Toussaint Part 1 - Leaving Besançon

So I've reached the first of 4 vacations/breaks that I'll get while I'm here in France teaching in the next 7 months. This one is Toussaint, which means All Saint's Day (November 1st). It officially starts Saturday but I only teach one class on Fridays and the teacher I would be assisting told me to get a head start on my travels if I wanted. So here I am, Friday at 6:10am, a few minutes out of Besançon on the TGV (High Speed Train) to Paris. Getting here was a bit of an adventure though, but I'll start at the beginning with a few random pieces of background information.

Trains in France (like most places, I believe) get more expensive as you approach the date of travel, especially for the more popular and easier to fill trains. With my youth discount card, I can get a one way ticket to Paris from my town for about 20 euro - if I buy it ahead of time. Since I bought my train tickets for this trip at the last minute due to confusion with plans and dates my options were a bit more limited though. In short, I ended up paying 20 euro, but I'm on the train that departs Besançon at about 5:55am. Buses here don't start until 6am, so that wasn't an option for me anymore. I live clear on the other end of the city in a suburb - and so walking to the station would have taken about an hour and a half at a moderately brisk pace. So, I decided I would bike.

In addition to this, I'm planning on going to a Halloween party in Dunkerque, and I had started scoping out a costume here in Besançon. Inspiration struck at a costume shop where I found a cheap felt bowler hat (I won't give the costume away yet though). I didn't plan on transporting this hat from Besançon to Paris to Dunkerque though - and so I was at a loss as to how I would carry the hat in my backpack or duffel without damaging it - especially on the bike portion of the trip. Finally I settled on the most logical option, I just wore the damned thing.

Also, There is one English teacher at our school, M.G. (I won't write her full name for her privacy's sake), who has been very friendly and has had us over to her place a couple of times for lunch. She also gave us a large bag of small apples from her family's orchards (she's from a small farming village in the region, and is very proud of her farming small town heritage and mannerisms), a jar of homemade quince jelly, a jar of homemade blackberry jam, and an orange juice container full of homemade vegetable soup. She also happens to live about a 3 minute's walk from the train station in Besançon.

Ok I think you have all the background information you need.

So when I mentioned to M.G. that I would be biking to the train station and asked her if there was a covered bike parking somewhere at the train station (she also bikes a lot) she immediately offered to let me just keep my bike at her place while I was gone. Her apartment has a little shed in the back that locks and since I was already coming over for lunch later in the week she offered to give me a key to the shed so I could just lock the bike up myself before catching my train. This sounded ideal so I thanked her and agreed.

So this morning I got on my bike at about 4:45 (to give me ample time before my train) and started the trip out to the station. My bike doesn't have a basket or a rack, so I had to carry my small duffel bag and backpack on me while I biked. This wasn't so bad except the duffel was most stable in front of me and so every time I pedaled my knees lifted it up and it felt like I was doing twice as much work as usual to pedal. In addition to this, it's freaking cold here. Luckily today was a little warmer than yesterday morning (When you could see your breath outside even at mid-day) but it was still cold enough that I had to stop a couple of times to warm up my hands because my fingers were going numb and I was worried about not being able to feel the brakes. I made it to M.G.'s at about 5:30 and proceeded to open the (very creaky) metal gate leading to the yard with the shed, then took out the key and tried the door.

It didn't work. Like, at all. The key is a large brass key that looks like it was hand-made in the 19th century (looks like the key in the Disney movie Cinderella) and it just wouldn't turn in the lock.

This is how I found myself on my knees in someone's yard in France at 5:30 am, holding my bike-lamp between my teeth, wearing a bowler hat, using both hands to try to force this shed door open while being as quiet as possible to not wake the neighbor's when a woman walked past, and stopped to ask me very assertively what I thought I was doing. Only at this point did I realize how sinister I must look. Oh yeah, and I haven't shaved in like 3 days either.

Luckily I managed to talk the woman out of calling the cops by quickly explaining that my key wasn't working (I think the fact that I had a key really helped) and I decided to give up on the shed and lock my bike up on the fence next to the shed and leave a note for M.G. in her mailbox along with my bike-lock key.

So yeah, this trip is off to an amusing start. I'll be in Paris in about an hour and a half though (just passed Dijon) - hopefully I'll track my friend Matt down to have someone to go out with tonight. Jarrad arrives tomorrow and I'm sure that will be some good times as well. Hopefully I'll keep this updated during the next week and a half that I'll be moving around doing stuff. Pictures on the way soon - in the meantime check out the pictures from the Besançon strike that I added to my previous post.