Alright so after the France excursion with the program, I stayed in Paris with a good portion of the program. That week was pretty rushed at times, with little time for free exploration, so the opportunity to view France ourselves was nice.
On the first night on our own, I made the discovery that my hostel was never booked. Well, the receptionist at the hostel made the discovery. At this point, I’m just... why. Ana saw me book it on her laptop. Anyway, I never got charged for it so I just bought the room on the day of (not too much more expensive, thankfully) and ended up in a room with almost no one from the program. Adriana ended up in the same room though, so I’m happy we were still together.
On one of the days, I spent the first part of the day just relaxing around Paris on my own, going to a garden and seeing some sights. Some people were going to a book store I figured “ehh might be nice to just look inside for a few minutes”. I should have learned my lesson with the bookstore in Vienna. I ended up looking throughout the whole store and loving the atmosphere. 2/3rds in, I found the science section and all hope was lost. I found a bunch of books that really interested me and wanted to take pictures of all of them so I could remember the titles and look into them later. But the store had a specific “no pictures” policy. I ended up narrowing my search down to three books and tried to consider which one I should get. This did not go well. I ended up buying all three and spent something in the vein of 50-60 euros. The books, if you’re interested, are called: Super-Intelligence (which Sebastian later told me he has read and recommends), 10 Types of People (which I lent to Adriana for reading on the bus back), and How Emotions are Made. The rush of “oh my god I just spent that” gives me a better understanding of why people go on shopping sprees. It feels so exciting that I now own these things and I could now know everything inside them.
While some of the others explored an art museum (I think it was d’Orsay), I took the opportunity to sit in a garden and take some much needed relaxation time. I was positioned in such a way while reading that the branches of a tree in front of me would block the sun from my eyes but provide plenty of light to the book for me to read. While napping, the sun lapping at my face, with very sparse cloud cover occasionally covering the sun to give my face a chance to cool back down, was pure bliss. Relaxing/reading/napping in that garden was one of my top most comfortable times in Europe. I had no WiFi in the garden so, about an hour and a half in, I headed to the louvre, which was a quick walk away, and went in to get WiFi. Have to say, still feels weird to say that I went all the way into the louvre, past security and all, just for some WiFi. It worked out though, and I managed to catch up with everyone else once they finished their museum.
On the tail end of the trip, heading to the bus back home, there was plenty of confusion. First off, apparently my bus booking back to Bonn never went through. This is the... I-don’t-even-know-th time this is happening so either I’m being sabotaged or I probably did something wrong. Who knows? Anyway, I managed to buy a ticket during dinner and a woman at the hostel kindly printed it out for me, free of charge. After that, I went to the train station first in order to buy a ticket for the train to the bus stop and I told the group I’d meet up with them. Just in case, someone told me to go to Place d’italie. I ran out of the hostel and to the station with all of my stuff and was very confused when I realized there was no way we were supposed to meet at Place d’Italie. So I decided to wait in front of the gates to the line that goes to Place d’Italie. I waited here for a few very stressful minutes before realizing something was wrong. No one else was showing up and I needed to get going if I wanted to make the bus on time. I asked a few people where I needed to go to get to the bus stop but no one was able to help me out. After more minutes of wondering if I’d even be able to get to the bus at all, Vivian, Kevin, and Sebastian showed up and we all managed to figure out how to get to the bus stop. When we eventually got there, I found out that, who ever had told me to go to Place d’Italie had probably meant to take the 5 line in that direction to get to the right stop. They had neglected to tell me the name of the right stop, probably assuming I’d already known it. But that doesn’t matter, since we all made it. After a few minutes, Josh and Ana showed up and we took the bus back to Bonn.
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