France and Spain.
People on trains are traveling.
Some of them like to travel, others hate it, and others are so used to it that they’ve forgotten to have an opinion on it.
People with expensive shoes sit tiredly in the curved train seats, their briefcase tucked under their folded arms and their eyes closed. They take the route so often that they know the motion of the train. They don’t listen for the next station; they can feel when they’re getting close.
People with hats shove their backpacks underneath their legs or their seats and excitedly look out the window. They glance up quickly from their phone every time someone walks past as if they would be told at any momemt that their ticket wasn’t valid in a language they didn’t understand, shattering the dream of their adventure.
The beautiful thing about the people you meet on trains is that you've never met them before, and you'll probably never see them again, but for a short moment, your lives intersect while you're both on your way to a common goal: to reach a destination. For a brief period in time, you all have the same goal, and that is what I love about meeting people while traveling.
I like to make up stories about people on trains, but even more than that, I like to talk to them and see what their stories are. Through this, I learn more about other cultures, more about myself, and more about the best way to navigate traveling. This blog is a collection of travel advice that I’ve learned the hard way, but also of stories from a recent solo trip I took to Paris, France, where traveling by myself gave me experiences I never would have had traveling with other people.
The Swedes in the Station
Be aware of your surroundings
After a full weekend of touring around Paris with family friends, I woke up at 5 AM, ready to head to the Paris airport to go back to Salamanca, Spain. I packed my things and quietly stepped out onto the murky streets of Paris. As I walked to the metro station, I passed by many people on the street who hadn’t let the wild night fade for them yet. Drunk men shouted to each other across the street over the song that they blasted on a speaker. A woman dressed in all black sat numbly on a bench, smoking something that wasn’t a cigarette. I walked past them all, my eyes open wide, looking sharply for the sign to my metro station.
Know your travel plan ahead of time
I had planned my journey all out. I would take the metro from my hotel to Gare du Nord, and from there I would take a train straight to Terminal 4 in the airport where I would spend too much time waiting on a hard plastic bench before my flight. I felt proud that everything was going according to my plan until I realized, in one quick moment, that everything was not.
But before everything went awry, I was buying my ticket for the train to get to the airport after I had taken the metro when a man with an accent called to me from across the ticket machine. As I looked up from my ticket machine, he said, “Excuse me, could you help us find the right ticket?” I nodded nervously and walked over to their ticket machine to help him and his companion find the right selection.
“You’re going to the airport too?” he asked.
I responded with a quick nod and a smile, and after they thanked me, I confidently walked off on my own towareds the platform.
Know your options
My confidence diminished as I realized I didn’t know which train to take to the airport. I asked a security guard, and with limited English, he gave me directions to the green train.
However, my ticket had a stub for the blue train to the airport.
Confused, I decided to trust the man and I hopped onto the green train. The Swedes hopped onto the train a few moments later. As we all looked at the rail map inside the train, the doors closed.
I frowned as I looked at the map. The tracks did not go to the airport.
The Swedish man realized this at the same time as me and he declared, “We’ve been bamboozled by the ticket man.” I snorted and nodded in agreement, feeling relieved that I wasn’t the only one who felt lost.
“We’re getting off at the next stationa and going back to get on the blue train,” he confirmed. I agreed that it seemed like a good idea, so we all got off the green train, hopped onto the train back to Gare du Nord, and wandered around the station until we found another person who could help us.
“The bue line train is broken,” a security lady declared when we asked her. “You have to take a bus.”
At this point, I had already spent an hour that morning taking the metro, riding in loops around Paris on the train, and trying to find ticket agents who would tell the truth about the blue train. I had given myself plenty of time to take public transportation if everything had gone smoothly, but the journey would be another hour longer to take the bus. A taxi to the airport would be around $50 USD, but time was runing short to take public transportation.
Be open to changes
The Swedish man sighed and looked at his watch.
“Do you want to take a taxi with us to the airport?” he asked, warily yet kindly.
I looked up from my phone in suprise, smiled, and said, “Yes, I would love to.”
We called a taxi and the three of us shuffled into the tiny back seat of a Toyota Corolla. I sat between the two Swedes, my backpack on my lap, and I wearily but nervously stared out the front window as the taxi driver tried to make us motion sick in the morning traffic.
“So, are you visiting Paris for tourism?” the Swedish man asked.
