Trying to schedule a trip by rail here elucidates all that is wrong with this country.
On the one hand you have this enviable, modern, high-speed rail system. On the other hand, said rail system comes with no Internet or phone support. I mean none. Zero. You must physically go to the train station to purchase your ticket.
At said station, there are many ticket windows and a civilized take-a-number system, as well as many automated machines. The machines have no language options, so at the risk of screwing up, I opted to wait in line to try to make myself understood by an agent. I purchased 2 first class, roundtrip tickets to Seville – a 90 minute ride each way – for a whopping $400 euros (check out the alarming exchange rate and do the math).
My fellow traveler became ill via bad clams and we needed to delay our trip one day.
As I mentioned, there is no Internet or phone support for the rail system, so even with an existing ticket, you must physically go to the train station and make the change with a station agent. So, once again, I traipsed down to the train station, on foot, by the light of my iPhone map app.
At said station, the otherwise, seemingly virile young men behind the ticket counters became Tubercular deaf mutes, apparently so far along in the wasting stages of their disease, that they had not the strength to sit upright enough for their hands to reach their keyboards. Nor were they able -poor dears – to overcome the obvious paroxysmal consumption and the anemia, to check a train schedule. Rather, they languidly ordered me into the outer hall to retrieve a pamphlet, their apparent dysarthria had them only able to grunt words, while the deterioration to their optic nerves left them unable to make eye contact.
BTW, a change to a ticket – even a $200 euro first class ticket – incurs a 10% fee, a fact that the consumptive ticket agent took great delight in informing me.
Seriously, no one in the US could get away with behaving this way and expect to retain a job, it was beyond parodic. The Machiavellian, 20-something ticket brutes make the whole of the DMV look like Mr. Bates, the limping Valet.