Vientiane, 2015

My last bus ride in Laos was from Luang Prabang to Vientiane, for my flight home. I had no more time to break up the journey in Vang Vieng. I had booked a morning VIP bus ticket and surprisingly, the pickup came earlier than scheduled. I asked the driver for 2 minutes and ran back to the dorm to bid farewell to Park, who was also getting ready to check-out and travel to a rural area to visit his friend’s friend. Then I was on my way to the bus terminal for my whopping >10hrs bus ride. My fellow commuters and I were pretty amused by the VIP bus. It certainly didn’t look like it was for VIP, but there was a cool crack on the front-screen. We went into full-fledged tourist mode and took photos of it. Anyway, we were early and there was nothing more exciting to do.

Zurich for a few hours, 2015

I arrived in Zurich slight past noon via the train. While preparing for the trip, I had asked a Swiss ultimate-frisbee friend M for some info about Zurich. At some point, I mentioned that it was hard to find a hostel in the central, and it was expensive too. He very kindly linked me up with his cousin J who offered me his couch for a night. Not wanting to trouble him, and being very stubborn, I kind of insisted on making my own way to his shared apartment. But he would only be home from work at about 6.30pm, so I had a few hours to explore Zurich with Robin (my backpack) before that. My bus to Munich, Germany was in the next morning, so it was really less than 24 hours in Zurich. I had intentionally inserted the oddly short stopover in my schedule to avoid reaching Munich at night, which was what the other routes available would have gotten me.

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Lyon, France 2015

Théâtre romain de Fourvière

Being back at the SNCF train station reminded me of my train (mis)adventures in 2014. The very first time I took the SNCF (from Paris to Perpignan), not only was I in someone else’s seat, I was also in the wrong train. I was at the right track, but I didn’t know that there could be more than one train on the same track for departure. After the very forgiving French grandpa, whose seat I’ve warmed, explained the situation to me peppered with many “mais attention” (but be careful), I glanced at my watch and with only one minute to spare, I raced out of the train to the right one ahead, on the same track. An SNCF staff cheered me on “vite, vite, vite” (quick) as my jeans threatened to slip off my hips. All that leisure running back home was put to good use. I managed to jump into the right cabin just in time but with my luck, the train terminated prematurely at Montpellier due to some flood ahead and I ended up getting stuck there for hours and missing my connecting train to Barcelona. Thankfully, I also met a bunch of people who helped me along the way, from translating, to offering directions, and inviting me to tag along with them.  The train ride to Lyon in 2015, in comparison, was uneventful and tranquil. The 2.4 hrs passed by quickly as I enjoyed my chocolate biscuit and my book in the first class cabin. Soon, I was in Lyon – the 3rd largest city in France.

Paris, France 2015

There’s something about bridges and rivers.

I returned to Paris in 2015, again, in autumn. I had 2 days there and the only reason was because it was a lot cheaper to fly into Paris than directly to Lyon. One year on, I felt more confident in general, as a human, although my French wasn’t much better. It was a much needed break. I had been spending too much time questioning the meaning of life…actually, I still do. When I stepped into the arrival hall, there was an odd sense of familiarity amidst the foreignness. Je suis retournée. It was too early to check in to my airbnb, so I booked a ticket to Château de Versailles with my phone in the airport and made my way to the RER. At the metro station, I spoke my first french sentence. Unfortunately, it was nothing like what I would have liked it to be. A man came to me and asked something which I couldn’t register, and my reflex response was “pardon, mais je parle pas francais” (sorry, but I don’t speak french). I could see Manu (my french prof) shaking his head in disappointment. The man wasn’t convinced “Mais vous parlez bien francais!” (but you are speaking french well). Of course it must have sounded good – it was a sentence that I have said so many times before. I could only give him a sheepish apologetic look and busied myself with train schedule showing on the announcement screen.