Going Home: Donostia - Périgueux

No phone calls last night. No open doors, but still not as much sleeping as I'd have wanted, perhaps because I spent most of yesterday in bed.

I was up in plenty of time for sufficient free coffee before getting myself to Donostia Amara to take the 10:45 Euskotren to Hendaia (the name of the Spanish station in France). I took the 10:45 to get me there for 11:22, because the 11:15 gets in at 11:52, only eight minutes before the one useful TER to Bordeaux. It's probably fine, as the Euskotren seems to run like clockwork, but I thought it better to have time for a chocolatine (no knife and fork) and a coffee beforehand.

Yes. My morning was this exciting.

Across from the station in Hendaye, everything was very closed and very quiet, but there was a boulangerie open where I procured a chocolatine, and then succumbed to a coffee in a paper cup in the Relay in the station. The woman behind the counter seemed to take umbrage at young people buying a green mermaid's bottle of coffee ("it's just sugar!") over actual coffee. She had a point. She had a machine which made coffee (1.40€) which I trusted more than the one in the boulangerie. Hers was not the best coffee, but it was actual coffee. Made there and then. With coffee.

I found a place to perch and worked studiously on not making eye contact with a white station pigeon who'd spent the weekend binging Hitchcock, while trying to eat a chocolatine that it was under the impression was not mine to eat. I casually brushed it away with a swift arm movement, only for it to come back moments later with its mates, who'd seen the commotion and clearly determined I'd invited them all for some of my breakfast. A waiting youth threw an empty Starbucks bottle into a nearby bin, which distracted them long enough for me to wolf down the rest of my breakfast and pretend nothing had happened. One of the gang of pigeons tilted its head at me, menacingly, as I crumpled up the brown paper bag as quietly as I could.

At about 11:45, a platform was shown for the TER to Bordeaux, so I boarded at the front where I had a most peculiar conversation with a man who claimed to be a train driver and went on to tell me at length about how he'd been being harassed by the police for the last three years. "Vous avez une tête de policier, monsieur," he told me – the man with the English accent who this morning looked as if he'd dressed himself in the dark and was brushing his breakfast from his coat after an altercation with a small flying rodent.

I did my best to reassure him I wasn't a policeman, which seemed to make it worse. "They'll say anything." He looked me up and down. "Three years!" he reminded me. I made sympathetic noises and eyed the two remaining seats in the compartment at the front of the train behind the driver's cab. He'd taken two and I quite fancied the other two as I'd thought there was no chance of being disturbed. I pointed out I wasn't French, a major setback for being a policeman, and thickened my accent a bit to help my case. "They come in all shapes and sizes and all have cover stories."

I tried putting my bag into a luggage rack that was woefully inadequate. "If you're going to sit here, I'll have to move. Three years this has been going on!" His eyes darted around the compartment. Apparently this had been going on three years. My tactical rucksack still wouldn't fit in the luggage rack, no matter how much I jiggled it.

I decided to sit elsewhere with a bigger luggage rack.

By the time the doors closed and we'd started moving, he'd gone. I decided to move back. My concern at this point was that he had been telling the truth, and was now driving the train – convinced that he was in some kind of getaway situation. Still, on the upside, I managed to get my bag to fit – sort of – in the luggage rack and took up residence in the little compartment of four, which looked really as if it was destined for crew use. I was joined by someone who had more potential for being a policeman than I did, I thought, and snoozed in and out of sleepy time until we got to Bordeaux around half-past two, where I went for lunch at the Bouillon.

It was quieter today than last time. After helping a woman with a pushchair navigate the exit, I was ushered Frenchly to a single table at the back, where a nice man in traditional French waiter attire brought me a menu and bottle of water.

I studied the menu for a few minutes and forgot that onion soup probably contained most of a rendered-down cow, because this is France. By the time it came, I decided that as I'd ordered it without checking, I really didn't have grounds on which to send it back, so asked for a glass of red wine. In any case, my main course was vegetarian – a sort-of macaroni cheese with mushrooms, declared vegetarian on the menu – so, perhaps.

For dessert, I once again had the Colonel Sorbet – a glass of vodka with some lemon sorbet in it – because what better way to kill some germs and cure a cold? On the other side of the restaurant, a budding Casanova was trying to impress his romantic dining companion by wearing a beret back-to-front, and continually waving his whole arm to attract attention, while rocking back on his chair as if wearing a beret à table wasn't already an egregious enough breach of restaurant etiquette. Between rollings of eyes, waiting staff tended to his every needs as quickly as their pauses syndicales would let them.

Coffee came, and the entire three-course meal with wine and coffee came to 22€, which is exactly how to eat during a train journey.

The final journey on the 16:26 to Périgueux was uneventful, and we arrived on time. The bus driver from Périgueux was clearly not amused that he still had an hour to work before the region's transport strike started at seven. He refused the last request stop.