Written by: Leah Injaty
12PM. In the middle of Remiremont. Have you heard of it? Yeah, me neither. I slumped down in the driver’s seat and sighed, staring out the windshield for who knows how long. Despite being a meticulous planner, I was no stranger to plans going astray. But there always has been some way to salvage a thrown-off schedule, some other tour or museum or market hall open at a convenient time where I didn’t have to miss out on too much. Not this time. I came here for one reason only: I was finally going to experience skiing for the first time, a popular pastime of friends at GT who have a lot of internship money and don’t mind broken bones. Instead, I was stuck in an unwalkable town, hungry, with a rental car nearly maxed out on kilometers, and stressing over how I wasted money on my abandoned ski rentals and lodging since I wouldn’t be back at the ski resort before the slopes closed. It’d be another 2 hours until I could return the car due to the completely un-American concept of a 2-hour lunch break, then I’d have to take the bus all the way to the city of La Bresse, and then take the infrequently-running shuttle bus up to the resort. I did the math a million times, there was just no possible way I was going to be able to ski today.
Gare (Train station) de Remiremont
Money is a funny thing. It can be a source of great motivation or great despair. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve usually leaned towards the latter when things go south, even when it’s out of my control. But never before was I forced to sit with such a longing sense of boredom while missing out while the minutes (and wasted dollars) ticked by, bringing me closer to the end of what was supposed to be a lifelong treasured memory. “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves.” I imagine when Pico Iyer wrote this famous quote, he had something more romantic in mind; maybe losing yourself meant taking a wrong turn in Prague and discovering a tulip field where you could lie amongst the colorful array as birds sang and the wind gently waltzed around you, and you could forget who you were for a moment. I, however, was not having it. If that glamour of “getting lost” is actually attainable for some, I might as well have been sleeping in a dumpster behind a restaurant. Despite knowing exactly where I was, I felt far more lost in that moment than I did when navigating all the uncertainties of studying abroad thus far.
Maybe it was my indignation or my lingering positivity from the excitement of coming to GTE, but I came to the realization that wallowing in self-pity would be a more regretful memory than at least trying to make the most of a day even when everything was going wrong. The only food place within a 10-mile radius was nearby, a charming Vietnamese restaurant situated in the midst of a cobbled road lined by historic buildings, so dense they obstructed my view of the mountains.
It was easy for me to assume that the United States’ reputation as a melting pot implies that other countries are more homogeneous, as seemed to be the case with the countries in Asia that I’ve visited most. However, Europe once again defied my preconceived notions, with people and cuisines from all over the world. Part of me felt uncannily at home when I met a German woman of Indian descent in a museum in Frankfurt, who spoke German with the same accent my parents and community speak English with. It startled me to think about how my family could easily have been Indian-German or Indian-French, and that I could have grown up in an entirely different culture where the “English default” isn’t so ingrained in me. It was somewhat hard to process that I discovered myself in the midst of a large community of my ethnic group outside of just India and America.
Similarly, as someone who loves East Asian restaurants in the U.S., seeing one in the middle of a small town in France was unexpectedly comforting. Being inside the Vietnamese restaurant with figures of glinting golden dragons and depictions of Asian artwork on scrolls decorating the ceiling, contrasted with the rustic French street just outside. It wasn’t until after I was seated and reading the menu that it occurred to me that there wasn’t a single vegetarian entrée I could have. Absolutely wonderful. This day really couldn’t get any better. After a bit of back and forth in broken French, I was able to order a chicken dish… without the chicken. The vegetables were coated in a tangy orange sauce, absolutely delicious yet not very satiating due to the lack of, well, the main part of the dish. Bad, then good, then bad, then good. It was like the universe was playing tricks on me with the undulating series of events over the course of the day.
I made it back to the Renault car rental at the same time as the horde of staff chattering away in French that was far too fast for me to pick up. I approached the lady who rented me the car the previous day; maybe it was due to a regional dialect, but she was the first person to not understand a single French word I said. When I rented the car yesterday, it didn’t even occur to me that they mainly have manual cars in Europe until my travel buddy Cyra spoke up. Luckily, they ended up having an automatic for 20€ more, but I couldn’t believe I had momentarily considered driving a manual for the first time up a snowy mountain. That would have been an absolute disaster. I smiled at the thought of avoiding that mess, looking for any positivity I could find.
