The cheap hotel in which we decided to spend our first night was surprisingly comfortable and clean. The blankets were warm and beds were soft and after the whole day of traveling and a nice evening walk along the river we were quite tired, so I expected that we would spend the rest of the night sleeping really, really tight.
Naïf!
In the middle of the night I woke up, shaking uncontrollably all over my body, and with terrible convulsions in my intestines. I got up in the quietest possible way not to wake up my roommates and sneaked to the bathroom.
Naïf deux fois!
After almost half an hour of my being there, Katie knocked gently on the door saying:”Girlie, are you all right? Can I assist you somehow?” Typical Katie, nice and caring, empathetic and always ready to help… She couldn’t sleep as well, but she swore that my being noisy was not the reason. I assured her that I would fight my intestines on my own and both of us tried to get some sleep after that.
The next morning we went to the nearest pharmacy and thanks to asking not for something “against diarrhoea” but “contre diarrhée” (makes a great difference!), I got some pills which enabled me to survive the morning walk to the city centre without further disasters.
The weather forecast for the town said that it would be
I was surprised several years ago that most of the shops and offices in our capital city open at 9 am at soonest, which is more than a hour later than in my home town, but in this French town everything (except for Mc Donald’s and a small café) was closed until 10 or 10.30 am. The first part of our walk led therefore to this café and as the majority of the churches and sights were closed as well, we spent the rest of the morning in bookshops (me), jewelries (Katie), stationeries (both of us), narrow streets and all means of transport imaginable.
Back in the hotel, our first steps led to the bathrooms, so that we could change into warmer and drier clothes. After that, I decided to use the toilet for one more reason and Katie told me that they would wait for me in front of the hotel. “Take your time,” Katie said, remembering my midnight adventure. “Our train to the mountains is leaving in an hour, no need to hurry.”
Have I mentioned that I am a claustrophobic person? It took my parents some time to teach me to lock myself in such tiny spaces as toilets…but now that I am an adult I have learned to overcome my fears to a certain level, so I locked the door this time as well.
Faute d'écolier!
When I tried to get out, the door stayed locked and my nightmare came true. I got stuck, there was nobody outside, no way out, no window, no plastic barrier that I could have climbed over, just me, three solid walls and one wooden door.
Merde!
Luckily, the years spent at the university have learned me more than how not to write essays. They have also taught me the essential rule of surviving: “Don’t panic!“
I still had my cell phone with me –“I will call Katie, she will call the maintenance man and with a little bit of luck we will still catch our train” – these were my thoughts for several hopeful seconds.
Naïf trois fois!
Soon I realized that there was no signal, as the room was underground and three long corridors far from the reception. The strange thing is, that in really hopeless situations, such as car accidents or being stuck underground in a foreign country, I don’t get hysterical (unlike when writing essays or climbing mostly harmless rocks), so when I started kicking the door and shouting for help in three different languages, my voice was not very loud or high-pitched.
Fortunately, the French are “aimant la propreté“. Not because of my shouting, but because of his regular shift the cleaning man (!) came and told me something in French which I did not understand, but I gave my last energy to the sentences “Je ne comprends pas bien” (thanks, dear teacher, for that first and only French lesson in my life) and “Appelez-moi la camarade – en plein air” (thanks, dear cheap socialistic dictionary in my handbag).
In a few minutes, Katie came, laughing like mad (I don’t know whether it was relief that we would catch the train after all or despair that she have decided to invite ME for this holiday), and told me that the man would bring his screwdriver and free me soon. Well, the repair was really rapid, thanks, golden French hands, and then finally we took the tram to take the bus to take the train to see Katie’s father and siblings three hours later.
Then we kissed each other on both cheeks, put three pieces of luggage and six people in a car and continued with a fourty minutes drive on a very narrow, steep and twisting road “into the wild”.
As all of us girls were feeling sick, we started an “esperantish” (anglo-french-dutch-slavonic) conversation about how we were going to watch the Perseids and the Moon eclipse, as at such a lonely place the conditions should be perfect. Yet Simon, Katie’s brother, softened our enthusiasm: „many clouds-you see shit“, which reminded us that the weather forecast for the mountains was "rain all the week long". Yet for the second time, the weather forecast was not accurate, luckily this time.
In the evening, I was standing on a terrace of a wonderful wooden-stone mountain house, breathing the most wonderful cold air imaginable, watching the clouds above the mountain range… and suddenly, a small rift appeared between the clouds and against the perfect dark blue sky behind them I saw a small miracle. “Star…” whispered Simon, who appeared behind my back just as unexpectedly. “L’etoilette“, whispered I at the same moment and didn’t care how silly it sounded. I was happy.
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