I raised my eyebrows and smiled, and we began a conversation about travel, Europe, language, culture, and sports that lasted nearly the 30 minute ride to the airport. Him and his traveling companion, and older woman, spoke 6 languages between the two of them. They had traveled to nearly all the cities in Europe, and had been in Paris for about two weeks during this trip. This was the last leg of their journey.
As we reached the airport, I began searching my wallet for any Euros I had to pay the taxi driver.
“Don’t worry about it,” said the Swede kindly. “We’ll pay for the taxi. We just want to get home, and this trip has already been crazy enough.”
I thanked them immensely and sat in profound silence as the taxi drove up to Terminal 4 of the airport. I wished them safe travels as I got out of the taxi and they continued onto Terminal 2, and I stood for a moment outside the doors of the airport, breathing in the fresh, French morning air and shaking my head at the miracle that had come of my morning.
Know that the best adventures are often the most unexpected
Out of a completely empty train station, the two people I managed to encounter were some of the kindest, most well-traveled people I have met in my life. Although I had planned every detail of my journey out, I still ran into issues. Knowing my options, being open to change, and being blessed with friendly Swedish traveling companions had allowed me to experience an adventure that I never would have otherwise.
The Spanish Parents on the Train
Always be prepared to make friends and talk to people
As I began the final leg of my travels back to Salamanca, I boarded a train from Madrid back to my home city. I found my seat number, but I died a little inside when I found that I was sitting facing a table with three other people. I was tired from traveling, and I had planned on sleeping, reading, or journaling during the trip, but from the minute I sat down, I knew that none of that would happen.
Three other peope filled in the seats, and they all looked to be my parents' age. They all greeted each other in Spanish, and then looked questioningly at me and my blonde hair and wide eyes. I greeted them in Spanish, and I could see their shoulders relax as the lady sitting across from me asked in Spanish, “Where are you from?”
“The United States,” I responded in Spanish with a smile. “From Minnesota, in the north.”
We began a conversation about my studies in Spain during the summer, and then the first lady shared that she had kids a little older than me, and that she and her husband, who was sitting next to me, were returning home from visiting their daughter in Madrid.
The husband sitting next to me showed me the Instagram account of their son, who had run with the bulls in Pamplona. (He asked me if I would ever do that, I said no, probably not, and he laughed and commended me on my intelligence.) He continued to give me advice about traveling around Spain, and I realized that talking with the people at my table was, in reality, more fun than sleeping or reading by myself.
The Boy who Didn't Speak Spanish
The right place at the right time
At one point during the trip, a group of blond teenage boys boarded the train. When the ticket man came past to gather our boarding passes, he asked one of the boys a question. The boy looked around frantically and said loudly and clearly, “English! Does anyone speak English?” The ticket man shook his head and repeated the quesstion, but the woman sitting across from me pointed at me and said, “She does! She can help.”
I sat frozen in my seat until I realized everyone in my section of the train was looking at me. I asked the boy a question and said something to the ticket master, and he began to motion to the boy until he nodded his head satisfactorally. He scanned the boy’s ticket and moved on, and I sat happily stunned in my seat that I had been the one to help in the situation.
The Argentinian Lady in Spain
Be curious, and you might learn more than you ever imagined
After that situation, the other lady across from me began to ask me questions as well, and we continued our conversation in Spanish after the other two had left the train. She was from Argentina, but had moved to Spain a few months before to work a better job for a few years. She had a husband, a son, and a beautiful house and garden in Argentina, and she shared many pictures of all three. I asked where I should go if I ever visited Argentina, and the pictures that she showed me of the beautiful buildings and waterfalls in Argentina made me move the country up on my list of places I wanted to visit.
Although I found her accent difficult to understand, I gathered that she had moved to Spain because she wasn’t able to live the life she wanted because of the economic situation in Argentina. I realized that I had heard the same thing from other people from Latin America that I had encountered so far in Spain. As the train reached our station, I realized that while I had wanted to sleep and read on the train ride, I had practiced my Spanish and met wonderful Spanish people on the train that I was able to talk with.
Meeting for a moment in time
All of these adventures took place during one weekend to Paris. Experiences like these make me glad I took the leap to travel by myself, because I learned more about my surroundings from traveling solo than I would have traveling with a group of people. The beautiful thing about the people you meet on trains is that you'll never see them again, but you both shared a moment of your lives where you were going somewhere together, and this makes me want to travel by myself more often.