"When I Find Myself In Times of Trouble . . ."

So at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning (March 28) I had to be awake to walk to the train station with my friend Sarah so we could embark on our ten-day trip to France and Ireland. Unfortunately, I had a ton of stuff I needed to get done the night before and when I finally got to bed I couldn't fall asleep. So at 5 in the morning I headed out on our 45 minute walk to the train station running on 0 hours of sleep.

Then we got on the train and I went to buy my ticket at the little machine. But the machine wouldn't take my card. And I was getting really frustrated. So of course I did the really stupid thing and forced my card in the slot. Only to discover that that was the money slot, not the card slot. In my defense, Sarah thought it was the card slot too. So the machine pretty much ate my credit card. Which, of course, is also my credit card. So at this point I have 100 euro to get me through ten days. Oh and we tried to talk to the conductor, who, naturally, speaks very little english. But he finally figured out what we were trying to tell him and he said that I would just have to leave my Austria address and the train people would have to come and open the machine and they'd mail my card back to me. Thankfully, Sarah was incredibly generous in lending me money throughout the trip.

We got off the train in St. Polten where we had to pick up our reservations for the next two trains. But the confirmation number for our reservation was written on the one piece of paper that I didn't need for this trip so I had left it in my room in Gaming. So they couldn't give us our reservations. So we just had to wing it. On the bright side, I was able to validate my Eurail pass in St. Polten.

We had some time in St. Polten before we had to catch our next train so, I shamefully admit, we stopped at McDonald's for breakfast and also picked up lunch to take with us on the train.

We then got on the train to Frankfurt and there were no seats and even the floors were starting to get crowded. So Sarah stood by the doorway while I grabbed a patch of floor in the hallway. I started out reading but considering I still hadn't gotten any sleep that was just not gonna happen. So I curled up on the floor and took a nap. Sarah told me later that everyone was looking at me funny but I really don't care cuz I was exhausted and I did in fact get some quality rest on that train ride.

Once we got to Frankfurt we had to switch to our train to Paris. I was completely freaking out cuz this was the train that we really needed reservations for. So we were praying Emergency Novenas and I was imploring the intercession of St. Jude and I was just so nervous! But we got on the train and grabbed two random seats by the luggage rack and we were so happy just to be on the train! And we were actually really lucky to get those seats cuz there were a whole bunch of people stuck standing. And as we started off on our journey to Paris I turned to Sarah and was like "You know what song I just thought of that I think is totally appropriate for everything that's happened today?" and she was like "what?" and I was like "Let It Be by The Beatles" and she was like "Oh my gosh I've had that stuck in my head all day!" We later determined that Let It Be was pretty much our theme song for this trip - hence the title of this and future blog posts. But more on that later. In the end we ended up having to pay 20 euro because we didn't have reservations but that was actually not bad considering we've heard horror stories of other students who've had to pay up to 60 euro.

Once we arrived in Paris we hopped on the metro, got off at our stop and promptly got lost. Yeah, hostelworld pretty much gave us the worst directions ever but we finally found our hostel just in time! The hostel closes at 11 and we got there at 10:30! The receptionist actually locked up right after we checked in.

So we went up to our room, I did the first day of my novena to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, and went to bed.