Cara's

Hi there! I am back in Lyon once again! The trip home was a nightmare. I caught my train Monday as 8pm, found a nice carriage and started to wind down and go to sleep when the conductor told me that this PART of the train doesn’t go to France! What the? Yes, they separate the train at Salzburg and so if you are not on the first 3 carriages you get to stay in Salzburg. Disaster avoided I moved forward in the train only to find all the seats were reserved. Ridiculous! I think people reserve seats as its only 3 Euros and then if they don't catch the train it doesn’t matter. I eventually found seats where people had not turned up for their reservation, chatted with an Austrian girl who works in Paris and a South African lady on holiday.

We all went to sleep only to be woken every 5 minutes by the conductor putting more people into our cabin. In the end I was very lucky to get off the train in Strasbourg. We were all exhausted and no one heard my alarm go off at 5:30. When the guy sitting next to woke me and told me we were in Strasbourg I panicked and literally threw all my stuff off the train. A minute later it left!

So I went to get the next train to Lyon and found out to my dismay it didn't leave for 6 hours! ARG! A bit of a gap. If you don’t get the 6:04 the next one is 12:08! Ahhhh! So I slept, ate Austrian Christmas cookies, listened to music and wrote New Years resolutions for 6 hours! I caught the midday train and was happy to be on my way until I found that on this train seats were completely reserved as well! I don’t know how the system works but it definitely wasn’t working yesterday. The must have sold at least 300 tickets extra. I suppose I should be grateful as if they had not sold extra tickets I would have been stuck in Strasbourg.

However there were people crammed in everywhere in true Melbourne MET train cancellation style! I had a gentleman in first class offer me his seat as he departed but some woman asked if her sick husband could have it and seeing as I didn’t have a first class ticket and she had that snobby first class look about her I wasn’t about to make an issue about it. At one point they added 3 carriages to the train to accommodate people but it was not nearly enough and I didn’t get a seat. I was in the baggage car for a while hanging out with the ‘youth’ of the train. Someone was playing rap music and it was kinda cool until they all started smoking…arg the French! In the end I laid down curled up in the isle and everyone had to walk over me….gotta love transport in Europe. And to top it all off on the way home the bus broke down so I walked the rest of the way. Some days it’s a battle and you really have to fight for what you want…in my case to get home.

I got home and Ben and his friend Shelly had only arrived a few hours earlier. We chatted, I unpacked and cleaned my room which I left looking like the Tasmanian devil had just whipped through. We ate really good cheese stuffed pasta for tea, Shelly and I watched the movie ‘French Kiss’ which I saw in a completely new light after living here...incredible and then the traveling day from hell was over!

Today I am studying for my Contemporary Art exam on Thursday at 8am! Better get onto that! It is nice to be home and I am trying to absorb as much of Lyon as I can for the remainder of my stay here. Dave arrives on Jan 14th so I am looking forward to seeing some things in Lyon that I have not had the chance to see yet and take a break from studying!

Cara =)