Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

By the end of the weekend, Shana and I had utilized every major mode of transportation (well, apart from planes, which was the problem in the first place): train, bus, car, bike, boat, trams, and on foot. I'm just going to comment on the "adventure" it was getting to and back from Belgium this weekend, and I'll save the next post for Brussels and Bruges :)

So our flight was to leave Lyon at 4 pm on Friday afternoon, which would have given us plenty of time to go to class in the morning and take the 1-hour bus ride from Grenoble to the Lyon airport. However, on Thursday night and Friday morning, we were hearing all about the volcano canceling flights, and even though we kept checking our flight status online (which always said "operating"), we wanted to go ahead and get to the airport so if it did get canceled we could get a train or something before everyone else on the same flight did. We skipped class and left Grenoble at 10 am Friday morning. Remember that time. We got to Lyon and immediately went to the EasyJet terminal to see what was up. We kept checking the boards and they all said that the other flights for Brussels (including one 5 minutes after ours) were canceled but that ours wasn't; weird, I know. So the guy told us it wasn't canceled but to come back in 2 hours (since that was our original check-in time) and see. So we went back up to the main part of the airport and had coffees and lunch and just killed time. When we got back to the EasyJet terminal, the boards still said our flight was operating, so we thought we were in the clear. Finally, 1 1/2 hours before we were to leave (after we had been checking it since 6 am the morning before, btw), they told us it was canceled. At this point, Shana and I decided we still wanted to try and go since we had already paid for the hostels and would be getting refunded for our flight. But in order to do so, we had to take a bus to the Lyon train station. We got there amid a huge mess of people and were able to get a train to Brussels through Paris leaving at 5 pm, arriving in Brussels by 11 pm. Now, may I remind you, that every train we arranged, negotiation we made, etc. was at least partly in French until the person switched to English if they spoke it. I don't mean to "toot my own horn," but I'm pretty freaking proud of myself for not only figuring out to get there and back, which you will see was way more complicated than necessary, but to do so in a foreign language. Anyway, we were feeling pretty good because the lady at the SNCF (train) counter was super nice and patient with our French, and we were feeling in the clear as far as getting there at a reasonable time. We got on the train and got to Paris, no problem, but our next train to Brussels required us to go from the Paris Nord station to Paris Gare de Lyon in only 45 minutes, but the nice lady at the ticket counter had assured us that was "suffisant"; luckily my mom had texted me that we just needed to take the RER, so we thought we would be totally fine. What we forgot was that France is in love with strikes. After buying our tickets and standing around for 15 minutes (we weren't the only ones though), we discovered that we weren't actually going to have an RER train to take us to the airport because they were too busy whining about some probably insignificant social matter (for example, in Grenoble they went on strike for pregnant women's rights; don't get me wrong, I think they deserve rights, but they already have the best in Europe if not the world in France. Strikes for them are unnecessary). We already knew we had missed our train but took a taxi from one gare (train station) to the other to see what our next move was; once we got to Paris Gare de Lyon, we looked at the board and saw that the next train to Brussels was at 6 am - 8 hours from then. We talked to the lady at the ticket counter, explaining that the strike (and France) screwed us over, but she was less than sympathetic ("what were you doing for an hour that made you miss your train?") and couldn't do anything but put us on a train in the morning and give us an unhelpful suggestion of where to stay for the night. At this point, Stephanie has yelled so many obscenities about France, trains, the world, volcanoes, etc. (not at anyone though) and simultaneously laughed/cried at the situation we were in. Shana too is upset, but has learned to handle her emotions better haha there were a million hotels by the train station, so we were just going to ask around and try to find a reasonable price (which, for Paris, we expected to be like $150/night). Luckily, we found one for 35/euros per person (about $100/night), that was owned and run by the cutest Frenchman (who thought we were Dutch?). It was a really frustrating situation, having already paid for the hostel for that night and having to pay for another place, but it was hard to be too angry when we were in Paris, which I dreamed of going to for 15 years, and we could see the spotlight from the Eiffel Tower :) the next morning, we got up early to catch our train at 8 after much-needed coffee and breakfast (pain au chocolat!). While huddling for warmth on a heater in the train station, we met some American ex-pats living and teaching in France who had driven back from Morocco; everyone we encountered throughout the weekend had it way worse than we did, so that helped put things into perspective. We were in first class on this train because with the student discount it was cheaper than second class, which didn't offer a student discount; first class? Oh darn ;) but that did mean that we