At 6:00 am my alarm went off to let me know that I had to leave in 30 minutes if I wanted to catch my train to Paris from Luxembourg. Along with my alarm, I also had an email notification from my train company. The email was telling me that my train was canceled. I immediately jumped up and quickly got ready so I could get to the train station as soon as possible to get an idea of what was going on and to see if I could catch another train. When I arrived at the train station the woman at the desk informed me that my train was not canceled, but that I would need to take a bus to a different station to catch a different train. This helped to calm me a bit, but I was still nervous about what was going on. I was traveling alone. This made it hard to deal with this type of situation for me. I felt like I had no one to go to.
In Luxembourg not many people speak fluent English, and my French is not very good. I was starting to get anxious about my trip and what was going on. I didn’t know where the other station was or what any of the signs said. When I arrived at the other station I heard some women speaking in French and English. I was able to interpret some of the French that they were saying and understood that they were taking the same train as me. I went up to them and asked them if I would be able to join them. I was nervous to talk to strangers at first, but these women were very kind and welcoming. They took me under their wings and immediately started to have a discussion with me about my trip and my life.
The older woman was getting off at a stop on the way to Paris, but her daughter was going all the way there. The daughter, Nathalie, sat with me the rest of the way, gave me her number in case anything happened while I was in Paris, taught me how to use the metro, and even rode the metro with me until I got off on my stop. The mother and daughter pair were so kind and helpful. Talking to strangers and traveling alone can seem terrifying but sometimes it leads to making new friends and getting to see amazing places that you have dreamed of seeing, such as The Louvre for me.