Next up was making it onto the bus, which didn’t depart for another hour. After returning the car, I sat in the small, bright-colored waiting area surrounded by cars for sale, as I watched customers come in and out in search of their perfect vehicle to take home. I made up stories in my head about them, almost like what I envision my experience will be like, buying my first car. Maybe they’ve been saving up for years to reach that milestone, maybe they’ll take it on its first cross-country trip when they move to a new city, maybe they’ll take it home today, and their dog will jump in the back seat, and its fur will be forever wedged between the seats. I imagined all the milestones I’ll get to achieve in the next decade; renting my first car, going skiing for the first time, and studying abroad in Europe are only the beginning. What’s one bad day going to do in the long run? There’s so much to look forward to, especially in my early 20s, so how could I possibly feel so stuck in a new place with the world at my fingertips, even if the original plan was completely thrown out the window?
A phone screen placed at my eye level jolted me out of my thoughts. “Would you like some cake?” I looked up to meet the eyes of the same woman who rented me the car; she had Google Translate pulled up on her phone and a kind smile resting on her face. I nearly cried. I’ve never been so touched to receive something as simple as a slice of cake after such a rough day. I had been eyeing it occasionally, still hungry from the insufficient amount of food; I assumed it was for a birthday, but it turns out it was for a French celebration called La Fête des Rois, or “Feast of the Kings.” I savored every bite of that cake as though it were my last meal, overwhelmed not just by the scrumptious flaky layers filled with thick almond cream, but also by the everyday joy of a small kind gesture that I vowed would never go unappreciated.
Since that day, I now believe in magic. Attitude is magic. Because unless someone snuck a four-leaf clover into my pocket, there was just no possible way everything was going to fall into place. Except it was. While planning for the trip, I ruled out night skiing since it was somewhat more expensive than the student pass and since I thought it would be too difficult to learn at night. I genuinely thought I had tried and exhausted all options earlier, but it’s amazing how subtle shifts in attitude can influence perceived possibilities. I left the Renault for the bus station with a spring in my step, finding the small town and the countryside from the bus window far more intimate and scenic than I did when I first arrived.
The last leg of my journey was taking the shuttle bus from La Bresse to the resort, which involved a long 40-minute wait. The previous night, we had gone into La Bresse for groceries, and based on the plain surrounding area, we deemed there wasn’t much reason to come back and explore. The bus stop was in a different area, however, not too far from that same grocery store, if only we had walked a little farther. The view from the heart of the city as the sun slowly dropped over the peaks of the mountains was surreal. A blinding yellow glow reflected over the rushing river flowing towards oblivion, as the streets wound in pursuit of the river’s path, black bars holding up the mounds of snow along the sides of the road. I made my temporary home for the next 40 minutes near one of the mounds, seemingly untouched.
Snow. I hadn’t seen this much since the great snowfall in Atlanta last year, where I got to build my first successful snowman, whom we named Quincy. I bent down to touch the top layer of snow with my bare hand. I remembered sledding down the hill where our house stood in New Jersey as a child and uselessly “helping” my dad shovel the snow off the driveway. I remember shaking the trees to make chunks of it fall on our heads and trying to build a snowman, only for him to crumble if he got more than a few inches tall. For the next 40 minutes, I forgot all about the activities I paid for, the very reason I came here, as I fed the river snowballs, drew random letters and symbols in the snow, and tried to make a perfectly smooth and even mini-mound, all for absolutely no reason. I can’t remember the last time I did something so fun and futile just because I felt like it; most things feel like they must have a reason to be worth my time nowadays.
I got what I wanted. I skied for the first time under the stars, with glowing colors lighting up the dome of the magic carpet. I flew down the hill straight ahead one too many times before I learned to properly turn and stop, thanks to Cyra’s help. When I imagine following my initial plan of going skiing in the daytime and calling it a night in the early evening, I hardly imagine that this trip would have been anywhere near as memorable as it was. The irreplaceable feelings of familiarity in a foreign place, the generosity of a stranger, and wonder inspired by resurfaced childhood memories were never something I expected on something as straightforward as a ski trip. Even though I may not have glamorously lost myself in a new city, what I found made up for it tenfold. I rediscovered my fading childlike innocence and unyielding spirit that were central to my personality until a couple of years ago, when other seemingly more important things slowly snuck into the spotlight. If this is what finding myself means, I’ll gladly turn every corner, lie in every tulip field, jump in every snow mound, and leave every door open.
