Ten Hours
This is my contribution to Ryan's group blogging project. The assignment was to write a short essay about something that happened to you in a very specific place. The goal was to make the essay more about the intrinsic connection to the physical place than about what actually occurred there. Here are the participants:

Beth
Bryan
Emily
Meredith
Stacy
Ryan
Tom

And this is my story:

My junior year of college was spent at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. I often point to this experience as a turning point in my life. I packed so many experiences into those nine months abroad that it seemed like I was gone for many years. Before I left for Ireland, I was just another confused college student muddling through life. When I returned, I felt like I knew who I was. My career choice had changed, my world view was different… I was no longer just a kid from Arkansas. I was a world traveler! I was cosmopolitan! I was ME!

Yes, still very self-involved, our heroine. But now I had some confidence to back that up. Whether that was a good thing (self-confidence was definitely new to me) or a bad thing (I was maaaaaybe a little snobby about having "seen the world"), well, I will let the history books decide that. I was definitely more self-reliant after a year abroad. It's one thing to leave home and live in a dorm, where someone is still cooking your food, you have a car to drive around, and mom and dad (and their laundry facilities) are just 40 minutes away. It's another thing altogether to be in a foreign country, relying on your own cooking, utilizing public transportation, learning a new culture, spending Christmas away from your parents for the first time, all that jazz. It was scary but exciting. I loved it.

I also loved being so close to mainland Europe. This being the mid-to-late nineties, flights around Europe weren't that cheap yet, but I managed to make a couple of trips over to the mainland. And that is were our story begins.

Spring break 1998. Three friends and I decided to do a little backpacking. We were all Americans, part of the same study abroad program. The group consisted of myself, K (another girl), B (a boy), and P (another boy). We planned our trip to include Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Avignon, and then a split – they would continue to Italy while I flew back to Dublin to spend St. Patrick's Day with my friend Megan, visiting from the US. We planned our route so that our last stop together would be in Marseille, and then they would go their way while I took a train to Zurich, where my flight back to Dublin awaited me.

The trip was full of crazy adventures, the kind that can only happen when you let four college kids travel alone together. There were fights, missed connections (with me crying, alone, in several Paris metro stations), mangled French and Spanish resulting in surprise meals, even a little topless sunbathing. I think there may have been a breakup (K and P were sort of dating at the time) and a reconciliation. Needless to say, by the time we made it to Marseille, we were exhausted! It had been an incredible trip so far.

We arrived at the Marseille train station a little after noon, I believe. Maybe 2pm. I recall having about 10 hours to spend before hopping on a midnight train to Switzerland. We decided that we would all hang out in Marseille and then take night trains to our respective destinations.

European train stations have a nifty feature called "Left Luggage" or some such term. You can rent a locker to leave your 75lb. backpack while you explore the city. We all agreed that this would be a fantastic option for us in Marseille, so we all got lockers, left our bags, and headed out to see what the city offered.

None of us had done any research on Marseille, as we hadn't planned on spending any time there. So we were pretty much flying blind. We had heard that there was a lot of crime there (drug smuggling, maybe?), so we were a little on edge. But that's all we knew. We decided to make our way down to the harbor.

It was pretty impressive. We walked around some and eventually found ourselves at an old fort. Wikipedia tells me that there are two forts guarding the port, Fort Saint Nicolas and Fort Saint Jean; judging from pictures, I think we were at Fort Saint Nicholas. What I do know is that it was pretty deserted, and we decided to have a picnic. We had some food with us in P's backpack. I remember grapes, and I'm sure there were some crackers with delicious French cheese. We might have had some wine with us as well… knowing us, we did. So we had our lovely, leisurely picnic. There was a beautiful view of Marseille, so I took some pictures. The sun was beginning to go down, so we decided to head out.


But no. Remember how I said it was pretty deserted? Well, I guess whoever was in charge hadn't noticed the four American students having a picnic in a secluded corner of the facility. The gates had been closed, locking us in. Crap. I started to panic a little bit, knowing that I had to catch a train in a few hours. Someone suggested trying to crawl over the gates and slither through the crack between the gates and the metal bars extending from the top of the archway. I thought this was a terrible idea for two reasons: I am not athletic or strong, and I was fatter than the rest of these people. OK, three reasons: I am also clumsy. I was sure I would impale myself somehow. However, I was overruled. K tried going over first (she was the tiniest), and she made it. So did the rest of us.

Ah, the sweet air of freedom! How we drank it in! At this point, we were pretty much pissed off at Marseille. So we celebrated our freedom by engaging in that time-honored tradition of Americans abroad… the trip to McDonalds! Oh yes, I had my McPoulet sandwich and frites. It's amazing how a little comfort food will make everything better. Thus fortified, we decided to head back toward the train station and maybe get a drink along the way.

Not far from the station, we found a bar. It was apparently run by a creepy, middle-aged, mustachioed gentleman. Very few people were in the bar. Because we believed that Marseille was overrun with criminals, we all agreed that it was probably a front for some drug- or gun-smuggling operation. However, we decided to stay and have a drink or two. A short, older gentleman (also mustachioed) kept hitting on K, and eventually got her to dance with him to whatever song was playing on the jukebox. Later, some young(ish) French men came in and tried talking to us in English. Being rather paranoid about the perception of Ugly Americans Abroad, we decided to tell them we were Irish. They were overjoyed and began singing Irish rebel and/or drinking songs. We pretended to know the songs as we waved our beers in the air.

As it was growing quite late, we left our seedy newfound friends and trudged back up to the station. I recall it was now around 11pm. We made our way to the left luggage facility… oh no. More locked gates. A sign, in French, explaining that the left luggage room closed at 10pm and would not reopen until the morning. Oh no.

All I had on me was my money belt, containing my Eurail pass, plane tickets, passport, and credit cards. Crap.

At midnight, my friends put a very tearful Mandy on the train to Zurich. They proceeded to try to sleep in the train station, but were kicked out after an hour or so. So they tried to sleep in the stairwell leading down to the train station, where at some point K and P were propositioned by a random Frenchman (or was it a Frenchwoman?) for a threesome. The next morning, they grabbed our luggage and headed off for a week or so in Italy. God bless them, they dragged my backpack with them the entire way.

Friends tell me that Marseille is a wonderful place, full of beauty and good times. I just can't bring myself to agree with them. Maybe I'll go back again someday and try to find the other side of Marseille. But I'll check to see when the left luggage closes.