Meeting People

"When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.” ~Pema Chodron

May 2, 2013 (Continued)

“I am Zachary,” I said, totally taken aback that this black man, who’d been speaking fluent French just seconds ago knew my name.

“You are with WSA!” he said. “I’m Kevi. I will be your guide!” He stuck out his hand to shake mine

“Oh! Right!” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“According to my information, you were the earliest one to arrive. You haven’t seen any others?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But I just checked in.”

“Have you had any trouble with the hostel? Do you need anything?” It was so funny to hear his thick French accent.

“No,” I said, still ready to go sleep. “Everything’s great. I’m just going to go take a nap.”

He chuckled. “Ok then, well I will be back tonight at 8:00 to meet with you and any others that come today.”

“Great!” I said. “Just down here?”

“Yes,” he said. “I will be here at reception at 8:00.”

“I’ll see you then!” I said.

Riding the elevator back up to the room, I was ready for my nap. The beds were built into the wall in little cubbies with privacy curtains that could be drawn. There were crates to store things under the bottom bunk, but they didn’t have locks on them. The crate was too big to fit my TSA lock, so I stuck my stuff at the foot of my bed. Resting my feet on top of my things, I drew the curtain and finally lay down.

Of course now, my brain was too anxious to sleep. Within minutes, the door opened and someone came in. I pulled open the curtain to see who it was. A tall guy with a goatee came in and started stowing his stuff under his bed.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Zach.” I reached out my hand to be social.

“Jack,” he said, shaking my hand.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“I’m originally from Arizona,” he said. That seemed like a vague way to answer that question. “You?” he asked.

“I’m from the US,” I said. “I’m studying in Prague this semester.”

“Oh,” he said. I was getting the sense that conversation made him uncomfortable. “I’m studying in Ireland.”

“Very cool,” I said. “Are you here with the Weekend Student Adventures group by chance?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes I am.”

“Me too!” I said. Coaxing the conversation beyond that was more work than I was willing to do. I decided I would wait until I was in a better mood to continue chatting. “I’m going to take a nap now, but I’ll chat more with you later.”

“Ok,” he said.

I redrew my curtain, and after he stowed his stuff, I heard him leave.

I checked my watch. It was 2:45. I set an alarm on my iPod for 6:00, so that if I ever got to sleep, I would wake up in time to get some dinner and meet Kevi.

With that, I finally dozed off.

I was woken up by the sound of the door opening, and two voices—one male and one female—stumbling into the room. I could hear them talking about which bed to claim, and I heard them checking behind curtains to see which were open. I stuck my foot out of the curtain and over the edge of the bed, so that they could see I was in here, without opening the curtain. After a few minutes, they left.

As I was trying to get back to sleep, I heard them come in again. This time, they were joined by a voice I recognized. It was the owner from downstairs. Apparently, this whole room was supposed to be empty. He promised to send house keeping up to get the beds remade and find out who was still here.

I checked my watch again and saw that I had slept for about 20 minutes. Between the traffic outside, the bells in the school yard, my new roommates, and housekeeping…20 minutes appeared to be as good as it gets.

I pulled open the curtain. “Hi,” I said.

“Oh Hi!” the girl said. “I’m sorry, did we wake you?”

“Not really,” I sort of lied. “I’m Zach.”

“Mariah,” she said.

“Brandon,” the guy said. He was unpacking his backpack and folding his clothes neatly into the crate under his bunk.

A funny thing happened at that point. The three of us started talking…a lot. They had just happened to run into each other at the airport and discovered they were both studying in Ireland and both coming on the WSA Paris trip. Mariah had been to Prague and considered it one of her favorite cities in Europe. Our conversation just took off from there. We talked about our families back home, various cities we’d travelled to, jobs back home, books we’ve read, etc.

At one point, I made the comment, “I’m Eagle Scout…”

“No way,” Brandon interrupted me. “Me too!”

“Do we have to do the secret handshake now,” I joked.

“Only if you want to,” he retorted, equally as sarcastic as I had been.

In an odd way, talking lifted my spirits. I didn’t feel as run down as I had before. My brain still ached a little, but I didn’t feel as irritable or worn out.

Around 5:00, I asked, “Do you guys want to go try and find some dinner?”

“I’m actually exhausted,” Brandon said. “Could we take like a 20 minute nap, and then head out?”

That sounded perfect.

I’m not sure I actually slept anymore, but just laying down felt great. We waited a little past 20 minutes, but about 5:30, they were ready to head out. Jack came back too and we invited him to join us. I wrapped my ankle again, and we went to wander along the canal to find a restaurant.

The people at reception gave a few suggestions. Apparently we were in a fairly residential area so everything in this area was pretty cheap. We never found any of the specific restaurants they proposed, but we as some beautiful scenery around the part of the canal I hadn’t been to. Like many of the other European cities, there were lots of little playgrounds scattered around with little kids and their parents playing and enjoying the outdoors.

As we walked around, we’d check the menu on the door before going into a place. Mariah knew a little French so she would translate. For being “cheap” all of these prices seemed pretty expensive to me. As we wrapped down to the end of the canal, we came to a beautiful courtyard with a huge fountain in it. It was very crowded, and this was the most expensive food we’d seen.

Deciding that restaurants closer to the hostel had had better deals, we wrapped back up the street, and cut across the canal on a large overpass bridge. The views were beautiful. The sun was just starting to set, and late afternoon shadows were being scattered around the streets. The architecture of all the buildings was so beautiful. I was starting to see the magic of Paris.

