In spite of Beat
Beat had it all planned out for us. Yet, in spite of his overwhelming competence and unprecedented levels of hungness, we managed to screw ourselves over once more.
We took a train to Mulhouse, at which point we had a 40 minute layover before the connecting train to Montpelier. Only seconds after leaving the train, “O shit; I left the phone in the train.” We rush for assistance, and they are quite helpful.
They call the phone, the terminus of the train, and even the janitor aboard the train, but all to no avail. Recovering an International Blackberry from the seat of a train filled with people was a bleak proposition from the get go. As these efforts were being made, time pressed closer and closer to our connecting train’s departure, but Ben refused to leave without some closure on the phone issue.
We agreed that I would leave him in Mullhouse with the plan being for him to take a later train. Only there was none, which I found out eight hours later in Montpellier at the cybercafé. I booked myself a single for the first time in all of our trip to Europe.
Fortunately, my solitude was offset by a friend that I made on the train ride, a student of poli. sci. who helped me to understand the French announcements made by the conductors.
She helped me land in Montpelier around 7:30 then gave me her number for us to chill with her Croatian friends later that night. Around 10:00 we met up on the train platform where her Croatian friends pulled in to. It was six of us; we first dropped their stuff off in their hotel, chilled a while while they got ready, then caroused the town with store bought liquor until the late morning.
I was very pleased to have made so many friends in Montpellier, having been concerned when Ben and I separated that we’d be bored. Around 3 in the morning or so they ran in to trouble sneaking the whole group upstairs in to a double under the watchful eye of the hotel doorman.
It’s beyond me why another teenager would care if a bunch of budget travelers pile in to one room together. I can only invoke Lev’s rule of inverse importance yet again: the less important the job, the more seriously the employee takes it. They asked if one of them could stay with me, which dissolved awkwardly when they asked me to choose, I refusing to take part in such a demeaning and awkward spectacle. In the end they paid a little more for a three person room and I crashed in the hotel room with the TV on so that I would wake up in time for this morning’s train.
At 6:15 I spontaneously rise and walk doanstairs to find the time, because my accomodations room did not include a clock. I discovered from MTV that it was 6:15 so I made my way over to the station, where Ben and I planned to meet at 7:00. I’m early, so I look for Ben a while then begin to worry that his train never came through. Getting a croissant upstairs, I see him chilling with his guitar; and so we were back together again.
The celebration was cut short when we saw that we needed a reservation for the 7:20 train to Barcelona and that it was full, forcing us to wait until 11:30 for one that only requires a Eurail pass. So, bleary-eyed and shabby, I’m in the cyber café killing some time before we can FINALLY hit up Espana.
