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Published: March 9th 2006
OK, here's another one to send your hair grey. (Man I'm going to regret being so honest with everybody one day! :P)
It's 1:50am and I've just arrived at my Couch-Surfing destination for the next few days courtesy of a guy named Stephane. It's a great old shop that's been converted into a flat and it's completely decked out exclusively for couch-surfers! Including this computer and a FREE international phone!!??!?) Getting here, however proved to be more difficult than expected.
After jumping a bus from the airport, which turned out to be a good 100k's away from Paris, I managed to mistake several power poles for the Eiffel Tower and a wheat silo for the Arc de Triomphe before actually getting into town. Once again being spat out onto the cold, wet streets of an unfamiliar place (it's happened to me so many times, the whole process actually does seem familiar after a while!) I started looking around for the nearest tube station, if anything to get out of the rain.
My determined wandering in a random direction seemed to attract the attention of a group of Polish ladies from the bus nearby and they started following close behind, even after it became apparent that I had no clue where I was going. After asking directions, we were escorted in French by a Nike hoody-wearing, slightly chavvish-looking individual to the turnstiles of the nearest tube station, at which he demonstrated how to jump over them and hold the boom-gate for the next person! Being a "man of morals and law-abiding citizenship" (but mostly just a wuss) I hesitated and stood back in protest, thinking the Polish ladies would do the same. The next thing I knew, a leather handbag and a spiky high-heel sailed past my eyes as one of them made the bloody jump over! This was followed by five massive suitcases and four more high-heeled ladies, so after that performance I just thought 'bugger it' and jumped over as well.
After a nattering ten minutes in Ponglish (my new word for the language you get when you try to combine English with Polish) about where we all had to go next, we were eventually told that we were, in fact on the wrong line and had to go out the way we came and up over to the the next one. We repeated the whole show again (where the station guards were, I have no idea!) and went off to find somewhere to BUY tickets. On the way I found a ticket laying on the ground which turned out to be valid, so I still couldn't tell you the price of a ticked on the Paris underground!
I managed to shake the crazy Poles and took my train to the address Stephane had given me. It was only about 9pm when I got there, and he'd told me that didn't finish work until 11:00, so I killed time in the neighborhood for a while. As it was still bitter cold and drizzling outside, I tried taking refuge in a cafe that was still open, but it turned out they only let me drink my coffee at the bar and then promptly kicked me out! (it could have been due my 'homeless hobo' appearance, but then that was about to come into it's own very shortly!) I went back to the tube station and played music on Lila for a while, until a head popped out of a door and told me to go away. I then migrated to a bus shelter, which didn't have nearly as good acoustics!
Still, I had fun by myself for about a couple of hours singing and playing ukulele out of the rain on the (strangely-deserted) Parisian street as the occasional passer-by would smile or give me strange looks. After a while though, it started getting cold, and seeing as it was 11:15, I decided Stephane might be home by now so I trudged up the road to the building number he'd given me. All there was on the outside was a big ominous door with no sign of a doorbell, so after pounding on it a few times without a response, I got the attention of the people on the first floor by waving my arms about wildly over the road. It turned out they didn't know Stephane (good ol' neighborly spirit eh?) and therefore didn't like me, so that was the end of that. After racking my brain over what to do next, I managed to woo a girl enough to use her phone to give him a call, but after getting the answering machine twice, I figured he just wasn't there, so all I could do was leave my number and...er... wait! By then it was about 12:30 and I managed to stop another passer-by and repeat the process, which resulted in the same thing. At that point, I gave up and wandered up the street to an unfinished apartment building where I crept inside and made a bed out of a roll of insulation and all of my clothes. I felt strangely stoic about the fact that I was at that moment homeless in Paris with nowhere to go, but I was actually just thankful that I was still warm (and had quite a comfortable matress!). I set my alarm for 6:30- (hoping that would be early enough to get out before the buiders arrived!) and was just drifting off when I received a message! I bolted outside and down the street to see Stephane walking towards me wondering where the hell I was. He'd been late home from work. And judging from the abovementoned events, our communication hadn't been all that crash-hot.
But there you go, half an hour of seeing what it's like to be homeless in a strange land and then rescued at the last minute. How lucky is that!?
...I will now take this opportunity to apologise to my family for telling that story! 😊
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Faasha
non-member comment
Hee hee ho ho ha ha
Actually I must be becoming hardened to your misadventurous life. I actually laughed heartily, (probably knowing you're safe and sound, for now).What about trying maps? They're really useful things, they have lines ,circles arrows ,street names etc ,which can give you all sorts of info you may need. Love you lots (Take care) Dad