Wow, forgive the cheesy title. I couldn’t think of anything better and have been sitting here for the past four minutes trying to see if I could. I decided it’d just be better to start writing with this time I have on a bus driving through the streets of Paris going towards Charles de Gaulle airport.
After Parthenay, I took the TGV to a city I hadn’t previously been to, Bordeaux. Once it came to a halt in her home city, Jacinthe met up with me right outside the train in the St Jean train station. Though it had only been around a month and a half since we had last seen each other, it was a happy reunion nonetheless. Though while we're speaking of reunions, my worlds collided when another old friend met up with me at the train station–Lucien, a fellow former exchange student, the “cute French boy” I bring up in conversation from time to time when I speak about who I spent my last day in France with. By some stroke of good timing, he was passing through Bordeaux the day I arrived on the way to his summer job in a nearby town. We knew we had to meet up in that case!
Lucien’s mom was with him, so we all piled into his car and went into the city center to spend some time. It was interesting to think of how things were the last time Lucien and I saw each other; it was my last day in France, signaling the end of a very significant time in my life, and his exchange was yet to begin. At the point where we were finally able to meet again, both our exchanges were long finished, and we both were on quite different paths in our lives. Nonetheless, we were able to talk as though we had only said bye yesterday. Considering I was able to go to Disneyland thanks to discounted tickets Lucien’s mom got from her work, I thanked her for the day that ended my exchange perfectly. I was happy to see that she knew exactly what I was talking about.
Even though it was very brief, I was happy to have met up with Lucien again. As for the rest of my time in Bordeaux, I really enjoyed getting to spend more time with Jacinthe and her family. (Mom I’ve adopted another family!) Jacinthe was very proud of her city, and after spending some time there, I could see why. Bordeaux was gorgeous. I loved being able to explore it on bike (even though in the city proper it got precarious), especially along the quays and crossing the bridges. It was also a lot of fun meeting some of Jacinthe’s friends. One of her best friends, a girl named Inès, came to spend time with us. She had her boyfriend Thede with her, a boy from Berlin who spoke no French. So yup, I got to use some of my German again! (Just to make sure it wasn’t already withering after two months in Vienna.) Since Jacinthe and Inès did a bilingual French-German program at their high school, they also spoke German very well. It was a lot of fun to mix the languages and try and teach Thede phrases in French. It wasn’t just German I got to practice; Jacinthe’s brother came to Bordeaux with his partner, Maria, who is originally from Mexico. So with her, I got to use my Spanish, and congratulate her on the baby she’s due to have in a few months. (omg her baby is going to be French) When they were there, we all had a really pleasant family lunch in the veranda by the garden. It was absolutely lovely and I felt right at home. (The Bordeaux wine was pretty good, too.) (Oh yeah, it was in Bordeaux where I rediscovered my obsession with fromage blanc.) I couldn’t help but imagine myself with my own home in France one day, with a beautiful family, hosting crazy young travelers thinking of myself in these adventure-filled days of my youth. But oh well, we’ll see what ends up happening.
For my departure, Jacinthe walked with me to my train and told me it was weird to think she wouldn’t see me for at least another two years. I reassured her it would go by very quickly, and that I saw myself actually living in Europe, anyway. Perhaps I’ll join her in Paris really soon 😉 Thus, I boarded yet another train with La Roche-sur-Yon as its destination.
La Roche-sur-Yon was a city I frequented often during my exchange, due to the fact that one of my best inbound friends Maya lived there. I spent the most memorable New Year’s Eve ever with her and her host family, the Cochou family, who would be hosting me for five days at a beach town nearby. I got so close to this host family during my exchange that they were practically another host family for me, and it made me immensely happy to be able to spend all this time with them. Olivier, the dad, picked me up at the train station and brought me to La Tranche-sur-Mer, where they rented a beach house for a few weeks on a vacation trip with another family, the Caille family. My inactivity online was caused by this five day long all expenses paid vacation on the beaches of western France. It was the kind of vacation where the days kind of all blend into a conglomerated blur, but I overall greatly enjoyed spending time with the Cochou family. It was an honor to place an order at the beachside grill as an “enfant Cochou” with Louis, Valentine, and Charlotte, their actual children. I really needed that time to just do nothing and not feel guilty about it, considering how much I’ve been traveling and have yet to travel throughout the rest of this month. While at the same time relaxing, the trip also had its wild side, considering the “bouée” (what is that in English?) and the bodyboarding I did. Damn, I’m still sore from that.
A highlight of my time at the beach was the stroll I took in the little city center of La Tranche-sur-Mer, a touristic area that had a crowd of beachgoers strolling down the boulevards purchasing ice cream and souvenirs. I was with Valentine, Charlotte, and two Canadian girls that the Cochou family was also hosting, and at one point we ended up at a shop that sold spreadable chocolate (kinda like Nutella but artisanal). The shopkeeper was very conversational and spoke to us in French and English. At one point, Valentine mentioned me being able to speak 6 languages. He said, “I imagine Spanish is one of them?” I replied, “Yes, it was easy to learn after French.” And in an impeccable Spanish he continued, “Where did you learn, in the USA?” In Spanish I said, “Yes,” but then added, “And in Bolivia.”
