As consistent with the theme here, we were once again left running for the mode of transportation, this time, the Eurostar train, this time by a communication failure not unlike one of those Bad Lip Reading videos, that was completely my fault. If you have not seen these, I think they are hilarious due to the sheer fact that these situations happened many times, most of which were incredibly hilarious. This one, however, was not, and led to me having a meltdown in the train station as they were calling our train for final boarding when we arrived. That aside, however, both of us calmed down when we were able to eat the croissants provided with the complimentary breakfast! Little did I know that this was only the first of the adventures to come.....
When we got to the Gare du Nord (the Northern Railroad Station for you non-francophones), I suggested we proceed to the information kiosk. I had the address and the reservation of the place we were going, but I was unable to get through to them on the phone beforehand as my international minutes did not work in the UK. So, I went to the ticket agent and asked her, in French, to please call the youth hostel so that I could confirm disability accommodations. As it turns out, there was no place on their website to specify this or make any comments. So the agent called them and she comes back asking me if I can walk upstairs at all, because there is somebody already staying in the accessible room. I said no, but then I thought the easiest thing to do would just be to sort this out when we get there, because of course no one knows what to do with a Deaf person and a person in a wheelchair when they see us together. So I asked for advice on the nearest transit location and we ended up waiting for about 45 min. extra than we were supposed to after finally finding the place when getting lost coming out of the station. At this point, both of us were so tired and hungry that we decided screw it, we're taking a cab.
So my friend and the cab driver folded up the chair just fine, but then the cab driver seemed concerned that my friend could not put me in the car somehow. He then decided that he and his brother, who was there for some reason, could do it better. So both of them picked me up and tried to shove me in the car fireman style without asking. Thankfully, I knew enough to tell them to stop, and tried to explain a better way to do it, or to just leave me alone, and let my friend do the job, but they wouldn't listen, and kept trying to force my legs in the back of the car, after I explained that they didn't bend so easily. After about the fifth time of trying to do this, they finally listened and let my friend put me in the car the easy way, all the time the meter was going up! At least I knew now that I could never be kidnapped easily, at least not in France.
When we got to the hostel, I thought, things had to start getting better. Firstst of all, these people didn't believe that it was even possible that I could have made all the reservations and all the card information etc. because I was in a wheelchair, so they kept trying to talk to my friend, who, of course, could not hear them well. The manager was mad because he had to keep opening the side entrance for me to get in and out, and he was also mad because he insisted on kicking two guests that weren't disabled out of our room, even though we said we didn't mind sharing, because it was a four-person room. Keep in mind that this entire time, I was speaking French like a duck with a nose plug.
After this was all sorted, as the Brits would say, the front desk was very nice to us. I wish I got the woman's name that worked there because she was such a pleasure to interact with and she was so helpful to both of us. She said that there were many options for transportation around there and told us where we could go and what to buy when we got there. The most interesting thing was that she complimented my fluency in French and said I spoke with a British accent, which is funny because out of respect for the culture, I had to try so hard not to do a British accent when I was there, but I quite enjoy doing it at home :-) This woman moved between French and English easily when talking to my friend, and when she noticed we were signing, she tried to teach us a few signs in LSF because she said she knew someone with a Deaf baby.
I remember when she informed us that the hostel Wi-Fi was not working (pronounced with a short I in French, that was fun to say!) So not only did we have phones that could not receive data and the minutes didn't work, we had no Internet either! What did people do before technology? I realized that I knew the general area my friends were staying in, but I didn't even have the address to snail mail them a letter. We had not seen anyone we knew all day, and could not contact the people we were supposed to be meeting up with to let them know we were okay. So, as we ventured out to try to find an Internet shop, which we discovered were all closed because France and nap time, we decided that we were going to eat pastries for dinner, so gosh darn it we did, and they were some of the best things I have ever eaten. Mine had pear flavored liqueur in it, and my friend got a lemon meringue. After the day we'd had, that was the best thing we could've asked for!
Instead of venturing out in the rain again, we decided to stay in and catch up on episodes of Switched at Birth that I had downloaded on my computer. There was so much to be said for the comforts of home at a time like that.
The next day, I knew that the group was going to meet at the Louvre on free day. So I decided that if we had any hope of salvaging this adventure, our best bet was to go there. After an interesting walk to find transportation that was not underground, we finally made it there. We realized that our group was nowhere to be found, and that it wasn't free day after all. So of course, what is the first thing we do? We have to go looking for internet. After looking at a few rooms and paintings, we find out that there is an apple store in the atrium of the Louvre. So here we are, we could be anywhere in the world seeing things that people have never seen, and we're in an apple store trying to use the internet.
So I was finally able to connect with my friend and he said everyone was meeting up at Notre Dame for the mass later that evening. I checked the transit schedule and realized that it was only about a 15 minute bus ride to L'Institut National des Jeunes Sourdes - AKA St. Jacques. This was the school where the founder of American Deaf culture, Laurent Clerc, went to school and it ws the first school where manual sign language was used as the primary method of instruction for deaf students. As some European travelers may know, a lot of the streets in France have circular intersections with different branches. So when I kept asking for directions and the guy would say 'go straight' I didn't know what he meant because there were too many options. We had no GPS but I found out later that we were only 500 yards from the school itself but we were so lost and I was so upset that we decided not to continue.
We ended up making our way back to Notre Dame to meet up with the rest of our group. By the end of this ordeal I was so happy to see people I actually knew besides my friend. They didn't know we had made it there and wanted to know where we'd been the entire time. They expained that they could use my interpretation skills to order food so we decided to go to a meal together where I could tell everyone what they were reading on the menu. Like any true traveler would I ordered des cuisses de grenouille (that's frog legs for you Americans). It's true, they do taste just like chicken. Maybe I'm weird but I love foie gras which is paté made out of goose liver, and you can spread it on toast - it's amazing!
We ended up cruising the markets and the bookstores, including a really well known one called Shakespeare and Company. While some people opted to climb the Eiffel Tower, I was obviously not that interested as the elevator only goes to the second deck. So instead, another group member had the idea to go to L'Arc de Trionphe on the Métro, which is awful for wheelchair users. So once again this ended up being an adventure of carrying me down a flight of stairs. I was able to recruit a very good looking French passer-by and explain to him how to lift the wheelchair and help us down. While there, my friend told us that the Eiffel Tower lights up every night at midnight, so we decided to stay up and watch the sparkle.
The next morning we made our way back on the Eurostar on our own, in just enough time to have our classmates to have security problems and have our train get stuck in the chunnel. So for all this concern about being on time, there was nothing I could do about the 2 hour delay back to class except to take a nap. Somehow our professor did not seem surprised.
Until tomorrow...
(Image: Me sitting in front of the Arc de Triomphe with my arm outstretched like I'm trying to be Vanna White. The picture was taken at night and I am sitting in my chair wearing a striped tank top and shorts)
(Image: Two pastries in a box. The one on the left has lemon meringue with circles of whipped cream and designs on the top. The one on the right is a pear tart with what looks like a cursive letter 'H' on top.)
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