got breakfast, and food is always something good to not have to pay for if you can put some bread or something in a napkin for later, which I did haha the train was only an hour and a half, putting us in the Brussels train station around 9:45 am, almost exactly 24 hours after we left Grenoble the day before. We knew how to get to our hostel from the Brussels Midi station, but we were in the Brussels Nord station, so we "just" needed to take the tram a couple of stops down. Shana and I both had limited amounts of change left, but we had just enough to get our tickets for the metro; unfortunately, we've gotten spoiled with Grenoble being so safe and had kind of gotten absent-minded about pickpockets. Some guy took Shana's wallet out of her bag, and we tried to follow him and get it back, but what can you do? Some (possibly crazy) Belgian lady was telling us to wait for the police so we could get it back, so we waited for like 15 minutes with no police. And then, the weirdest thing of all, the guy brought the wallet back; he had taken the cash, but left the credit cards. So weird. The lady was badgering us to call the cops, but I figured there was nothing they could do since he 1) gave it back and 2) looks like every man walking down the street. Shana needed to call her bank, which wasn't open because it was like 3 am West Coast time, but we still decided to go to the hostel and regroup/use their phone (because I can't call from mine outside of France and Shana's was 1) on low battery and 2) really expensive), however, we no longer had enough change to buy 2 tickets for the metro, and the machine wasn't taking my card or bills (and there are no change machines in Europe even though everything takes nothing but change). After having a little bit of a temper tantrum (this will be a common theme for me throughout the next days. I'm not proud of it, but whatever, I think I'm allowed to be a little upset), we were able to get change for my 5 euro bill (the last cash that I had) to buy our tickets. We got on the train, in such a fluster, and realized we were going the wrong direction. At this point, it was just funny. We got off and ran across the tracks (sorry mom) to the other side; an hour and a half after leaving the one train station, we got to the other haha luckily it was a beautiful day, but more on that later :)
The return trip was significantly less eventful, though it still took a lot of effort to negotiate each leg, and because we had already paid for tickets from Bruges back to Brussels and from Lyon back to Grenoble, we didn't want to pay for those twice, so we had to arrange the trip from Bruges to Grenoble in kind of a weird way. The problem on the way back was with money; Shana had been able to use her card in some places, but for the most part, I was paying for 2 people's tickets and things, plus the hostels, plus the $450 I had already paid for our plane tickets. Because people are assholes and want to make a profit off of others' bad situations, the prices for trains had been jacked up, so we ended up paying to get home what our round trip plane tickets had cost, after already paying more to get to Brussels. It was really stressful, and I still don't relish the thought of how much freaking money I spent this weekend, but I am still glad we went (more on that later too). We took the train from Bruges to Brussels and had to go from Brussels to Paris, again going from one station to the other with the RER. Once we got there, we found employee and made sure there wasn't a freaking strike ("Est-ce qu'il y a une grève aujourd'hui aussi?"), but she was really helpful in helping us go the right way. Once again, Shana had no cash because the ATMs weren't taking her card, and I had cash but no change for the ticket machine, (well, I had enough for one) so we both just ran through the turnstiles on my ticket; normally, I wouldn't condone it, but we had no change and no time to get any, so thank God no one saw us. We got on the RER (which isn't any more impressive when it IS running; that was the hottest, stinkiest public transportation I have ever been on). We did work, navigated the metro, and got to the other gare in plenty of time; once again, I'm proud of us because 3 months ago, I don't know that I could have done that as quickly and efficiently. Or in French. The train from Paris to Lyon was uneventful, but once again, we were at the Lyon train station and our bus tickets back to Grenoble left from the Lyon airport; that meant another ticket to buy and another bus to ride on. One cool thing though was that there were a couple of guys from Turkey (with no option but to rent a car and drive home. Holy crap) who didn't speak French, so I served as a translator between them and the bus driver. I have to say, even though it wasn't perfect, it was a really cool thing to be able to do that. We got back to the airport at 9:35, missing the 9:30 bus and having to wait for the 10:30. At this point, that was just par for the course, so instead of being angry, we took advantage of the airport being nearly empty (because it was shut down) to have a little singing session haha we FINALLY got back to Grenoble at 11:30, and by the time I walked to Victor Hugo, got a taxi, and got home, it was 12:30, meaning it took us 12 hours to get home; not the 24 it took to get there, but 36 hours of travel for a long weekend? Craziness. All in all, it was extremely frustrating and expensive, but I do think we learned a lot, and I am pretty proud of us and of myself for doing as well as we did. And I'm also glad we still decided to go because now we don't have to wonder what could have been :)