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Live Your Life Newsletter - November 2005
Travel & Hostel Newsletter for Backpackers
Newsletters: November 2005 | All Archives
Catalyst For Adventure: The True Story of Best Friends Travelling Through Europe
This is an exciting feature of the “Live Your Life Newsletter”! Every month we will be featuring an extract of a fantastic new book entitled, “Catalyst for Adventure: The true story of best friends travelling through Europe” by Crystal Stanczak.
On the choppy seas, with the smell of decomposed hay in our nostrils, we concentrated on what lie ahead. We were sailing toward the foreign language chapter in our trip. Finally, I would have the chance to use phrases I learned in the five years of French class I had taken.
Can I use the hall pass to go to the bathroom?” I asked Summer in French.
“I come to school by automobile.” I continued.
“I like to eat salad. Do you have two sisters?”
“I went to the store yesterday. My father is not agreeable. The dog is brown.”
Yes, this would be a terrific redemption for all of the tiresome hours I had spent conjugating verbs in my French workbook. Maybe the Parisians would also appreciate the Christmas carols I remembered from 11th grade. After all, my rendition of “Frosty the Snowman” was unequivocally the best in the junior class.
Someone once told me, “When you are not looking for love, that’s when it finds you.” After watching my best friend go through mini-agony, love was that last thing I wanted to find in France. Instead, it found me—three times over.
My first French love came in the form of a hundred-year-old steel structure—the Eiffel Tower. Based on our travel day, I would not have expected to be enchanted that evening. We had had little sleep the night before and were unfamiliar with the Paris subway system. What’s worse, was that we tried to settle in a hostel during rush hour. When our subway stop had arrived, the car was so packed that Summer couldn’t get out. Part of me successfully exited the subway car, and the other part of me (my enormous backpack) did not. The doors shut on my now-ripping backpack, forcing French commuters to push the rest of me out of the car with all of their might. Who ever said that Parisians were not helpful?
With gratitude, I saluted the commuters in their native tongue, “Thank you for your help. I have red hair.”
Eventually Summer and I reconnected at our hostel, ecstatic that we could finally take off the thirty-five pounds we’d been hauling on our backs all day. My brother had lent me the same backpack he had used to travel around the world, and I felt a little guilty that this sentimental item was growing into something that I resented.
After a refreshing dinner, we decided that the first tourist attraction we should see was the Eiffel Tower—love at first sight. The occurrence lingers in my soul to this day.
A giddy smile stretched harder across my face the closer my feet took me to the Eiffel Tower. The tower was illuminated in orange tones, and many people stared with upturned heads and dangling jaws . . . myself included. In my high school classroom, I had seen this structure a million times, yet somehow in person, there was no comparison. The carefully crafted metal beams represented a dream . . . and now that I had actually touched it for myself, a photo of the Eiffel tower would never satisfy me. It was much taller than I imagined, surrounded by elegantly manicured botany. Over the noise of street peddlers, I swore that I heard the Seine River singing. On the hour, it put on a ten-minute light show and everyone around ceased discussion, so that the tower would not be offended. With reverence and delight I promised that I would come back. Little did I know that the Eiffel tower would draw me back every day I spent in Paris.
Order this book: You can order this book at Amazon.com
Read any other good travel books? Send your recommendations to submissions@st-christophers.co.uk
Newsletters: November 2005 | All Archives
