keithtom.com

i’ve been on the run for a bit but have a couple hours of nothing now. unfortunately i have a bunch of posts that are written on text files on my ipod or gaby’s laptop, neither of which i can get the posts from. so i’ll just start writing from 2 days ago.

Sunday, July 19

the morning half was spent traveling back from normandy to nantes, where i am now. it would have otherwise been an uneventful day even though i had fun talking on the train ride. arriving in Nantes, i had to find a place to stay so i began walking around and after trying out a few places i noticed an older guy in the same situation, so i just decided to ask him if he wanted to split a room and he did.

turns out he was from montreal and he had an almost unbelievable tale that we began to talk about in the room and carried over to dinner. it’s too long to recount here but it’s one of those stories with a series of large coincidences and events that make you stop and wonder about this life. we ended up discussing a bunch more about separatists and philosophy. it was fun. i guess he’s back in montreal now…

Monday, July 20

the guy from yesterday gave me a few tips on traveling as he had done much in his youth. so first and foremost was find a new place to stay: that hotel was okay to split but i wasn’t paying the single rate. its friggin expensive to travel alone. so i went to the tourist information to find out the cheapest place to stay that wasnt terrible, and she directed me to an auberge de jeunesse, which is where im staying now. great place actually, and roomed w/ a young guy from paris, a university student from yugoslavia and a older guy, 40 or 50 something which i havent really spoken much to.

the rest of that day was exploring nantes and dropping by an internet cafe. its a nice small city but only has a few nice sights to see.

i think i’ve been pretty lucky in the people i’ve been meeting and talking with. with the young guys, the topics were physics, to WW2 history, to the state of things today. one pretty interesting pt was about how it seems like the mass media sometimes makes the world seem a lot scarier than it is – please don’t go telling me that the world is in fact dangerous, i know this. but one example that the parisian brought up was how a couple years ago fox news (hah) made it seem like paris was in civil war (which i personally remember seeing it and thinking the same thing), and the guy was saying that friends in the US would call and ask if everything was okay, if they wanted to come to the US and stay there for a bit. now granted, the moral of the story may just be ‘dont watch fox news’, but i’ve often heard how dangerous traveling is, how you can’t trust strangers, and at this point i’ve taken that for granted without really testing this in the slightest.

the initial results: the world isn’t even half as scary as i thought and you can trust strangers more than you think.

Today

I woke up with strange stiches near my left kidney and i feel like it is missing…

that was a joke. the room is cleared out and it is just me and the old guy, who i still havent had a chance to speak to. he leaves early and just appears at night. today was a great day. got a ticket to goto la boule tomorrow, which will have beautiful sandy beaches, old naked ppl and the great ocean. can’t wait.

on my way i discovered this amazing garden, which i have to upload all my photos for. it was right under my nose: for those of you heading to Nantes, make sure to see the Jardin des Plantes. I pretty much spent the entire day there – walking around, taking pictures, and listening to some Tony Robbins actually. good stuff.

i came back to the hostel to hand wash my clothes, get ready for tomorrow and write all this. im gonna head out soon to go out with gaby and her classmates. they’ll probably go drinking since it is the end of classes soon and they aren’t even legal in the states so this is like a field day for them. gotta say im glad quebec lets you get that out early.

well i’ll take a bunch of pictures tomorrow and try to enjoy more cheap french wine because thursday is fast approaching and by then classes are over, and we are headed to berlin, germany. i hope they have cheap internet there…