A comically bad day

I went to Anger to Foyer hunt today.

I planned to take the 11:30 train, but I ended up sleeping until 11:30 and taking the 1:00. Then the station informed me that there was a train strike today.

Luckily, I had looked up the word for strike last week because there is a teachers strike this week, as well.

I only had to wait 15 min though, so I guess it is some sort of partial strike, or something.

I got to Anger and easily found the first Foyer I was supposed to look at, but I will talk about that another time; this post is about the shitty parts of my day.

So I left to go find the other Foyers and stopped at the tourist office for a map.

I'm extremely bad at map reading, usually I don't bother with maps because I know it will just get me lost. I usually prefer to wander in circles with no destination in mind or else I get incredibly frustrated by my lack of directionability skills.

But I actually had a specific destination in mind, so attempted to find it by map, which obviously failed, so I walked in circles for a half an hour.

Which was okay since I'm pretty used to being lost.

So I figured that I had to cross the street and turn left. So I crossed the street at a zebra crossing, making sure that the bus had stopped.

annnnd
BAM, I was on the road.

I had tripped over the random stone circles that are evenly spaced on roads.

I was splayed on the ground, in shock. My knee had slammed into the pavement and my palms had broken the fall and ached. I didn't move for 10 seconds than looked up to the bus.

The driver was just sitting there. Emotionless. I caught his eye with mine. It was clear he was unperturbed that a young girl had just tripped in front of him, and I didn't want to hold the bus up.

Yes. I didn't want to to hold the bus up.

Canadians, eh?

I couldn't stand because my knee hurt too much so I dragged myself across the road like a lame drunk and hobbled over to a bench.

I sat there and cried, but I hid my face in my oversize purse so as not to draw attention.

Eventually I got up, my knee was feeling better and I set about trying to find this Foyer again.

After another 10 min, I thought Fuck it, I don't want to live here anyways, why waste my time.


I decided not to live in Anger because they are building a tram line so it's very noisy and congested and the entire city square is being dug up.

So I decided to go browsing instead.

I was innocently in Sephora, when I got kicked out.

Kicked out of Sephora. How could I live in a city where I couldn't even innocently browse in Sephora?

I guess I had used one tester too many or something because the security guard came up to me and told me that I had to ask one of the shop ladies for assistance.

This was just ridiculous. Sephora has a millon testers for a reason. I can't speak French. I don't want to talk to shop ladies, I just want to see if this lipstick is my colour dammit. I can do that myself. Just leave me the fuck alone, I'm browsing, this is my happy time.

Of course his long speech to me about how I couldn't just TEST the TESTERS myself spoiled everything so I left.

---> insert tirade on French customer service here.

I exited the store to pouring rain, but congratulating myself on my cleverness, I whipped out the umbrella I had remembered to bring from home.

I had purchased it for 5 euros along the Seine the last time rain had sprung up on me.

The winds were fierce and in about 10 min. the damn thing broke. I tried to salvage the day, and walked around for a bit more but eventually decided to cut my losses and headed towards the station.

My umbrella just kept breaking and breaking and eventually I got so angry, and was soaked and my knee hurt and my hair was frizzing that I slammed my umbrella against a steel pole and screamed FUCK YOU.

That placated me for a bit. I wanted to do it again , but the sponteniety of the anger had left me and I just felt silly.

I waited 2 damp and shivery hours in the train station because of the strike reading Down and Out in Paris and London, which was extremely appropriate for the situation and made me happy that at least I am not living in 1930s Paris in a flee-infested motel working 12 hours a day as a busboy.