We found a restaurant and went in to take a seat. The bar tender called over to us—in English—asking if we wanted drinks. We asked for menus, and he said dinner wasn’t served until 7:30. Knowing that we all had to be back to meet Kevi, and not wanting to wait another hour to eat, we decided to give up and go eat at the hostel restaurant.

Crowding into a circular booth, we looked over the menus. I ordered an Orangina again to drink and a croque-madame sandwich.  It was basically a grilled cheese sandwich with ham in it and fried egg cooked over top. It tasted great!

Our waiter was hilarious too. When Jack flagged him down, he said, in a very heavy French accent, “What do you need boy? More food? A woman? Both?”

As we sat around the table sharing more stories, I saw Kevi come in. He looked lost, searching around for us, so I waved to get his attention. He came over and sat down with us. The rest of the group got introduced to him and our waiter cleared our plates.

“Do you guys want to walk around? Do you want to stay here? The canal is a good local hang out place,” he said. “The locals come out at night and just sit around it and enjoy being outside. It is not very touristy so it never gets real crowded.”

“I’m definitely up for a walk,” I said. I’d passed exhaustion and was now moving on to delirium so getting outside and getting some exercise sounded great. The rest of the group agreed.

“Ok,” Kevi said, his accent still throwing me off. “Does someone want to check the room to make sure we aren’t missing anyone?”

“I’ll go,” I volunteered.

I rode up in the elevator, and went to the room. Sure enough, I found a dark-skinned girl with curly black hair stowing her stuff in a crate.

“Are you with WSA?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. I detected a bit of an accent, but I couldn’t place it.

“I’m Zach,” I said.

“Wildaly,” she said.

“I’m sorry?” I said, hoping she would repeat it.

“Wildaly,” she said. “Just call me Will.”

“Ok,” I smiled. “Kevi, our guide is here. He was going to take us for a walk around the canal if you want to join us downstairs.”

“Oh great!” she said. “I will finish stowing my stuff and come right down.”

“Awesome,” I said. “I will see you down there.”

I reported back to the group, and we waited for Will to come down. When she did, we took a short walk down to the end of the canal that I’d been hanging out at most of the day. There, there was a small bar called 61, which we went in to take a seat. Ordering tap water, we sat around sharing stories.

Kevi shared with us that he had been born and raised on the island of Martinique, an overseas region of France. After studying an interning all over the world—from New York, Barcelona, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—he graduated college and settled in Paris. He gives tours for different agencies almost every day of the week and hopes to start his own company called Black Paris Walks.

“I haven’t seen so many black people in Europe until I came here,” Will said.

“I agree,” I said. “It surprised me.”

“France has a lot of black people,” Kevi said. “Do you know why?”

None of us did.

“It was mostly to piss off the Americans,” he said. “In the 1920s and 30s, rich Americans were flooding to Paris for vacations. Since racism was so strong in America, the French government decided to also welcome in immigrants from Africa, as well as Africans from America who were trying to flee the oppression in the states. So when the Americans came to Paris, they would be like ‘I don’t want to sit here with these black people.’ And there was nothing they could do about it because they were totally equal in Paris. Since then, Paris became a safe place for black immigrants to come, so a lot of them settled here.”

“I didn’t expect that,” Will said.

“No one does,” Kevi said. “Everyone thinks ‘Oh Paris! It will be these skinny white guys walking around with baguettes.’”

“I have definitely seen more black people than baguettes,” I said.

He laughed. “That could be my marketing slogan. Black Paris Walks: more blacks than baguettes!”

Kevi also shared that the gypsies in Paris were just as hated as they were everywhere in Europe. He explained however that not all beggars were gypsies.

“There is sort of an odd thing in Paris,” he said. “You will see little kids or men with no legs sitting in the metros asking for money. Think about it. How does a man with no legs get down into the metro? How do little kids know how to beg? There is sort of a system, like…how do you call it…pimping?...where people are hired to beg because they are young or because they look pitiful, but the money goes back to the person they work for.”

At that point we sat around sharing funny stories from our various trips around Europe. Brandon hated the weather in Ireland, while Mariah hated the food. Will was from Puerto Rico, but was studying for a year in Italy.

“I have never been with so many funny Americans,” she said at one point.

After we’d finished our drinks, we headed back to the hostel. Kevi said that he would meet us—and the 12 other people that were supposed to be arriving—tomorrow at 10am. We thanked him, and headed up to the room. I was pleasantly surprised that not only did the front desk rent towels, but they sold cheap razors. I got one of each and went to take a shower.

The showers in this hostel were sort of locker room style, down the hall from the room. Like Barcelona, the water was on a 30 second timer, and the button had to be re-pushed ever half minute to keep the stream flowing.

Brandon was in one of the stalls when I came in. “So what did you do for your Eagle project?” he yelled over the side of the stall, competing with the sound of the water. I told him about my project and he shared about his. It wasn’t until we went back to our room and found Mariah siting in the hall on her laptop, that we learned the whole floor could pretty much hear our conversation.

We all sat out in the hall for a while trying to connect to the Wi-Fi. At this point, I’d been up for about 36 hours with only two little 20 minute naps. Unable to get or maintain connectivity, I decided to call it a night and went into the room to journal. It had been a fun evening. This was a great group and in some way—probably because we’d all been alone for so long—we felt like a little temporary family.

And with this temporary family, I was excited to see the magical city of Paris.