Article October 23, 2006 Issue

A LONG, BRIGHT NIGHT FOR THE TRAVELER

BY CHRISTINE LOVE

During my junior year of college, I had the opportunity to study abroad in Austria and Germany for ten weeks, taking classes and learning in a different environment. Right before that term began, I met a friend during spring break, and we set out to travel around Europe.

We started out in Italy, and then had to get up to Paris so that my friend could catch her plane to go home. We were supposed to take an overnight train from Florence to Paris, but we found out that the train was full and that our only other choice was to take a train that arrived in Paris at 11:30 at night. But because my friend needed to get to the airport, that's what we had to do.

When we got to Paris, we tried to figure out what to do for the night. There wasn't enough money for a hotel, so we decided to spend the night in the train station. We didn't really have an alternative. At least with police officers walking around, there was some form of protection. Still, when we saw how many people there were, we weren't comfortable sitting there. There were some rowdy people around us, yelling at police officers and that kind of thing—not a place where two 20-year-old women would want to spend the night.