8.30.2009
Hello to all! I finally made it to Dijon last night after over 30 hours of travel due to my own last minute planning. Let’s re-cap:
I bought a greyhound ticket from Worcester to Boston, forgot my ipod (sweet Greg brought it to me) and while boarding the greyhound and CRYING, the driver then announced that the bus had indeed run out of seats. Great. So my very nice goodbye became very anti-climactic when I got off, walked back over to my friends, and asked Greg to drive me to the airport so I wouldn’t miss my flight. Bon. D’accord. So, I got my refund, and off we (Charlie, Lily, Carolyn, Greg and I) went.
Upon arrival, I said goodbye to everyone and made my way to the Virgin Atlantic Terninal—very nice. I even got a list of movies that I could watch for free (recent ones too! I chose Benjamin Button.) on my own airline sponsored DVD player. They also gave me beef stew, two rounds of tea, bread, salad, and of course lots of wine. Holler.
Heathrow=Shit Pit. The woman next to me, Andrea, was very nice and a good conversationalist, but she did bitch about us flying into Terminal 3. She said it was the “poor person’s terminal”. She was right. Not that I really cared, but hey, she said the truth. It looked like the terminal had once stored prisoners, and the customs line was fucking long as hell. It almost took me 45 minutes to get through, and I was in the front!
Note: UK Border patollers are mean, but French border patrollers are even meaner, if possible. That said, I finally got my luggage and got on the underground to St. Pancras Station---a 4£ bus ride, because I had to go through 6 zones…oh well. The underground was very easy to navigate. Very clean, also. Finally, at St. Pancras station, where the Eurostar is, I sat alone on the ground and slept, only to be woken up a ½ hour later by a cup of coffee. That’s right. Apparently, the man working in the café right by where I was sleeping felt “bloody sorry” for me, and made me some “roast” so that I wouldn’t be too fucked up by the time I got to Paris. A pleasant surprise!
In the station, after security, which was no easy feat getting through with all of my luggage, I went through the “way out” (it just kills me the British use this term instead of “exit”. I feel like this exemplifies British culture in a nutshell.) and into the waiting area. I met a girl from Smith college who talked with me for a few hours who is going to study in Scotland. She was very nice, and it was good to talk to another sleep-deprived American, to be honest (from MA no less!). Not gonna lie, it was sort of sad leaving London. Not only was it very pretty, but it was basically my last time for a while in the land of English speaking people! Not to mention the inhuman amount of helpful people and cute boys.
The train ride to Paris was nice. Only two hours! I sat by a 26 year old British male, James Howard, who was very cute and also gay. I’m pretty sure he was hitting on me. We talked about France, England, the States etc. It turns out that although he’s English, he lives in Paris for work! He started getting rather close to me while he was telling me how incredible the Luxembourg Gardens are. Eventually, I said something along the lines of “wow, that sounds great! I’ll have to go sometime!”, and his response to this was “well…how much time do you have between trains, because I think it may be nice to go with such a pleasant conversationalist!”. WOW. Talk about being flattered. Invite to Luxembourg Gardens with a cute guy who may or may not be interested? Oh, but wait…my next train to Dijon was leaving only 2 hours after we arrived at Gare du Nord. Fuck. So no luck there, but still. We ended up talking for most of the ride to Paris, and upon arrival he asked me where I was headed next- I told him that I was taking the RER (the RER is a part of the Paris Metro that connect the suburbs to downtown, and this was fastest way for me to get from place to place) to Gare de Lyon. Not only did he walk me to the RER and help me with my bags, but he proceeded to purchase my RER ticket for me (an 8 euro ticket!), saying that it was “no big deal, they’re just euros”. Well, thanks! Anyway, we “shared a hug” as he said, and then he told me that he’d soon see the rest of France and that if I find myself in Paris or he in Dijon then perhaps we could meet for a drink.
Anyway. My journey continued on the RER which was horrible. I got off at the Gare de Lyon, but needed directions. Some Parisians were nice. Some, not so nice. But all of them, regardless of how they treated me, made no sense. I could not for the life of me decipher what they were saying to me. Nor was Paris actually very pretty, at least from the train stations. I felt about Paris how I felt about New York at first- it seemed dirty, cramped, and overwhelming. Perhaps I was just tired. Either way, it was not what I wanted.
Finally, I got my ticket to Dijon, and remembered to use the “composter” which are essentially these yellow machines that validate your ticket. You know, everyone talks about how beautiful the French countryside is, and maybe it’s just because I’m color blind, but it all seemed rather drab to me. Regardless, a very nice Frenchman allowed me to use his cell phone after we arrived so that I could call Veronique, as Dijon has almost NO coin pay phones (they are all telecarte france phones that require a phone card or a French bank account). Véro answered the phone, and before you knew it, she was at the Gare picking me up. She is, thus far, a very friendly woman. She helped me load some of my things into her little euromobile, and then explained to me the rules of the house. Essentially, no wearing shoes on the carpet, put dishes in the dishwasher, do your own laundry, always lock the door, etc. Simple things, and she was very nice about it, saying “vous comprenez? Ou voulez-vous me repeter?” which means “do you understand, or should I repeat myself?”. Her house is very lovely, very typically French. Lots of cream colors, couches that nobody sits on, floral prints etc. Not MY choice of décor, but elegant none-the-less. The bathroom is super small, and trying to figure out how to flush the toilet was hell….it took me like 15 minutes to figure it out, as I didn’t want to ask Veronique and face any untold embarrassment. I unpacked, checked my emails on her computer, as I didn’t have a European adaptor for my own, and went to bed. I was exhausted. I’d been up since 10 am EST and didn’t get to bed until 3 or 4 pm EST the next day! Almost 30 hours of being in transit, which, although it sucked, was better than possibly missing one of my connections. Today proved uneventful. Woke up around 2 pm, got dressed, and went out on the town. A little scary. Everyone is so good looking and thin! People were very helpful and nice though, which was good. I also found a “tabac” (Sort of like a 7-11) where they sell international calling cards. I think 1 euro give me one hour of talk time? Not too bad, but Skype will be better and probably cheaper once I have the internet.
Tomorrow might mark the beginning of the stage intensif de Septembre….we’ll see. As of now, I like to pretend that school will not ever start and I’ll just stay in the bed that Veronique made up for me very nicely. One “student” arrives today. He’s a 51 year old Japanese male. One thing though: he’s a professor of English. YES. Thank god. And he’s only here until the end of September when a Canadian male and a Japanese female (both my age) arrive. One can only hope for the best. I’ll keep this updated as best as I can! I miss you ALL and America so much. This is definitely going to be a life changing year, for better or worse!
AU REVOIR MES AMIS,
Elias Mohr
PS- French is coming a lot harder than I thought. It seems the only person I can understand is Veronique, and forming sentences is proving to be extremely difficult around native speakers.
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