Arriving in Paris



Upon arriving at the station, I used my main most powerful tool for learning how to get to the hostel at which I had made reservations: Patience. I slowly walked around the station and asked a vendor, "Metro?" and "Information English?" and he rattled off a bunch of stuff and seemed to wave his arm in a direction, so I walked that way and found a while nother part of the station I hadn't seen before and before long, I found a counter with the sign, "Billets" which reminded me of places to sleep in World War I war movies so I figured it referred to hotels and that they'd understand English; I was right! The woman sold me ten subway rides for a little under 10 Euros (1 Euro = Approx. $1.25) and directed me to a subway map. I studied it for a good half hour and found both the station I was at and the one to which I was going and from there, it was easy to figure out the route. All the different lines are numbered so it was just a matter of memorizing something unique about the names of the station at the end of each line I was taking (so I knew in which direction to go) and the stop names or count stops.

I arrived at the hostel and was put in room 19. There are little separate toilet rooms all around but there was only one shower on the floor (for 30 or 40 people). The shower itself had a little changing area which was only separated from the hallway by .. you guessed it .. a shower curtain. This was a little nerve wracking but all in all, everyone was very respectful that way. On the other hand, later at night, there were an awful lot of party people who would come into the rooms they were in in the middle of the night.

Posted: Sun - June 1, 2003 at 01:57      

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