What he said next blew my mind: “Oh really? I lived in Bolivia for five years!”
HAHAHAHAHA WHAT?
Here I was in some cute beach town in western France having a conversation in Spanish with a French guy who was so enamored by Bolivia he chose to stay there for years. Needless to say, we had a very lively conversation that switched between French and Spanish about a country I never knew I could love this much even after all this time away from it. He told me about how they call him Pato there (it means “duck” in Spanish), because “Patrice” is a bit weird of a name to pronounce, and I know full well how they love giving nicknames. He apparently visited very recently, and toured some other countries around Latin America. It was such a serendipitous encounter, and I knew I had to buy something from the shop so as to remember it. He offered me two jars for 5 euros instead of 6, so I took it. We wished each other well in Spanish, and I left the shop still feeling pretty awed.
At the end of my stay, I said bye to the two families and Olivier and I drove back to La Roche. I had some time to relax in the house before going to the train station, so I roamed around a bit, pausing a few moments in the very same places certain memories took place, allowing them to reenter my mind for a split second. From there, he took me to the train station, and I got a little teary eyed when I had to say bye. It was probably the nostalgia trip and the amazing past four days I spent with the family, but for some reason it was especially hard to leave right then and there. Nonetheless, as I am used to doing, I let go and boarded the train.
The train continued taking me on a nostalgia trip as it stopped by the train stations in Nantes and Angers, the fleeting moments it spent in each place paralleling the brief passage of memories I had on those platforms and stations through my mind’s eye. Wow…those places were real, and they didn’t just exist in my mind. At the Gare Montparnasse, my Paris train station, I managed to catch the bus to drive to the airport, where I started writing this entry. As it drove through the city I thought of all the little corners of the world my memories have taken place in. The bus stopped at the Gare de Lyon, and I remembered how I first met Sari and so many of my other Eurotour friends there. But rather than dwell on the past, I wished instead to just regard the city around me and daydream about one day actually getting to live there. At this point, it’s more fun to speculate about the future than to reminisce about the past, anyway. This trip back in France has proven that to me.
With that, I shall leave this entry because I have to leave this hotel to actually go to the airport and board a flight to Hannover. What am I doing there? More on that soon. Salut!
After Parthenay, I took the TGV to a city I hadn’t previously been to, Bordeaux. Once it came to a halt in her home city, Jacinthe met up with me right outside the train in the St Jean train station. Though it had only been around a month and a half since we had last seen each other, it was a happy reunion nonetheless. Though while we're speaking of reunions, my worlds collided when another old friend met up with me at the train station–Lucien, a fellow former exchange student, the “cute French boy” I bring up in conversation from time to time when I speak about who I spent my last day in France with. By some stroke of good timing, he was passing through Bordeaux the day I arrived on the way to his summer job in a nearby town. We knew we had to meet up in that case!
Lucien’s mom was with him, so we all piled into his car and went into the city center to spend some time. It was interesting to think of how things were the last time Lucien and I saw each other; it was my last day in France, signaling the end of a very significant time in my life, and his exchange was yet to begin. At the point where we were finally able to meet again, both our exchanges were long finished, and we both were on quite different paths in our lives. Nonetheless, we were able to talk as though we had only said bye yesterday. Considering I was able to go to Disneyland thanks to discounted tickets Lucien’s mom got from her work, I thanked her for the day that ended my exchange perfectly. I was happy to see that she knew exactly what I was talking about.
Even though it was very brief, I was happy to have met up with Lucien again. As for the rest of my time in Bordeaux, I really enjoyed getting to spend more time with Jacinthe and her family. (Mom I’ve adopted another family!) Jacinthe was very proud of her city, and after spending some time there, I could see why. Bordeaux was gorgeous. I loved being able to explore it on bike (even though in the city proper it got precarious), especially along the quays and crossing the bridges. It was also a lot of fun meeting some of Jacinthe’s friends. One of her best friends, a girl named Inès, came to spend time with us. She had her boyfriend Thede with her, a boy from Berlin who spoke no French. So yup, I got to use some of my German again! (Just to make sure it wasn’t already withering after two months in Vienna.) Since Jacinthe and Inès did a bilingual French-German program at their high school, they also spoke German very well. It was a lot of fun to mix the languages and try and teach Thede phrases in French. It wasn’t just German I got to practice; Jacinthe’s brother came to Bordeaux with his partner, Maria, who is originally from Mexico. So with her, I got to use my Spanish, and congratulate her on the baby she’s due to have in a few months. (omg her baby is going to be French) When they were there, we all had a really pleasant family lunch in the veranda by the garden. It was absolutely lovely and I felt right at home. (The Bordeaux wine was pretty good, too.) (Oh yeah, it was in Bordeaux where I rediscovered my obsession with fromage blanc.) I couldn’t help but imagine myself with my own home in France one day, with a beautiful family, hosting crazy young travelers thinking of myself in these adventure-filled days of my youth. But oh well, we’ll see what ends up happening.
