A learning curve

4th - 8th of June 2016
Paris

I had been in Paris for a few days now and I had seen the Eiffel Tower, there wasn't really much else for me in Paris as it was just a stop off along the route of a bigger journey. I guess I'm not a huge art fan nor am I really interested by grand architecture,

don't get me wrong I can find pleasure in seeing these things but it's nothing more than a momentary feeling that I don't get much desire to revisit.

So Paris was beautiful, the old buildings that I had seen where different to the old buildings in London. There was a beautiful charm about them, I liked the way the buildings curved on the corners and how every window seems to have a false balcony.

I liked the height of the buildings and detail that was hidden on the outer walls of not just the grand buildings but of some of the less important residential buildings.

But I had seen that and I was moving to another hostel in Paris only because I really had left things too late to arrange trains to another town/city. So on the morning of the 4th of June after checking out of the hostel at 10h00 I sat in the bar below the hostel planning my route out of Paris.
          The path I wanted to travel was pretty clear, I wanted to go south closer to the Alps and Italy so I chose this place along the way called Dijon, like the mustard (Although the region is more famous for its red wine). It was quite hard to find a hostel for less than Paris price, but there was an app I had seen the night before called Airbnb so I started searching for places to stay on that. For anyone who's not familiar with it, it's an app that lets people advertise spare rooms in their apartment for short term rental. I have even come across people who have basically started their own hostels on there and are renting out six bed shared dorms etc. It's great and I had found somewhere that looked really nice and clean for a decent price, so I contacted the host and within a few minutes she had replied confirming she could accommodate me for the dates I'd requested. "Great!" I thought, "this is going smoother than I had expected" I then looked up how to get there on my Interrail pass and within minutes I had found a train that I did not need to make a reservation to use. 
          I left the bar and started walking towards St. Christopher's Inn, it was easy to find once you've found the canal. Just follow the canal north on the left hand side and you will get there eventually. Once I had checked in and found my dorm I realised that I had not ate since breakfast and it was now two o'clock, so me and two other people from my dorm went in search of a supermarket. We bought food and ate it back at the hostel, the two people I had met where from Washington state and Hong Kong and seemed pretty cool so I was happy with the dorm I was staying in. 

            After eating the other two had some downtime, planning their routes and their next hostels and I went to use the toilet. Up until this point I had been wearing a wallet strapped to my waist underneath my clothes, it had all of my cash, my credit and debit cards, my new phone and my passport in it. It was pretty valuable to me. In fact it was more valuable than anything else I had packed. But in order to do what I needed to do I had to take it off, so I did... and I left it in there. In the toilet cubical, like a twat. Like the biggest twat you had ever seen. I mean who's that stupid right? But I did it and that was that. Ten minutes later I had realised what I had done and ran like hell back to the cubical I had been in only to find that it had been taken, the whole thing. I searched everywhere where my passport might have been dumped, I even went through bins, behind the toilets, looked through windows onto balconies that you can't access and knocked on everyone's door. I left a note on the door close to the bathrooms asking for them to return the passport to reception or just to dump it and keep everything else. I got onto Facebook messenger to my mum and told her the news she had properly been expecting. She canceled all of my cards and I filled out my lost passport form. 
      I was feeling pretty low right now, basically like I had failed my travels already and I never said it nor acted on it but I wanted to go home and just cut my losses there. I would have felt better if someone had pick-pocketed it or mugged me, instead of just loosing it out of carelessness. But it had happened and I had gone through the shame of telling my parents and my friends, they all said they felt sorry for me but I could tell they where thinking I should have been more careful which was right. The worst thing was my Russian visa was attached to a page in my passport, I hope the person who took it saw the visa and felt really bad. The time and effort that was involved in getting that visa, and it would be completely useless to them. Money means nothing really, I can get one hundred euros back with no effort. But getting that visa back, How do I do that? I stopped thinking about that, talked to my mum for a while and went to sleep.
             I woke up early, had my free breakfast at the hostel and left for the police station. I got in because the guard spoke a little English and I had my drivers licence on me to prove who I was. Once I was in there I approached the lady on the desk and said "bonjour, parles-tu Anglais" she said "non" I started cursing myself in my head for never listening in my French lessons at school. Lucky for me there was a man behind me who spoke great English and offered to be my translator, he told the lady what I had told him and she gave me a report to write my name, date of birth, etc on. I thanked the man roughly 50 times and walked out, it's true that the French speak better English than we speak French and the kindness of that man for seeing my situation and helping me restored a little bit of faith I had lost in humanity. 
      I went back to the dorm and everyone else was just waking up, I started speaking to the guy in the bunk below me and we agreed to go out sightseeing together.

This helped take my mind off things a little bit and it was good getting to know him, he was from Boston, was on a gap year and had been working for the past 9 months at a ski resort in Michigan.

He was going to start at an Ivy League school in the states and he seemed to think England and France where the epitome of culture and high society and Europe was superior to the U.S. because obese, language intolerant, celebrity worshiping, Donald trump voters plagued his country.

