The next morning, we made the most of our time left. We started out with an hour or so at a free historical museum, followed by a walk through a park. I had told Dallin before coming, that when we were in Vienna we must waltz; I didn’t care if it was in a fancy place or just by a street musician, but when in Vienna one must waltz. So, it was our last morning in Vienna, were walking through the park, and Dallin says, “Put your stuff down, we’re waltzing!” So he put his iPOD onto a waltz, gave one earplug to me and one for himself, and proceeded to teach me how to waltz. I was terrible, but it was fun. Afterwards, we went to Easter Mass at a cathedral were we had read the music is so good it’s like a concert in itself, which it was. It was so amazing I didn’t want to leave, but I eventually had to drag myself away to catch my plane to Nice (southern coast of France) to meet up with the school in Marseilles the next day.
This is where things get interesting. I stayed so long at mass and didn’t realize how far it was to the airport that I barely made my plane to Nice (I arrived 35 minutes before my plane left). Upon arrival, I was going to try to get a hold of Marvin, who had spent the last week in Marseilles, to see where he was staying that night (this is Sunday night). He had warned me his phone might not work, and sure enough it didn’t. So I went to an internet café briefly to find a hostel, went there and they were booked, but found another just around the corner. This actually turned out to be a hotel, not a hostel, but there were no hostels to be found, so I ended up getting a nice hotel room all to myself for only 35 Euros. I walked around the city a bit, saw a cool Russian church, and walked clear across the map to find these Roman ruins, only to discover they were already closed for the night. So due to my tired feet, I headed back to my hotel and had a lovely evening in. I relaxed and caught up on my news, both in French and English, before calling it an early night, so I thought.
The phone rang around 11:00, but no one was there, so I figured it was a prank call. Then it rang again a minute later, and this man came on saying he had a phone call for me. A voice comes on saying “Hello? Who is this?” Me (very tired and bewildered, wondering who could possibly know I am at this hotel): “Uh… hello? This is Kathleen, who is this?” Voice: “This is your mother.” What?? I was so confused, as I’m sure you were. Let me explain. I thought I was going to let me mom know when I met up with the school group in Marseilles, since that was more for sure. She thought I was going to call when I met up with Marvin that night. Either way, I lost reception on my cell about 10 minutes after getting to Nice, so I couldn’t call anyways, so at this point she began to panic, as any good mother does. She began by calling the school, tried to reach the boys dean who spoke a little English, but he was unavailable. She asked for anyone who spoke English, got my friend Stephanie. My poor mother is telling Stephanie all about how trustworthy I am and how I do all these things without thinking and was supposed to meet up with Marvin and Stephanie is just like “uh huh…” So she tries to call Marvin but can’t get a hold of him either. Then my mom tries to get a hold of Dallin to see if he knows what’s going on. No idea.
Then, bright idea. She decides to stalk me and see if there’s been any recent activity in my bank account, hoping (in her words) there wasn’t zero dollars meaning someone had robbed and abducted me. What an optimist. Luckily, no abduction, it did show something like “Nice, France- hotel Fland…”. Thankfully for my mother I had paid with my card and not cash. She then called the international directory (which I didn’t even know existed), and asked for a hotel in Nice that started with “Fland…”, they found something they thought was it, transferred her, she got the receptionist who spoke no English, but somehow finally managed to get through to the tired and confused me, at which point we straightened everything out and all was right again. My mom said it reminded her of trying to track us down when we got stranded in the Kolkata airport, for those of you who remember that story.
No comments:
Post a Comment