Living like a nomad
It was my first travelling through Europe on my own. the last time i had been there, i was a child, staying safely in nice hotels and eating good food at proper restaurants with my family. the idea of staying at hostels and living like a nomad was new to me, so you could say i was a bit nervous about some things. back in the states, i had made friends with a french boy that was attending my university for a year. he was back in France now and the idea was that i’d stay with him as long as i wanted to. we were supposed to meet in PAris.After about 10 days in London and significantly less money in my pocket, i decided to move on to the second stop in my trip. no matter how much i’d call or email him, i got no response, so i simply decided to go to Paris and see what happens. i arrived and booked into a hostel. after some repeated attempts, i finally got him on the phone. turns out he wasn’t even in Paris but in the south of France, in the town of names, his parent’s home. he told me he’d be back in pairs by the end of the summer, near the end of my trip and show me the city then. in the meantime, he invited me to come to names and stay with his family. i said, “ok”.
That very day i go to the train station and find a train for names. the trains about to leave and i can’t reach him on his mobile, so i leave a message saying, “i’m in arriving in names later tonight, hope you get this and can pick me up.”
so here i am in nimes a few hour later, around 10pm. as soon as i get off the train and step out of the station, they lock the doors and close the place down. within minutes, there’s no one even in the vicinity of the station. and there’s no sign of my friend either. i find a payphone near the door and try to make a phone call. for those of you who’ve never tried using a payphone in France, let me inform you that most phones don’t except change, only the infamous France telecom card, which you have to buy in special places. the France telecom card was to be the bane of my existence in France. and on this occasion, it let me down beautifully. i placed the card in the phone and find that i have exactly zero credit left. ok, so i have no mobile phone, no phonecard, no train station, and no friend anywhere in sight. i thought about finding a bus or the metro. nimes is a small town: no metro, bus closes at 10pm. no transportation either. no address of my friend’s place either, just a random phone number that had worked for me only once in the whole of my trip.
so i set off into the night, leaving the station with my bags and hoping to find a sympathetic stranger. i don’t speak a word of french and every small-town person i came across spoke next to no english. i was trying to ask my way around but i had no idea where i was going. that made the language barrier even more difficult.
so that’s where the story begins: being lost in nimes and having to make something of the situation. times like these you have to get a little creative. somehow i found an internet point and began to seek refuge in the internet, which can be like a home away from at times like these. i had two pieces of information, my friend’s phone number and his name. with a little bit of detective work, i found his address online. and after that, the worst imaginable map of nimes. i printed the map and address and set off again.
nimes was once a roman city. in fact, it’s the only city in france to have complete roman ruins, barely touched by time. it makes for some beautiful architechture but also some very small and confusing roads. i found myself in a town that was completely empty and dark, fumbling with a terrible map and trying to make it from one street to the next. many times i had to stop, go back and start over again from a certain point. i hadn’t eaten in since the morning, so the intense hunger pains i was experiencing made it difficult to think straight. many times i thought i’d sleep on the street that night. oh well, at least the weather was nice.
three hours of roaming through this not-so-small village and finally i seem to be close to my destination. but there’s one major problem: i’ve come upon the residential neighborhood where my friend’s family resides and it’s a bunch of tiny streets. my wonderful map didn’t bother to mention the names of any of those streets, just squiggly lines on my piece of paper. so i do nothing: just stand next to the road with my stomach growling, my head pounding, and my eyes glazing over. without the energy to decide to give up, i give up by default.
like a miracle, the only car i’ve seen in an hour appears from the dark. i hear honking and the distinct sound of my friend’s voice from the driver’s side window. he stops the car near where i’m standing and the first things he shouts is, “how did you get here?” i just smile and shrug. he tells me he just got my message: he’d been away at the beach all day.
so he takes me to his family’s home, treats to me to a late-night snack and shows me my bed. the next few days in nimes are amazing: a nice comfortable home, endless generosity, french food and time with nice people. but within days, i’m itching to get back out there again, alone, to see what crazy challenges lay ahead.
