Read beyond the lines

In the last blog I wrote, without intending to, I lied to you. I'm also not sorry for that; let me explain. when I set out to build this website and create a hub for my creative content it came with three sample blogs, each with a photo and title but only some text to tell you what a blog was. I made the choice to use these as inspiration for my first three blogs on the site. The title this one had was "read between the lines" with this picture of a book:

After re-reading my last entry and having it fresh in my mind this photo reminded me of an experience that was entirely my own while I travelled in France. I had been reading a book, 'Labyrinth' was written by Kate Mosse, and the book its self ends with the details of how you can travel to southern France and see many of the sights mentioned in the book as the main community featured in the story is a real place. The whole experience of going to France and finding my way to the locations from the book I had been reading became a goal of mine and is the one contradiction to my 'go with the flow' attitude from that part of my life. To be fair it mostly blew up in my face, and I honestly have no idea how the book even came to be in my possession.

Firstly, we set out to take the train from London England to Paris France, however, I forgot my passport in a scanner at my cousin's home and had to wait for her daughter to bring me it via train several hours away. By the time we got to France, it was the middle of the night and myself nor my travelling companion spoke a word of french. We found our way to a small Holiday Inn and took a room for the night before heading south to meet friends of my cousin at their home. The train we took required one to manually lock the doors with a small chain and pin, the door nearest us opened and closed the length of extra chain as the train moved along the tracks.

The home I stayed in with friends of the family, amazingly, opening their doors to us.

I remember my friend and I chuckling at them for calling it autumn/near winter conditions while they still had green grass. It was from here that our story really took the wind from my sails and, at the time solidified my desire not to make my own plans, as we set out to go to the town from my book. We booked a ticket, we could get the next train or wait a few hours, so we took the next train 30 minutes later it stopped. It also took us in the wrong direction to a station with nothing really in the way of services. we took our transfer and boarded the next train which took us in the correct direction and had its first stop 30 minutes into the journey, that's right this was the same train we could have waited for at the first station which had many amenities. A few more hours pass and we stopped at an unmarked, older, station where we learned that the train had to wait for the tracks ahead to be cleared due to the train ahead of us hitting a car. I met a young man who was a Green Bay Packers fan, while I was out on the platform waisting time and smoking, and returned to my seat to wait for many hours. By the time we arrived in the town, it was well past midnight and the bars had sent out their patrons, additionally, nearly all of the hotels were closed. as we wandered the night for a few more hours we eventually saw a couple being let into a hotel by an employee and we rushed to gather ourselves a room as well.

The next morning we came to realize we had seen many of the sights from the story in the dark of the night. My travel companion at this point was quite over our excursion I might add. Quickly we found the ruins of the old castle, though fully modernized and even featuring their own hotels and shops, and walked through it checking off the different scenic places mentioned in the book. before heading back to Paris where his mother had booked us a hostel for a few nights.

I tell this story quite often and it was an interesting experience to be so far removed from the touristy things at some points that we were the only people who spoke English on a regular basis. It is not common for me to say a regret anything, part of going with the flow I suppose, but I will say that I wish I had stayed in Europe longer than I did. While we were in Paris I would make the choice to change my return ticket to match my friends and leave nearly two months sooner than planned by my parents.

would I still have been sitting here now on this day if I had waited then? We can never know.

~Devin~

#reading #traveling #lessons