It was back in april, in France, when me and my friend siddharth travelled to Lyon from Rouen......I guess not many would be familiar with the French city of Lyon......its located in the middle of France and serves as the headquaters of the International Police also known as the interpol.....me and sid took a train to paris from rouen on a saturday evening, roamed about paris until midnight, spent the night at our friends place and started out for lyon next morning...both of us had booked tickets separately, so we had to take different trains from Paris to Lyon and back....the thing is.... he had booked his tickets earlier for about 70 euros, which is quite a bargain since it bought us a return ticket right from Rouen to Lyon......and I, having booked a week later, managed to get the tickets at the same price but for different timings........Eurail is not like Indian Railways, its more like the flight scenario in India, the earlier u book the cheaper the ticket is.....and prices also vary according to the train timings.......
So we reached lyon around noon and roamed the city....bad luck it had to rain that day.....but it cldnt stop us from roaming about carefree in the pelting rain, we didnt care if we caught cold the next day, after all we planned this journey almost 2months before and spent so much money........and so by nightfall we came back to the railway station.....I had to take a train that started from lyon at 11pm and reached paris at around 1am....1am is the time when the eurail service stops and the next train to rouen was at 7am in the morning.....sid had a different plan, he had booked tickets for a 6am train from lyon to paris and then onwards to rouen.....so he had to spend the night at Lyon Gare(railway station) and I had to do the same at Gare de lyon in Paris.....but our genius plan to spend the night at the gares backfired......
Once I reached gare de lyon in paris, I was asked by the station authorities to move out of the station as it was to be closed from 1am till 5am......I had to move out and found myself standing in the middle of the night on the huge portio of one of the oldest and biggest Gare's in Paris in the centre of the city.....having absolutely nowhere to go......I must say that I was a little scared....spending a night on the streets in a foreign country without even knowing the city or the language was pretty intimidating....and being alone made it worse......but then.....out of nowhere.....came the sense of adventure......and I dare say......I wasnt afraid anymore.....instead it was replaced by a sense of euphoria.....something I rarely have experienced before....here I was....alone in one of the biggest cities in Europe with the prospect of having to spend the night alone on the streets......
I had read about the Noctilien bus service in paris....... its a bus network that serves the city from 1am till 5am when the normal mode of transportation like the Metro, Bus and RER is shut down....one particular bus moves in a circular clockwise direction covering the four major Gares in paris....gare de lyon, gare de nord, gare st lazare and gare montparnasse.....another bus made the anticlockwise trip.......so I deemed it better and safer to sit in the bus in the AC and keep going round and round the city of paris rather than roaming the streets in the cold......
It was an absolutely exhilarating experience.....what I did would freak my parents out if they ever came to know of it.........its, I accept, a very stupid thing to do.....any other person might have looked for a hotel to spend the night....but when have I ever denied myself being stupid sometimes......I remember taking the bus that did the anticlockwise trip from gare de lyon.....it went around the city of paris, not only covering the four railway stations but also most of the important monuments of paris....like the concord, eiffel tower, champs elysees, the famous moulin rouge located on pigalle street.....pigalle is one of the most conspicuous streets in paris.......I remember the busdriver stopping the bus at gare montparnasse on every roundtrip and asking us to get down from the bus....then he closed all the doors and went out of the bus.....and in around 15min, another driver used to take charge and open the bus doors again and we had to take a new ticket again....each round trip was around 1 hour.....it was really funny having to go out of the bus, knowing fully well that I was going to get back up anyway......I also remember the police stopping the bus at the same spot everytime near gare de nord on every roundtrip and checking if we had purchased tickets....a policeman even recognized me on the third roundtrip and smiled......i guess he understood what i was trying to do....because most of the other people on the bus were actually doing the same thing......but because of completely different reasons.....they looked poor...i guess they didnt have a place to sleep and probably had no money for a hotel.....i felt sorry for them, and realized that India is not the only place where you find poverty......
By the time it came down to the last round trip, I was exhausted to the core.....having walked all day in lyon and having been up all night in the bus had exhausted me completely.....it was getting very difficult not to fall asleep right where I sat.....after every two minutes my eyes used to shut and my body gave way to sleep.....and I jerked myself up everytime....because I knew that if I didnt stay awake, I might miss my train to rouen......so finally at around 5:30am, I got down from the bus at Gare St Lazare.....waited for an hour for the train to rouen.....I am sure I looked miserable while waiting for the train....i deliberately didnt sit down because I knew i would fall asleep right away.....god I must have looked so miserable......I reached rouen at around 8am on monday morning....sid later told me he too had to spend the night outside the gare in lyon...
It was an experience which would be deemed utter stupidity by most people.....some people might also say that it might have been dangerous.....but the thing is....there are some things that you will never have the courage or heart to do once you are older....because there might come a time when ur life might not just be urs anymore.....you might have responsibilities thrust upon you.....responsibility of a family of ur own.....and so, till then, I feel there is no harm in being a little stupid sometimes.....
