Challenge: Finding my way from the Gare du Nord train station to Vintage Hostel, my accommodations for the next two nights. These two buildings were less than a mile apart and on the same street, Rue Dunquerke. This should have been easy.

Even exiting the Gare du Nord station is difficult. People are racing in every direction and it takes me a little while to figure out how to even leave the building. When I finally discover the elusive door to the outside world, I step in to a sea of automobile exhaust, cigarette smoke, car and motorcycle horns, even the heckling of a few scam artists. The smells and sounds surprisingly resemble India, and so for my first time in a new city, I am confronted not with surprise, but nostalgia. I walk, walk, walk…. Good Camino practice.

Triumph: Walking for an hour, sweating profusely under my raincoat before discovering the vertical hotel signage on the side of the building that signals comfortable refuge after two sleepless international flights.

(Every time I thought it would be easy to get somewhere, it turned out to be extremely confusing, mentally and physically fatiguing. Of all the city maps I’ve received from hostels in international cities, this was the only one I made sure to bring with me every time I left my accommodations.)

I lug my backpack up the stairs, eager to unpack, settle in and maybe change my clothes before heading out to lunch. I am energized by the newness of everything, I’m finding it easy to ignore my jet lag. Luckily, I’m more hungry than I tired and it’s around 2pm. I open the door to my shared dorm room of two bunk beds and the window curtains are pulled shut and all the lights are out. I flip on the overhead and a black haired French girl in heavy makeup shoots up and gives me the most confused look I’ve ever witnessed in a living creature, human or otherwise. She remembers that she is sleeping in a shared dorm room, and rolls her eyes at me before collapsing back on to the bed and pulling the sheets over her head.

I stumble through the tiny room with my belongings and put my coat down on the only available bed– the one right above her. I climb up to the top bunk and it’s painfully squeaky. I even feel like I might tip the whole bed over sideways. Down beneath my struggle to mount the mattress, this girl is thrashing angrily and grunting and then falling back asleep a second later before she begins to snore loudly. Because what I need is NOT to sleep, I decide to minimally unpack my things and settle in at later time. I climb off the mattress via the wobbly iron ladder (right next to her head) and lace up my shoes before the sleeping dragon gives me a few choice words.
LE JE VIE ON SWA NO COU LA FROMAGE COMIE FUAX COO (or something like that), she screams at me, this rude American who had the gall to enter the shared dorm room that I had just checked in to.

I don’t actually know any French, so I dodge the hurt feelings of whatever insults she lobbed at me.

I leave this incident slightly disenchanted, but the beauty of the city quickly reenchants this weary traveler. Nichole, a classmate of mine and I wander up and down the avenues dense with cafes and young Parisians whose casual Friday attire is worlds nicer than any article of clothing I’ve brought with me. I am fully aware of my frumpiness in hiking boots and technical apparel as I trudge alongside their silk and stilettos. My first lesson in Paris is this: Everywhere I go, I will be underdressed.

I learn my second lesson when I get yelled at by a stranger for the second time. It is also my second day in Paris, and perhaps I am overcomfortable. I am riding the Metro towards Nichole’s neighborhood, Gare d’lest. The train is crowded, but not the sardine-packed sort of stuffed that occurs later in the afternoon and evening. I am standing in the middle of the car, holding on to the bar as there are no available seats left. I let myself be rocked gently by the motion of the train and I think to myself, “The Metro is so fun and easy!” The door opens at the Stalingrad stop on the M2 line and a towering woman wrapped in scarves and a long weather-beaten trench coat board the train, and she is pushing a toddler in a stroller. After the door closes, she bumps the stroller with my feet and yells something at me in French. I step back to give her more space, but she is still yelling and I have no idea what she is saying, and I’m ashamed by inability to understand or respond to her. I mutter a “pardon” while trying to figure out where I should stand.

To give her as much room as possible, I hop over into the next car and stand again where there is available room. Everyone is staring at me as she continues to yell at me. Her kid even joins in. I figure the only thing more embarrassing than being publicly scolded in a foreign language in a closed environment, would be pathetically disembarking the train with my tail between my legs at the next station. Four more stops to go until I can get off.

I ascend the steps of the Gare d’lest station, comforted that I will never see any of those people again. When I find Nichole’s hotel and then collapse on her bed, the nightmare transforms in to comedy as I give her the play-by-play.

I am appreciative to Paris and its inhabitants for challenging me, but also welcoming me in a way I didn’t expect. Whenever I gave myself more praise than I deserved, embarrassment was right around the corner to punish my insensitivies. And likewise, whenever I found myself lost, clueless and confused, kindness was offered to me from helpful strangers. Effort is required on the part of visitors to adapt to local customs, and the trying is always rewarded with kindness. I am confident now that Paris is a city I would love to be able to stay long-term in the future, but until then I have a whole lot of French to learn.
And about 500 miles to walk.