A Train

The day started out oddly. I left the house a full two minutes early, practically guaranteeing I'd get a parking spot at the gare (train station), therefore eliminating the necessity of parallel parking on the sidewalk. Have done this once before. Not a great success.

Imagine my surprise when I arrive at the gare, only two minutes early mind you, and realize I have almost half of the parking lot to myself. This was unnerving. I was positive I must have gotten up an hour early or something and kept checking my watch to see if the little hand had become possessed recently. It had not.

I believe that the French have a special transmitter lodged in their brains which allows them to automatically know when the SNCF train employees would go on strike. They at least have some kind of sixth sense. I, however, am not French, no matter how hard I may occasionally try to be.

So I waited. I was supposed to leave on the 7:38 train, like usual, but alas, there was no 7:38 train today. So, I waited for the 7:50. The 7:50 was 25 minutes "en retard" meaning, it was really late.

When the train finally arrived, I was lucky enough to end up in the same car as Camilla who I generally meet in Marseille to eat breakfast with. The train was so full that every seat was taken and where we were standing near the doorway, there were so many people, you had no choice but to get really friendly. You know how there's a scale for how close people stand to others, the spectrum probably ranging from strangers to lovers? It would appear that we all loved each other very much today.

We were late to school but since everyone knew about/were suffering from the strike, we were quickly forgiven. We proceeded to take an exam to test our level of French (distastrous, particularly the oral comprehension) and then to have a school-wide party with foods we each brought to represent our country. Hannah and I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They were a hit. Our teacher watched, fascinated, as we put them together and we got lots of good comments from other students. We also heard a lot of nervous comments and things like, "You put that with jam?? That's strange." and "Isn't that really heavy? Isn't it fat?"

Next was time to catch the 2:33 train back to Aubagne. I really wanted to get home to finish a movie I'd started last night. The rental was going to expire at 8:30 and I needed to finish it before I got the kids. The train started right on time and I released the breath I'd been holding in nervous anticipation. We were going to make it! And then, halfway through, it stopped. Right in the middle of nowhere. So we sat (and slept) for 30 minutes. Gotta love French strikes.

The happy ending to this long and rather pointless account is that I did indeed arrive home late but fortunately, the family had other plans for picking up the children from school so I was able to finish the movie. It completely made up for the ridiculousness of the trains. Well, that and the PB&Js.