For my departure, Jacinthe walked with me to my train and told me it was weird to think she wouldn’t see me for at least another two years. I reassured her it would go by very quickly, and that I saw myself actually living in Europe, anyway. Perhaps I’ll join her in Paris really soon 😉 Thus, I boarded yet another train with La Roche-sur-Yon as its destination.
La Roche-sur-Yon was a city I frequented often during my exchange, due to the fact that one of my best inbound friends Maya lived there. I spent the most memorable New Year’s Eve ever with her and her host family, the Cochou family, who would be hosting me for five days at a beach town nearby. I got so close to this host family during my exchange that they were practically another host family for me, and it made me immensely happy to be able to spend all this time with them. Olivier, the dad, picked me up at the train station and brought me to La Tranche-sur-Mer, where they rented a beach house for a few weeks on a vacation trip with another family, the Caille family. My inactivity online was caused by this five day long all expenses paid vacation on the beaches of western France. It was the kind of vacation where the days kind of all blend into a conglomerated blur, but I overall greatly enjoyed spending time with the Cochou family. It was an honor to place an order at the beachside grill as an “enfant Cochou” with Louis, Valentine, and Charlotte, their actual children. I really needed that time to just do nothing and not feel guilty about it, considering how much I’ve been traveling and have yet to travel throughout the rest of this month. While at the same time relaxing, the trip also had its wild side, considering the “bouée” (what is that in English?) and the bodyboarding I did. Damn, I’m still sore from that.
A highlight of my time at the beach was the stroll I took in the little city center of La Tranche-sur-Mer, a touristic area that had a crowd of beachgoers strolling down the boulevards purchasing ice cream and souvenirs. I was with Valentine, Charlotte, and two Canadian girls that the Cochou family was also hosting, and at one point we ended up at a shop that sold spreadable chocolate (kinda like Nutella but artisanal). The shopkeeper was very conversational and spoke to us in French and English. At one point, Valentine mentioned me being able to speak 6 languages. He said, “I imagine Spanish is one of them?” I replied, “Yes, it was easy to learn after French.” And in an impeccable Spanish he continued, “Where did you learn, in the USA?” In Spanish I said, “Yes,” but then added, “And in Bolivia.”
What he said next blew my mind: “Oh really? I lived in Bolivia for five years!”
HAHAHAHAHA WHAT?
Here I was in some cute beach town in western France having a conversation in Spanish with a French guy who was so enamored by Bolivia he chose to stay there for years. Needless to say, we had a very lively conversation that switched between French and Spanish about a country I never knew I could love this much even after all this time away from it. He told me about how they call him Pato there (it means “duck” in Spanish), because “Patrice” is a bit weird of a name to pronounce, and I know full well how they love giving nicknames. He apparently visited very recently, and toured some other countries around Latin America. It was such a serendipitous encounter, and I knew I had to buy something from the shop so as to remember it. He offered me two jars for 5 euros instead of 6, so I took it. We wished each other well in Spanish, and I left the shop still feeling pretty awed.
At the end of my stay, I said bye to the two families and Olivier and I drove back to La Roche. I had some time to relax in the house before going to the train station, so I roamed around a bit, pausing a few moments in the very same places certain memories took place, allowing them to reenter my mind for a split second. From there, he took me to the train station, and I got a little teary eyed when I had to say bye. It was probably the nostalgia trip and the amazing past four days I spent with the family, but for some reason it was especially hard to leave right then and there. Nonetheless, as I am used to doing, I let go and boarded the train.
The train continued taking me on a nostalgia trip as it stopped by the train stations in Nantes and Angers, the fleeting moments it spent in each place paralleling the brief passage of memories I had on those platforms and stations through my mind’s eye. Wow…those places were real, and they didn’t just exist in my mind. At the Gare Montparnasse, my Paris train station, I managed to catch the bus to drive to the airport, where I started writing this entry. As it drove through the city I thought of all the little corners of the world my memories have taken place in. The bus stopped at the Gare de Lyon, and I remembered how I first met Sari and so many of my other Eurotour friends there. But rather than dwell on the past, I wished instead to just regard the city around me and daydream about one day actually getting to live there. At this point, it’s more fun to speculate about the future than to reminisce about the past, anyway. This trip back in France has proven that to me.
With that, I shall leave this entry because I have to leave this hotel to actually go to the airport and board a flight to Hannover. What am I doing there? More on that soon. Salut!
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