular theory, to an almost impossibly far-away place. There’s a meme going round at the moment which places it in an undetermined locality in Murcia. Murcia is not far away from anywhere, so this is presumably Valencian slander.

    Restaurante el Quinto Coño is actually in a small village called La Codosera in Los Baldíos de Alburquerque in the Extremaduran province of Badajoz, a mile or so away from Portugal. The local administration’s guide to the zone lists it with phone number 924 404 014, while an extract of the Chamber of Commerce register says it can be reached on 924 404 390 and that it does a menu for the exceptionally attractive price of 7€. It seems to be on the southern outskirts of the village, and I can’t think of that many places I’d prefer to be at the moment than having a pre-prandial something on the terrace:


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    (For all I know the “el quinto pino“, the fifth pine, may be in Murcia. Still quite a lot of pine in Murcia.)

  • Church of Sant Pau at Montmany about to fall down?

    That’s the claim here, although I have to say it doesn’t seem to have got much worse in the years I’ve been basing a route around it. Partial collapse, leaving accessible Gothic-ish ruins, might even be preferable, but if it disappeared completely and the mad, mad farm next door were to be civilised then the walk would lose much of its eccentric charm.