the traveler's journal: a semi pointless story about a train ride to paris and other paris related thangs.

so i'm currently sitting in the lobby of a hostel in paris, sucking up more than my fair share of free wifi, while a french version of "you'll be in my heart," by phil colins plays over the radio (those are definitely words i never thought i'd say). it's only 8:05 PM but i'm already to throw in the towel and call it a night. want to know why? ok:
so yesterday me and marissa caught an 8:30 PM train from innsbruck to munich. apparently our train was having difficulties though, because it was fifteen minutes late, giving us a slight heart attack and only twenty minutes to get to our connecting train in munich. that was the second most stressful train ride of my life (the first being the one from zurich to innsbruck, as a sleep deprived maria wasn't even sure she was on the right train, or that anyone would be there in the end to meet her because her train was an hour late, or that she'd even be awake to get off at her stop because she keep falling asleep every time she blinked. also, where did that third person talking come from? weird.) we pulled into the munich station with 2 minutes to spare before our next train was scheduled to take off, prompting the first step off the train to be the first step of a fun little run through the munich train station from platform 14 to 23.

we ended up making it though, miraculously enough, and then spent the next 13 hours sitting in a compartment with two other people as the temperature went from freezing to boiling multiple times as the train stopped every half an hour for the first two hours.

actual serious story time: so when i first told everyone that i was studying abroad multiple people felt the need to share scary travel stories that either they'd experienced, or that they'd seen on tv (yes people, i've seen taken, thank you for your concern). one such story was told to me by my mom, who had heard it from her friend who studied abroad 15 years ago in europe, and it goes a little something like this: 


so they were traveling via night rail to italy and the conductor of the train would go into each compartment after the people inside had fallen asleep, and he would spray "this stuff" to make everyone fall into a super deep sleep so he could later go through their stuff and take what he wanted without anyone knowing. no worries the story ends happily, as my mother's friend stayed up and watched over everyone's bags and when the conductor came into their cabin she yelled at him and scared him away. and everyone lived happily ever after.

now time for my story: at about 2:30 AM we were stopping for a while to cut the train in half or something because half of us were heading to paris and the other half of us were heading to amsterdam. everyone in my cabin was asleep, except for me because the room had gone from boiling lava hot to freezing again, when the cabin door opened and a dude in an official looking, maybe conductor?, train suit came in and started poking around near the lady who was sleeping across from us. i groggily looked over at him and he shortly left the room. i was then able to fall asleep for a little while longer until i heard the door open again. when i saw that it was the same conductor man i sat up this time and made sure he knew i was awake. he made eye contact with me and either kissed two of his fingers or put a finger to his lips in a "shhh" fashion, i didn't have my glasses on so i can't be sure, winked and then left. i wasn't inclined to believe my mom's horror conductor story before... but now... i dunno.

for most of the train ride, the song train song by feist and ben gibbard was stuck in my head. slightly annoying. also, i had a dream that the hostel we stayed at served us pickled and cooked bat for breakfast. woke up from that one with a bad taste in my mouth. ah bah dun dun tch!

wow, now that i've taken a million, long winded paragraphs to tell you about half of our journey i'll sum up the rest as quickly as possible.
we arrived in paris at about 10:30, as previously said, and immediately set out to find us a cheap hostel. after walking in the completely wrong direction for... a while, we arrived at the hostel "vintage" at 11:30. the nice man at the front desk took our bags and told us our room wouldn't be ready until 4. he didn't send us on our way before taking our payment, a sweet 124 euros for 4 nights, and giving us a map with circled destinations on it. we set out to discover as much of paris as we could by foot, which turns out wasn't very much. guys, this place is huge. we saw a church that has had someone inside it constantly praying from the time it was built, 125 years ago. i could even point out and name some of the classicizing features of the church, take that last semester's art history class! i wanted so badly to take pictures of the inside of the church but it was strictly prohibited, and i didn't feel like getting kicked out of paris on my first day here, so i settled with pictures of the outside of the church instead. i don't really want to edit all the pictures i've taken today yet, which admittedly aren't all that much, but i'll give you at least one picture of the church. oh! i totally forgot to mention, we ran into a lady from dallas on our way to the church. she was in paris all by herself and she was rather chatty and slightly motherly, which was nice. anyway, that nice lady decided me and marissa really needed a picture in front of the fancy pants cathedral, so she attempted to use my camera to take one. and the picture on the left is the result (after a lot of editing to lighten it up) of that. ha.

after the church we went on a fun little walk to visit one of the mystery circles on our map. turns out our destination took us through the... adult part of town. that was an adventure, to say the least. 

we came back and checked into our rooms after that and then wandered around town some more, stopping for food a time or two. can i just say the food here is divine? i walk past bakeries and am immediately filled with the desire to eat everything my eyes see (ha, i say that like it's any different from the rest of my life, but you get the idea.)

so far i've had a quiche, the best lemon pie thing ever, and a variety of a nutella candy bar. it's a good thing that i'm spending half of my days walking or i'm pretty sure i'd end up coming home fat. 

well, it's now almost 10 PM. i think that's a long enough novel for you guys to read for tonight (although i'm pretty sure my mom is the only person who would have gotten this far. mom, you're a trooper). 

until tomorrow,  tschüss!