My France Trip (June, 2006)

I wrote this story on a piece of paper almost 3 years ago during my first ever vacation in Europe! It was Jun, 2006 and I was working in east Germany as summer intern. I have a lot of wonderful memories from that time.

Places: Koln, Paris, Nice, Monaco, Marseille, Frankfurt
Guys: Sameer, Das, Pushkar and Anupam
Time: June 2006

"I still wonder how lucky you sometimes get. Das called me in the morning and I woke up. Still checking, packing my bag, and thinking that I would be able to reach Jena West station in 23 minutes. It was 4:59 am when I realized I should better be taking the hell out of my room to the station. Walking down the way I realized how far my place was from the station. I was running and walking and still confident that I would make it. Well! I saw buses going in front of me when I realized buses do exist and I could have taken bus directly to Jena West. So habitual of taking a walk to every place I go with the idea to save money that I forgot the buses do exist. I hurried and reached Jena West Station at last and on time. As I was trying to figure out which of the two platforms is my train going to come I saw it coming. So I rushed towards the platform and boarded the train. I faced the ticket checker for the first time. I reached Weimar and took the train for Frankfurt. I was having a printout in hand of my train schedule. I was supposed to reach Frankfurt Flughafen FernBf and it was Frankfurt (main) HBf. So I asked a guy outside and he told me that the other part of the train is gonna go to Flughafen (airport) and so I again rushed towards the other part of the train. After boarding the train I looked around and it seemed first class. So I thought that I will have to come out again and board another bogy. One more guy who boarded was equally scared. It seemed like he also was travelling on DB for the first time. We went to the other side and found the second class. I got out at Flughafen FernBf, looked around for Das and he was there. We went to Cologne together. Cologne turned out to be a very nice place. Cologne Cathedral is just outside the station (Picture to the Left). We took a map from the tourist information center and started walking on the road. The whole city looked kind of empty. Maps are confusing if you are looking at one for the first time. It took me some time to figure out how to use a map. There were just churches, museums and art galleries in the city and nothing else. That’s when I realized that I don’t have anything to see here anymore. After appreciating the architecture of the Cologne Cathedral, the city has nothing more to offer me. We went to one of the art galleries, spent some time looking at weird pictures that had some weird stuff in it that we didn't understand. Anyways, we came out horrified and decided not to visit another art gallery in near future. We went directly to an area close to the train station. We spent quite a long time on the riverside, first on the bridge for road traffic and then on the other bridge for the trains. I took lot of pictures of the beautiful river Rhine before boarding TGV for Paris.

