the birm*

Light stories (part 2: hassles)

While we were heading up to the cathedral we knew that we wouldn’t be back at the tram station by 12:45am, as it was already midnight. But, we ASSumed that these tram times were only “ordinary” ones, since the metro was running all night on this particular week-end, plus it was too late to turn back and...we’re still young, we could do with a bit of adventure!

We got to the tram station at 1:15am and saw, with horror but without great surprise, that the last tram had indeed been and gone, half an hour before. My car had been left at Marie and Olivier’s place, about 5kms away…

So I shed some layers and started to run towards the car (not knowing the city but following the tram line), being the only option at this stage.

After about 15 minutes I realised that there would be a better way: a bike (in Lyon you can rent a bike from an automatic locker and put it back in another one. If you use it for less than half an hour, it’s free, if not it’s a euro or two). I did the necessary transaction (obviously there’s a 150 euro deposit on the bad boy, refunded when you rtn the bike) and was away a few minutes later.

I got the tram station where the car was parked, parked the bike right next to the car and drove off into the unknown (note for later, driving in an unknown city full of one-way streets can be slower and more frustrating than running/riding a bike…).

I eventually got back to where the others were (after frustration, many phone calls, driving on tram tracks and taxi/bus only lanes) and we made it back to Mica’s place by 2:30am… needless to say, the 7:45am rise-to-drive-to-G-town-to-select-a-potential-future-women’s-French-handball-team was rude.