Colmar and Annecy
THIS. This is what I was looking for. This is the type of travel that thrills me, and suits me. Which, you’ll realize is no real compliment to myself once I explain how I’m travelling.
I decided to forgo the expenses of hostels, and to instead book overnight busses to sleep in while traveling between towns. Two birds with one stone, right? Yeah, I haven’t slept in 48 hours. To be fair, a portion of this awake stretch started in Paris. I couldn’t sleep past 3am because my bowels are really keeping me on my toes here, it’s either dry for days or a constant flow. I’m sure you can piece together which cycle I’m currently suffering through based on given information. Look, I committed to sharing everything, and I’m taking that oath seriously.
Colmar is the first town I visited. It was so beautiful and charming! There are little canals flowing through the streets here, and the colourful townhouses remind me of Newfoundland! The weather has been so good to me, and spring flowers are evidently feeling equally as alive as I am. This was another entirely pedestrian and cobblestone town, and for some reason the streets were covered in confetti. I have yet to figure out why. It was the first day of spring and this was a very fitting town to the occasion.
I’m not much of a shopper, so I really only do a few laps of a new town to get a gist of the scenery and then I’m ready to move on. I found a street on maps that looked like it followed a creek through a forest, so I went for a walk and followed this trail for a good 3-4 hours. I watched the sunset here, I had a staring contest with a sheep, and I ended the night grabbing a drink at a local pub and journalling until my 11:30pm train. I felt very calm.
This serenity was painstakingly interrupted by my new mortal enemy: overnight trains. I’m aware this does not bode well for my week of overnight train travel. I should also clarify, it’s actually overnight BUS travel because, once again, I am cheap .. and so are busses. First jarring realization: they say they depart from the train station, but they actually leave from a regular old bus station a few hundred meters away. Second jarring realization: people who take overnight busses seem to embody both the stench and the manners of a wet gym sock.
I’m the type of person who, when I feel something very strongly, I open my notes app and rant there. A few of my favourite headlines:
IM FEELING VERY STRESSED AGAIN […]
It is my human right to call in sick to work […]
dream last night: I was canoeing across Egypt […]
and here is my notes app rant from my first overnight bus ——->
My inner monologue was Steve Martin rage swearing from Planes Trains and Automobiles. I also drew this diagram of my position trying to sleep. I’m doing the full body swivel to look left and right now. Most of my trips have layovers in the middle of the night, as this one did, so I also tried to sleep on a bench in a suspiciously damp-cold piss-reaking train station waiting room, but no luck. Shocker. You know that type of moist, chilling environment that makes your bones feel brittle? Or when you feel so dirty that your teeth feel warm and spongy? Although I don’t wish these sensations on anyone, I do hope these are shared niches to reassure myself I’m not actually decaying. It’s only been one night and I feel so beat up.
By the morning, I, too, had adopted the wet sock smell against my will, I was angrily sleep deprived, starving because I’m too scared to eat anything without being within close proximity to a toilet, and I just felt disgusted with myself in general. Get this though: a few hours in Annecy and I felt I had been purified. My images don’t do these mountains any justice. It only takes me an hour tops to explore these small towns, so I found another trail veering away from the centre and walked for a few hours in awe. I lay down in this field by the lake and mountains to write. My brain was quiet and my soul was simply happy.
I am gripping onto this peace for dear life as I’m about to re-enter midnight bus hell. Stoic and zen, remember, my test for the month.