That last one is right, Donald trump is doing pretty well for some reason :S. But overall I think he had a bad case of 'the grass is always greener on the other side' it sounded as though his parents held France and European culture in high respect and he grew up believing that us Europeans are a step above everyone else, which is defiantly not true.


             The weekend past and on Monday I attempted to find the British embassy, I found it after hours of searching only to find out I needed to go to the consular office which was a five minute walk away but was hidden away in a row of buildings that looked exactly the same. I found it, again after an hour of searching only to find that it closed at 12H30 which meant I was 30 minutes late. I went back again on Tuesday, handed in my lost passport form and they told me they can do nothing to help me apply for a new passport apart from tell me the web address i need to use to apply for a new one. Thank you (not so) great Britain, I can see you really go out of your way to help your citizens in a time of need, that's not fair it was my fault and I should fix it. Anyway I applied online, got my countersignature signed and posted it the next day. 
           I should of paid more attention to French lessons, this whole process would have been a lot easier. Maybe I'll learn another language, maybe I'm just saying that because I feel guilty that I relied on other people. But over the course of all this I learnt that the metro system in Paris is very easy to use, it's clearly labelled and the ticket machines that translate everything so people like me can use them are great. That Paris is much bigger than it looks on a map and that the British government couldn't give a damn about me. I learnt what to do if your passport is ever stolen and that U.S. and Chinese tourists are two for the penny in Paris. I think I can consider this a learning curve, which should benefit me in the long run.

My first days of independence

1st - 3rd of June 2016
Paris

I woke up on the morning of my first travel day not really thinking anything of it, it was just a normal day, there were no feelings of excitement nor were there any butterflies of uncertainty. I started my daily routine as I would, I made my breakfast at a leisurely pace and followed that up by making myself a coffee and watching YouTube videos for an hour before I finally started my workout... That normal routine that I hadn't been able to change for the last month.
           However two hours before the train from my home town to London was due to depart I started to think "maybe I should finish packing all of my final essentials" I quickly decided this was a good idea and got to it! Lucky for me I had been packing things in my bag as I thought of them for the last two weeks. One hour before my train was due to depart I had finished, double and triple checked everything and I was confident all was in order so I went downstairs to make myself a coffee and to relax.
          25 minutes before my train was due to leave and five minutes before my lift to the train station left I realised I had no earphones in my pocket. This was a disaster, I had some in my bag but they where tucked right in the bottom portion underneath all of my clothes! So I ran upstairs and began turning my room over looking for them, only for my efforts to be in vein. It was now 15 minutes before my train left and I had begrudgingly admitted defeat, my mum was in the car with the engine running and my dad was outside with her smoking a cigarette. I got into the car and waved my dad good bye, he didn't cry or show too much emotion but there was a look in his eye that I could see he was sad to see me leave. I arrived at the train station, hauled the weight of another person onto my back (in the form of a backpack), waved my mum goodbye, and ran to the platform. Luckily my train was late, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's ever caught a train in England before.

       I left for Paris from London St Pancras. It was a typically grey, wet and windy day in London and actually was the same in Paris. I found my hostel with relative ease and got some rest. I started the next day early, eager to explore Paris. This was the week the river seine had burst its banks, flooding the market stalls and parks below street level.

As I walked along the river I could see french news reporters and international news reporters all along the bank of the river talking about the dramatic rain fall that had occurred in the last few days and the repercussions of it. It looked horrible for anyone who's business or livelihood was effected by this freak rainfall, but it was intriguing to watch the river seine in flow of full force. I walked for what seemed to be forever, passing grand chapels, government buildings and stunning bridges before finally reaching the Eiffel Tower.

It was also the week before the European football tournament was to begin so the French authorities had hung a giant football between the legs of the Eiffel Tower.

              The land around the Eiffel Tower was mostly occupied by African immigrants selling Eiffel Tower key rings and more African men trying to tie string around your finger so you will pay them to let you leave. On my way to finding a spot to eat my lunch I encountered a man who asked where I was from in two different languages before asking me if he could tie his string around my finger, I said no and walked away. I ate my lunch away from everyone and on the way back towards the Eiffel Tower he asked again and somehow managed to get the string around my finger, I told him I was leaving two - three times before I got away and when I did he told me I was disrespecting him. The sight seeing portion of my day was good but I was tired so I decided to make the long trek back to my room.
        On my way back to the hostel I took a wrong turn and what should have been only 20 minutes of walking back to the hostel turned into two hours of walking down streets and back up them, I don't think I was ever more than 30 minutes away from the hostel. I arrived back at my room, had a shower and slept.
            I was now on day three and had no accommodation planed past this night, this worried me a little bit and it suddenly sunk home that I have to look after myself and this meant not being thrown out on the street with nowhere to stay. I spent most of the day in the hostel looking for hostels that where a little less money than the one I was staying in, which was £53.90 for two nights. I think that's outrageous for a hostel that doesn't let you cook your own food, or even eat prepackaged food on site. So I found one a little further north of where I currently was, it was in a great location just along the canal and was reasonably priced at £22 per night called St. Christopher's inn.

I made a trip to the supermarket for food and water, ate and slept feeling as though I had accomplished a great deal towards my independence.