I'm a girl from the suburbs. I don't belong in the suburbs.

(Long) Explanation: The suburbs of Paris are not nice, someone un-PC would call them ghetto. And so they are.

I realized yesterday that I had still not received my Eurail pass for the trip I am going on tomorrow, and without that, I could not travel to all the countries I am going to without buying full-fare tickets (blech.) So this morning, I called UPS France, and they so kindly told me that my pass was just sitting in a parcel center in France, that they had tried to deliver it 6 days ago, but since they didn't have the code to get into my building, they just gave up, didn't try to contact me. Sure, just ignore that "Express Shipping." It's probably not important anyway.

So, I decided to ignore all the things I needed to do today, like getting things for my trip and going to a group meeting, just so I could go out to the UPS center to get my pass. The lady I spoke to on the phone said she could order it to come to my apartment tomorrow, but no guarantee it would be there by the time I left in the afternoon. She also gave me what sounded like detailed directions to get there, not a problem, right?

Wrong. I was supposed to take the Metro to a certain station where I can catch a train out to the particular suburb and then take a bus from there to the industrial area, where I "walk a little bit down to the end of the street and UPS is at the end." False.

Metro, obviously no problem. Do that multiple times daily. Train, simple. Done it before. Bus- it wouldn't be difficult, if I hadn't gotten on going the wrong direction. I ended up spending 2 hours riding the bus around the neighborhood. Well, I got some reading done. Not like I needed to read New Moon. Again. I became friends with the bus driver though. I had thought that the bus would end up going back the opposite direction, or in some semblance of a circle, like they do in Austin. Nope, at the end of the line, he simply turned around and said, "C'est tout." I was like, what? "That's all?" But I have no more money! Well, too bad, I had to get on a different bus and go the opposite direction. Awesome. No problem, really.

The problem came when I got off the bus, and I was supposed to "walk a little bit down the end of the street," but the street was nowhere in sight, and I was in a NOT good area of town. Like a scene from a movie. I started walking in one direction, but turned quickly when I saw some heavily graffitied tents and a barbeque pit with fire- straight out of the slums from Batman. I actually found a lady to ask for directions (in this industrial area, it was 99% male). From my broken French, I understood "go under bridge, turn right, then right again." Turns out that's NOT exactly what she said. I had to go back by the fire pit, which I literally ran by, and kept going till I got to a round-a-bout, which had 5 streets coming off it, none of which was the one I needed. At this point, my fear for my life turn into anger at the UPS people and the people of La Courneuve for not labeling their streets correctly. My temper's been a little short this week, due to a series of unforeseen events.

After some more wandering, I found the "Lotissement Industriel," or the Warehouse District. YAY! Now I only had to walk about another mile, according to a map (!) that I found, and I would be there. I definitely did not belong in this neighborhood. It was all workers, and they would look at me as though I had two heads. Not the usual leering that I used to in Paris, but simple staring, like "what the hell is that young, pale red-headed girl doing HERE?" Yeah, I was wondering the same thing myself. By the time I found the warehouse/shipment center, which by the way was gated off and I had to go through Fort Knox security just to get my package, I was livid, like shaking mad. You know how I can get a little angry sometimes. And the security guards had the nerve to laugh at me when I walked up to the wrong entrance? Not after taking one look at my face.

So I get my pass (finally) and make it out of the industrial area, by the way I saw where they service the double-decker tour buses, if you were wondering. I still have a little problem of I have no money and I don't want to walk back to the train station. Well, some rummaging around in my purse produced a small miracle- a 10 € bill! And when the bus pulled up, it was the same bus driver and his friend from earlier. We all started laughing when I stepped on. When the driver's friend asked me if I was on holiday out there, I wanted to ask who on earth would holiday in that forsaken place? But I instead explained, in French I might add, that I was studying in Paris.

But what would this afternoon from hell be without one more thing, right? So when I get back into Paris, into the largest Metro station, I have to walk from one station to another, all underground, of course. Of course, there are usually the assistance of the walking escalators, or whatever they're called. But no, these of course are all turned off/not working. And it's rush hour. So everyone in Paris is in this station, and I'm trekking a mile or so across the stations to get to my line. Let's just say I was practicing my breathing excercises to keep myself from screaming at this point. But at least now I know- for my next Eurail pass, order it at least a month in advance, in case UPS decides to be idiots again, so that I can just wait for them to deliver it to me.

Whew, that took it out of me a little. Like therapy. And I'm still procrastinating packing...something about packing for 10 days in a tiny suitcase is not appealing.