Getting here was most cer­tainly the most gru­el­ing trip I’ve ever taken. From door to door, it took me 21 hours to travel almost 6000km, car­ry­ing with me nearly 90 pounds of lug­gage (which isn’t that much of a stretch from my body weight).

I was mainly focused on mak­ing it safely and with all my stuff, so tak­ing pho­tos wasn’t a pri­or­ity. Traveling alone is cer­tainly a lot more dif­fi­cult than with a com­pan­ion, because you can’t leave suit­cases with some­one and do some­thing quick like walk down a street to find a sign, or go to the bathroom.

talking to a pigeon

Giving a pigeon a stern talking-to. Birds are brave here.

At Gare Montparnasse.

Ottawa to Montreal

I was run­ning on fumes before my trip even started. Making sure all my work was done and clean­ing the house so I could return to the com­fort of my home meant I had barely eaten or slept.

But Heather drove me to the air­port, a ges­ture I really appre­ci­ated because get­ting dropped off and picked up for trips is one of those things that always makes me feel like I have fam­ily. The flight was only 45 min­utes, so it wasn’t an oppor­tu­nity to catch up on a lot of sleep, but every­thing went smoothly.

Montreal to Paris

With an hour-long lay­over and not hav­ing eaten in more than 12 hours at this point, I started feel­ing faint in the air­port at Montreal. I decided to shell out $3.50 for a bag of mixed dry fruits and nuts, which, as I learned from hik­ing in Boy Scouts, is one of the best (and light­est) ways of get­ting energy. Also pur­chased was a roll of Wine Gummies, which I fig­ured I could chew on if I ever needed to stay awake, as I’ve yet to fall asleep while some­thing was in my mouth.

It only started click­ing in that I was mak­ing a big trip when I stepped on the plane and saw how wide the cabin was (char­ac­ter­is­tic of inter­con­ti­nen­tal flights). Everyone boarded on time, but with an engine fail­ure that remained unre­solved after two hours of tests, they had to move every­one and all the lug­gage to another plane that arrived later.

Luckily, the plane was a giant Boeing 777 air­craft, one of the most up-to-date planes, as they not only have indi­vid­ual screens that play TV shows, movies, and XM satel­lite radio, but a host of other fea­tures as well:

It was after mid­night by the time we took off, and I fell asleep for a good five hours of the seven hour trip; the only advan­tage of being exhausted. But even though I’d touched down in France, there was still a big part of my trip left.

Customs was a joke com­pared to Canada even (let alone the States); a quick glimpse at my pass­port and I was let through. Most of the work in cus­toms is prob­a­bly done by a sign that says that if you’re car­ry­ing more than €10,000, you need to declare it.

Paris to Chartres

Charles du Gaulle Airport to Gare Montparnasse

The air­port isn’t exactly in the heart of Paris, so to get any­where you gen­er­ally travel to cen­tral Paris first. For me, that meant get­ting to Montparnasse sta­tion, as it’s a huge hub that con­nects to the train sys­tem. I could have taken the RER regional sub­way air­port, but opted for the shut­tle bus cause I couldn’t pic­ture myself get­ting through a turn­stile with a giant suit­case and two carry-on bags, let alone trav­el­ing on a crowded sub­way train with so much stuff. Even though it was three times as expen­sive, I’m sure it was worth it. This was also when I used my first bit of French (Excusez-moi, parlez-vous anglais?), as I couldn’t fig­ure out where the tick­ets were to be purchased—turns out you buy them from the dri­ver on the bus, and they have a lit­tle machine for credit cards (thank­fully, Visa is a uni­ver­sal word).

I was doing my best to stay awake as there was so much to absorb on this 45 minute drive through the city streets, but I did pass out for a minute or two every now and then.

Gare Montparnasse to Chartres

From Montparnasse sta­tion, I caught a train to Chartres — a town about an hour south-west of Paris — where Frédéric and Misun have set up their home. The prob­lem was that I didn’t know when to get off the train as there were no maps, and com­bined with fatigue, I exited too early at a tiny satel­lite town called Maintenon with only 8000 people.

With the end so close in sight, but trains only com­ing every hour (which seemed like more than an eter­nity away at that point), I made a call to Frédéric again, and had to leave a mes­sage as he had already gone to the sta­tion to pick me up.

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Frederic later sent me the mes­sage, and said “Jeff, I like your lit­tle message…good mem­ory for later!”. Hearing it now, I’m sur­prised at how com­posed I was (I thought I could hear my voice waver­ing when I was talk­ing), cause to be hon­est I was almost break­ing down at this point. I blasted some new tracks on my head­phones, and that quickly got me moti­vated again; it’s impos­si­ble to stay frus­trated if you have the right music on.

Arrival at Laboratoire Artistique Bilingue

I’m sure I’d be laugh­ing at this expe­ri­ence if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ll have to do the same thing in reverse in a cou­ple weeks. Frédéric told me if it was any­one else, he would have fetched them at the air­port, but know­ing me and my habit of being com­pe­tent and respon­si­ble, he knew I could nav­i­gate a for­eign city by myself. It’s prob­a­bly more faith than I deserve. I would have refused if he offered any­way; this was a test for myself I knew I had to take, and a way for me to step up and become a stronger person.

I’m a lit­tle jet­lagged and extremely sore, but I finally made it.

Europe 2010 travel diaries