Paris! The fashion capital of the world! How my stay gonna b like? Pushkar and Anupam were waiting for us on the station. They were there since d morning. The first thing he told me is that the place is in mess and people not supporting at all. They won’t speak English with you even if they could. Since we were already late, Pushkar went to search for a room and we (Das and I) started our journey in Metrorail towards Eiffel. It was decided that we (might) meet at the Eiffel Tower, besides one of the four feet. We didn’t have an idea how the metro lines worked, and we boarded the metro. We saw black people all around. It seemed like nobody knew any English. So we reached one station and came out of the other. We again boarded that station and came out of the next. We were not getting how to reach to Eiffel and there was nobody to help us. We were on our own. It was already 8pm and we were getting very late. We then decided to go back where we came from. We took the Metro,  waited for the station from where we started. But rather I saw my train coming out of the ground and it scared the shit out of us. Holding the map in our hands, we tried to understand how the whole metro system works. We talked to a French lady who was standing in the metro. She was really trying to help and so the whole English-French conversation started. We were asking in English and she was responding in French. We finally came out and she showed us the platform which will bring us back. As we boarded the metro again and saw lot of black people again, I lost any hopes from the people out there. It was very scary. With some hope Das asked one of the two white women talking to each other that I didn’t even noticed. She replied in English and it was a happy and satisfying moment after a long time. She explained to us how the whole metro system works. We then started for Eiffel tower, got off at the right station and started walking towards the Eiffel. Das had to pee now. It was really an emergency for him and I was scared of the city. We started looking here and there for some place for Das. Das was ready to pee anywhere and I was telling him to hold on to it. Don’t go for public urination and let French police catch us for that! I convinced him that Eiffel gets lots of visitors. So his problem will be solved there. As we reached Eiffel and looked for the first place it was closed. I was all scared, and Das had an emergency. Both were not in the condition to think anything. Finally we found a place for Das and then we sat down on a bench for a while and took some pictures of Eiffel. I was so scared about where to stay in the night that those ‘taking pictures of Eiffel’ was just a formality. Das was feeling relieved now and not at all scared. He was trying to convince me to stay there overnight to save money and I was suggesting that we should go to Notre Dam and stay there as Sanchit had told me earlier that he stayed the whole night with his professor at Notre Dam. Anyways, we asked a guy and he told us that it’s safe to stay at Eiffel. So we were pretty sure that we were going to stay there at night. We took lot of pictures when they started twinkling lights on Eiffel at 10 pm. It was really a nice experience. I generally asked an Indian street seller who was again and again coming to sell key rings to us about whether Eiffel will be open at night or not. He told that everything will be closed by 1:30 am. Then I enquired about Paris metro and it closes at 12 am! It was the scariest moment ever. Especially when Das was not at all scared, rather confident, that we would spend the whole night on the streets. Paris is obviously not a safe place for that. So I said that I will pay for his hotel stay if he is supportive, and that he was not helping at all. So we asked the same guy about the place where we can stay in the night and he told us to go straight to a place. So we started walking very fast. We met a Chinese looking couple and the woman was very helping. They helped us with the map, showed us one place where we can go and find a cheap hotel. It was very far away from that place. Metro was also about to close. So we started our way towards the metro rail. Then we saw Pushkar and Anupam coming from the other side. The improbable had just happened! We got reunited in such a big city like Paris. God is great, the ultimate reality I guess. Four of us started walking towards the metro again, there was not a lot of time left. Pushkar had to take his bag from the Paris station and then we had to go to the place they had booked for overnight stay. It’s the “Formula One” hotel. We reached the hotel, and got good sleep. Next day we woke up late and went to Notre dam church where we met a group of IITians. Summer students from the IITies are everywhere in Europe, and especially in Germany. We then went to Louvre Museum (Picture of Das and I, in front of The Louvre, to the right) and then to Eiffel where we took a Boat trip on river Seine. The trip was an hour long and we saw most of the important places. After the boat trip, we went up the Eiffel climbing stairs. I really didn’t want to go till second floor just to save money as it’s quite at a height. But three of them wanted to go up taking stairs and save money, so I was left with no option but to take the stairs. We went to the second floor and took lift from there to the top. We spent lot of time on the top. After we got down, Das and I went to Paris Nord station to collect our bags and directly go to Paris Lyon station where we were supposed to take our next train to Nice. Nice is on the Mediterranean coast in southern France. Pushkar and his friend went to see Louvre museum. We met in Paris Lyon again and started our over night journey towards the Mediterranean Coast. Since we all bought the tickets separately, so we got the seats in different bogies. Again I saw mostly black people in the train. We reached Nice early in the morning. Police caught and enquired about us!! The tourist information center in Nice was closed, so we decided to visit Monaco first. It is the second smallest independent state after Vatican. The whole journey from Nice to Monaco was amazing as you see Mediterranean Sea on one side and mountains on the other (Picture of Monaco Monte Carlo train station to the left side). It turned out to be very nice place. No streets lights are required and you can just go on to cross the road anytime you like and cars stopped giving first preference to you. It was totally a different experience for me. In Germany it is mostly streetlights everywhere and people follow the rules properly. So people will cross the road only when the light is green even if there is no car on the road. We went to the castle on top of the mountain and took lot of pictures. We returned to Nice and police caught us again. They were looking into the visa with lens and talking to each other in French. They then took us to the post and we were waiting outside when they were inside with our passports. We showed our university identity cards from IITies as well as our host German universities. They also took it and went inside. Finally they came out and let us go. We were four people, so I was not at all scared this time. Das told that he was!! The tourist information center was open by that time. We instinctively headed towards the beach. We really had a great time on the beach. Nice is famous for nude beaches and so we all were kind of excited but it was quite rainy that day and so not a lot of people were around. We were lethargic about visiting larger part of the sea coast at the time, so we just stayed at one place and took a dip into the Mediterranean waters. We returned to the station early and waited quite a long time on the station for our train to Marseille, which was supposed to be a very old town. Pushkar and his friend stayed back in Nice. Marseille was bit like Mumbai. It was indeed very old town and no feeling of beautiful Europe. We just took the map from the information center and started walking down the hill to visit a few places. We went to the sea coast and watched street performance by red Indians (Picture to the right). The funny thing about Marseille is that people don’t follow street lights! Nobody even look at the streetlight I guess. We took the train for Strasburg from Marseille and spent about an hour in Strasburg. From Strasburg we took train for Frankfurt and stayed there for quite a long time. We went to the airport first to get the information about tax free shopping. We then visited the new FIFA football stadium which was closed for tourists for security reasons. Our eurail pass included the local S bahn (local metro rail) as well. So we went to the main shopping area of the city and then headed for the old city. Their was a screen in the middle of the river and people were watching the football match on both sides of the river. Hey! When I entered Germany from France, I felt like coming back home as my French experience didn’t go so well. Das and I took trains for our respective destinations after that. I traveled a lot in those 3-4 days and got an idea of those places. Although I guess it requires some quality time if you want to know any place."