I write this as I sit in the waiting lounge of the Gare de Nice Ville, the train station in the Nice city center, and wait for my train to Marseille. From there I will take a train to Montpellier, where I’ll take in the sights (I hear the architecture is quite decent) for a few hours before then boarding a train to Toulouse, where I’ll be staying with an old friend from Rembau for a few days.
The journey here hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride, which you would have gathered from watching my recent vlog (included below). I left Malaysia on a 10.10 am Emirates flight on 11th June, and was due to arrive in Dubai at around 1.00 pm local time before then getting on a flight to Lyon. As it turned out, just as my plane was about to land at the Dubai International Airport, it was forced to land elsewhere for the time being as the airport had temporarily shut down due to some kind of drone flying about in the airport airspace. My plane was just one of the 14 that had to be redirected that day.
By the time we were finally allowed to land about two hours later than was originally scheduled, my flight to Lyon had already gone. I wasn’t the only one, of course; there must have been about a hundred or more other passengers queuing up to find out when our flight would be rescheduled for, some more disgruntled than others. Many of us, including myself, unfortunately had to wait until the next day for our respective flights. We were given hotel rooms to stay in for the night, as well as meals for dinner and breakfast.
The room I was given was actually quite nice. It was comfortable, and after (a pretty good) dinner I watched the Wales-Slovakia game that night until I dozed off. The next morning, aside from breakfast, I stayed in my room until just before 12.00 pm, which was when the shuttle van to the airport would be arriving. At about 2.30 that afternoon, I was finally on my flight to Lyon, 24 hours behind schedule.
After I’d landed at the Lyon Saint-Exupery Airport (somewhat interestingly named after the author of The Little Prince, who was also a fighter pilot in World War II), I bought a train ticket to the Lyon city center, where I would then board the earliest train to Nice, where a friend of mine from Rembau (and Bukit Indah, in fact) is studying. The ride was only supposed to take about 20 minutes, so about 30 minutes into the journey I realized that I was on the wrong train and spent the remaining hour-and-a-half kicking myself about it. To be honest, though, even before the ride had begun, while I was sitting in the train waiting for it to depart, I had a hunch that I’d made a mistake. However, I decided at that point to stick to my guns – that wasn’t one of the better decisions I’d made in my life.
At the end of the trip, we got off at this place called the Paris Gare de Lyon. This got me a bit confused, as I wasn’t sure where I was. I hadn’t yet gotten myself a SIM card, so I wasn’t able to access the internet using mobile data. Eventually, I managed to get online using the station’s free WiFi (which was only limited to 20 minutes) and I found out that I was, in fact, in Paris.
The first thing I did after finding out I was in Paris was to locate the nearest mosque as I hadn’t done my Maghrib and Isya’ prayers yet. It turned out that the Paris Grand Mosque was only a short bus ride away (Google Maps even told me which bus to take; technology is wonderful), so I made my way there. It should also be noted that I had to lug my two heavy bags around with me: a large green travel bag, which weighed at about 19 kg back at KLIA, and my backpack, which wasn’t too light either as it contained my laptop as well as a bunch of other stuff. I wasn’t exactly in peak physical condition, of course, so traveling from any given point to another was quite a challenge.
I think it was just before midnight when I finally got to the mosque, as they were in the middle of Tarawikh at the time. I was pretty tired, so I didn’t manage to join in after I’d completed my Maghrib and Isya’. After they’d finished, I was getting ready to bunk down there for the night when a man, presumably upon seeing me and my giant green bag and gathering that I wasn’t from around town, greeted me. We briefly chatted and I asked him if I could stay the night in the mosque. He spoke fluent French, so he asked someone from the mosque’s management if it was possible. As it turned out, that wasn’t allowed – the mosque was closed between prayer times.
I tried not to panic, as I’d pretty much banked on being able to spend the night there. Thankfully, the man was nice enough to offer to drive me back to the train station where he figured I’d be able to stay until morning. I was a bit suspicious at first, but for whatever reason I decided to trust him.
I’m well aware that he could have mugged me, and the fact that it was about 1.00 am in Paris (doesn’t exactly have the best reputation for safety) means that it was likely that he would have. However, I just felt that the whole situation just didn’t seem like it could have been premeditated; too many factors were in play. And besides, what kind of criminal goes to Tarawikh prayers at the mosque until 1.00 am and then spontaneously decides to take advantage of a naïve-looking traveler?
I was right to trust him, as it turned out. He was a 25-year-old French citizen with Pakistani roots named ‘Abid (I think), who had been born, raised and educated in France. He was an Uber driver with a degree in something like International Trade, and also had a small fleet of drivers working for him. He wasn’t really from the area either; he just happened to be in the neighborhood after finishing a job and decided to drop by the mosque for prayers before going home.
‘Abid was very helpful. Not only did he drive me back to the station, he also helped to check the price for a room at a hotel (which was way too expensive for just a few hours), helped to carry one of my bags, and even checked the qiblah for me while we were at the station. After all that was done, he left.
I settled down to sleep at this sort of padded seating area, but it wasn’t long before some big security guys came up to me – and others who were sleeping or were about to sleep there – and asked us to leave. There were still maybe two hours left before Fajr, and four before the ticketing office would be open, so I started wondering what I was going to do.
I decided to go back to the mosque. As I had plenty of time to kill, I decide to walk the whole way, heavy bags and all. I stopped at a few bus stops along the way to catch my breath and took the opportunity to observe nighttime Paris.
An interesting observation I had was that the vehicles on the road would always, and I mean always, stop at red lights, even at pedestrian crossings, even in the middle of the night with no other cars or pedestrians in sight. Being a KL boy, I found that to be quite insane. Another observation I had was that it was common practice for drivers to turn off their car engines while waiting at stoplights and then starting them up again once the lights turned green. I didn’t know how economical it was to be doing that as compared to just letting it the engine run, but I intend to find out.
I eventually reached the mosque, prayed Fajr, and then walked back to the train station. I waited for the ticket office to open at 6.00 am and asked for a ticket to Nice. The only one they had available was a night train. I’d gotten pretty sick of Paris at that point and didn’t want to stay there for another day (especially not with the prospect of again having to haul my luggage around the whole time), so I asked for a ticket to Lyon instead, where I figured I should be able to get a train to Nice that left before the sun set – and even if I couldn’t get one, at least I wouldn’t be in Paris anymore. They had a train to Lyon at about 10.00 am, so I took it.
It had been a somewhat interesting start to my trip, albeit a difficult one. Things could only get better from there, I suppose.
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