Next Station...

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I had always imagined that we had done something terribly wrong, something so unpardonable that we were now suffering the consequences of this unnamed act. Something must have happened that I was unaware of. The good people of Extremadura must have committed some sort of heinous act, something so vile that we were being punished for our impertinence. Something so terrible that neither of the main political parties could remedy at the national level, even though their respective parties had enjoyed years of absolute majorities. After all, how else could it be explained? Here I was standing in Madrid at five thirty in the afternoon on a Saturday, after a long and exhausting training session, and there was no public transport home available. As my colleagues from Palma de Mallorca got ready to take the return portion of the flight that had taken that very morning and while others got ready to board AVEs for the costas, here I was contemplating another night in a hotel. I say anthoer after having been forced to stay in one the night before because it was simply impossible to get to Madrid for the 9:30 session. As I searched for a way home it came to me. The complete negligence of decades of elected officials couldn't be the reason for us having the inglorious distinction of being the only community without a single kilometer of electrified rail. The vicious circle of reduced services thus reducing passengers couldn’t be blamed on our officials who once-upon-a-pre-crisis time dreamt of airports with connections to London and Berlin. It had to be someone else’s fault and there the answer was on my mobile phone...the French! As they did during the War of Independence, the French were once again meddling in the affairs of Extremadura, making it so that only way to get home was by using their invention, BlaBlacar. An hour later I found myself in a shared car with three other people who had been in the same predicament. They had also been attending training sessions in Madrid and had no other way home. It’s people like this that politicians often say we need more of in the region, ambitious, industrious folk training to better themselves to help better our region. The least they can do is provide them with a lift home.