Travel Stories - Esks Adventures
Earlier in the year (2014), I did it. I went on my big OE with my sister and cousin and we travelled overseas.
The whole experience was just incredible and I constantly yearn to go back.
One of the things I think back on that makes me laugh every single time, was when we were on the train in France, leaving Paris to travel up north.
We had laboriously traipsed with our huge packs on our backs to the station, trying to locate our gate and ensure we were on the correct train. My large green pack was the worst and most embarrassing, it being far too big for my short self. I resembled a turtle and, with the weight of it, walked as slow as one too.
It was an early morning train so we got ourselves a coffee and freshly baked pastry to take with us. We made a huge scene bursting into the carriage; trying to balance our food, drink, packs and extra bags, helping one another to throw, and shove our luggage up onto the rack above us.
I sat next to my sister, and our cousin sat across the aisle from us. We got ourselves all seated and settled, I pulled down the tray in front of me and placed everything I needed on it; coffee, pastry, phone, music and book. I sighed and began to relax a bit and my sister and I were chatting and giggling with excitement about our next step in our adventure.
The train was hot and stuffy and we looked around for air conditioning or a window to open. Suddenly, we heard a “bzzzzzzzzzzzz” nearby. That was when we noticed there was a wasp buzzing at the window next to us and it was inside the train. My sister nearly jumped into my lap and we looked around us but nobody seemed phased by it, or at least they didn’t know it was there. Yet. The wasp buzzed around to the window behind us and we poked our heads over the seats to the man seated there. He looked up from his newspaper at us “Excuse me, there’s a wasp in here, by your window”. We pointed to the horribly carnivorous looking insect in the window. He looked at it, back at us, shrugged and went back to reading.
We could not believe this. How was he not afraid of this potential threat? Could he not at least get rid of it for us if he was so unafraid?
Next thing we knew, our cousin leaped up out of her seat and yelled at us “look out guys!” she held her hands above us and I looked up just in time to see my enormous, oversized pack tumbling down on me. I jumped up and managed to divert its landing spot but wasn’t able to save my coffee. I travelled the next few hours with coffee stained pants...and I will never know what became of the wasp.
