The Strike Hit Me Hard

Remember my recent post about strikes all across France? (if you hadn’t read it yet, click here) Well, I got the VIP experience today.

Yes, electronics can be an addiction nowadays, but there are just some days when you tend to forget about them. I casually walked out of my house this morning holding an oreo cupcake in my hand without realizing that my phone was NOT IN MY POCKET. Only when I got in the car and we were already a few streets away from home did it strike me that I left it lying on my bed.

Normally it wouldn’t be such a big problem, I just couldn’t send and receive messages for the entire day, that’s all. But today was the day I specifically needed my phone because when I got off the student bus, headed towards the public bus stop and waited almost half an hour without a sign of any bus passing by, I needed to call my host mom. Unfortunately I did not have family member phone numbers written somewhere on a piece of paper. I started to contemplate on ways to solve this huge problem.

I was basically stranded fifteen minutes car distance away from home on a raining evening without any way to contact anyone. I thought about asking around for the nearest police station, but didn’t want to cause such a big scene just because I couldn’t get home at the moment. Randomly stopping a car and hitchhiking? Way too dangerous. It seemed to me that there was only one more solution left – walk.

So I began to follow the bus route and went bus stop hopping. When I came to the stop in front of the city hall I spotted Le Paris cinema right across the street. Then an idea hit me – I could go inside and find the owner of the cinema to call my parents, because my parents participate in multiple religious activities and playing a christian film once a month at this cinema was one of them. The owner recognized me and tried calling my host dad, but unfortunately it went directly to voicemail because he was working on a business trip.

By then the situation didn’t seem that horrible anymore – even if neither of my parents could come pick me up immediately, at least I had a nice indoor place to wait. However, I still preferred getting home as soon as possible, or else my host family would start to worry and maybe even freak out when I don’t pick up my phone.

Then my luck came – the owner of the cinema turned towards the snack bar where a young man was just finishing up some work and asked him if he could drive me home. It was very nice and generous of him to agree to it and I was officially saved for the day.

On our way we talked a lot. He was very interested in the whole exchange student thing, and we also talked about cultural differences. “Alsace (a French region) is the real France,” he said to me. I replied that visiting Strasbourg was already on my bucket list and I hope to cross it off soon.

So thank you, S, for being my knight in shining armor savior in a nice car.

“Bonne continuation!”