postcard from bordeaux #2 – a travel reality check

Here’s the deal, people: no matter how dreamy and perfect traveling looks on all of our favorite social media apps, there are always parts that suck a bit. Not one of my holidays or travels or moves has worked out without a hiccup. Now, that might partly happen courtesy of my non-existing planning or preparation skills, but they won’t take the full blame for it. Traveling is messy, especially in the first days in a new country/city/culture. That’s just how it is. But there’s also an immense joy in these first days, when everything is new, you notice the smallest things because everything is exciting and even fuckups can’t mess with you. Now let me tell you about my first day in France:

I got into Charles de Gaulle around 08:00, tired, because I forgot that booking a 06:00 flight also means I have to get up at 03:00, and because airlines don’t serve anything anymore, let alone coffee. But hey, I’m in Paris. That’s all that matters. Croissant life, here I come.

On the train, I noticed this really cute little Viennese boy, who tried to get his dad’s attention who was finishing up what was hopefully his last business call before he signed off for the rest of their holiday – in loud Viennese, might I add. When he finally got his dad’s attention, the little boy started counting – I can’t remember what exactly, because the way he was using his fingers to support his counting was the funniest. Starting with his middle finger, he started at one, only to get stuck there and end up wagging his middle finger in his dad’s face. Now, I truly believe the kid was too young to understand what he was doing, but who knows, maybe he was just a little genius tired of his father’s business calls. This already brightened my mood immensely, without even having had coffee yet.

Only five minutes later, the situation looked completely different though, when I got out of the train and, after carrying my overweight suitcase up and down a bunch of flights of stairs towards the metro, was stuck. I couldn’t get into the metro, since the ticket machines wouldn’t take my existing ticket but there also wasn’t a way to buy a new ticket. NOWHERE. The only way out of this situation was back through the staircase. Now, I know this sounds like a minor thing, but when you are in this situation, tired, with the heaviest suitcase on earth, this is the worst problem in the entire world – for about 2 seconds. Once I accepted there was no other way, I did make it back up the stairs – even though a no entry sign was looming over it, which I rebelliously ignored – and out of the station. Mad at the whole system, I decided to just walk to Montparnasse and enjoy a little bit of Paris on the way. After all my wheelie suitcase wouldn’t make it too difficult to walk. Or so I thought.

It would have all been easy, hadn’t the suitcase decided to play a number on me and lose one of it’s wheels on the way. It just broke off. Maybe not just. I guess after a few cobbled streets and a rowdy me dragging it over some curbs, it had enough. So here I was, with my overweight, three wheeled suitcase and lots of construction sites ahead of me. Somehow, suitcase and I made it to Gare Montparnasse, where I disposed of suitcase for the time being and hit the tow on my own.

And let me tell you, it was a glorious day. I wandered the streets aimlessly, had pasta with a free concert by the chef of the restaurant who sang along loudly to almost every song on the radio, making everyone around him feel light and joyful. We should all sing a lot more, wrong or not. It’s such a wonderful lively thing to do.

My stroll led me to the Seine – it might have not been a completely aimless walk after all – where I sat in the sun, reading a book about somebody moving to a remote town and building a new life, wrote a little, stared at the Louvre and some seagulls playing in the sun. It felt completely serene and straight out of one of those perfect little Instagram Reels. The best part about it: it was real.

Just as real as the extremely long queue in front of Shakespeare and Company which made me decided that, as cosy as the store is, I can get books anywhere else, too. Instead, I had coffee in the sun, contemplated some deep life questions – which I photographed for you to do the same – and watched kids having the loudest, most carefree game of tag at Les Jardins du Pont Neuf, which is by the way an extremely cute part of Paris.

The day was long enough to remind me why Paris is always a good idea, but it was time to get my broken suitcase and make my way to Bordeaux. On boarding my first TGV, I got extremely lucky, because the person who was supposed to sit next to me didn’t show up, so I got a window seat and was able to watch the French countryside the whole entire time. Plus, there was another cute little boy with nerdy round glasses that made him look like Harry Potter. My attempt of opening up a bag of dried mango ended up with the mango all over the train, which the little boy and his mom found hilarious, my own stomach only slightly so, though. But it made me bond with the two of them for the rest of the train ride, so it was all worth it in the end.

I got to Bordeaux around 20:30, ready to sleep as soon as I got to the Airbnb, only to realize that it’s really hard to order a taxi in France if you don’t speak French. After another little emotional crisis, I found a lovely French lady who called a taxi for me. And I’ll make the rest quick, because by now I think we’re all over the emotional rollercoaster ride: the taxi driver went the completely wrong way with me, but got me to where I needed to go in the end. And it wasn’t the worst, because I got to marvel at the wonderful sand stone buildings of Bordeaux and the sunset over the Garonne. It took me about 10 minutes to find the entrance to the little alleyway in which my studio apartment is situated – naturally, I thought I had to sleep on the street that night. Once I did find it and opened to huge wooden sliding door to the patio, I got extremely excited about the huge orange and dark red heucheras and even more excited about my bed – until I opened the sliding door to the little studio and smelled it. That was the moment I realized that I will live in a dirty, moldy smelling apartment with a leaking shower that floods the whole bathroom every time you turn it on for more than 5 seconds for the next three weeks #yaykathi. (By now, I really love this apartment. A bit of cleaning and opening the windows did the trick. The shower is still a disaster, though. But hey, you can’t have it all.)

And this concludes the story of my first day in Bordeaux. A confusing metro station, a broken suitcase, a really weird smelling, dirty apartment, a broken shower and many many blissful, little moments. Reading through all of this again, I’m not even sure I should call this a travel reality check. In the moment, these little annoying incidents feel big and unsettling, because you are in a vulnerable position as it is: in a country that is not yours, perhaps even without speaking the language, etc. In hindsight, it was mostly great, though. And this is one of the biggest things traveling will teach you: to deal with the hiccups and move past them quickly, to enjoy the moments. Traveling makes you a problem solver. It teaches you to stay calm in the weirdest of situations. It shows you how kind strangers can be. And it makes you fall in love with life, the world and the little moments over and over again.

I’ll leave you with this for now. Au revoir de Bordeaux, mes chers

P.S.: I also realize that I am in an extremely privileged position, being able to chose to travel and to go where I want to go. I know that all these little hiccups are nothing compared to what others are going through at the moment. This text is mainly written in a bit of a satirical way, for your entertainment. If you do, however, also want to support these who can’t chose at the moment, consider donating to our fundraiser for the people of Kharkiv, who are still there, in a war zone, in need food and essentials on a daily basis.
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