[Story time] How I almost slept outside in England in 2003

The title is slightly exaggerated but it allows me to make a wink at this other story time in Sweden.

Here is a short review of an anecdote fromone of my very first trips abroad in 2003.

For the little story within the little story: two years later I told this anecdote in my French baccalaureate dissertation and I got 17/20 🙂

A bit of background: it’s July 2003, my parents offer me a 3-week language stay in Folkestone in the south of England.

I am 15 years old and this is one of my very first trips abroad. So far I have proudly crossed the Belgian border for a wedding in the Ardennes and I have been to Germany twice (on a school trip and then on vacation with cousins).

This time, I am really going on an adventure as I have to join a host family that I have never met before. I barely have two years of English behind me (I did LV1 German…) and the years of 4th and 3rd were not the most glorious years of my schooling, so much so that apart from “Hello”, “Thank you” and “Goodbye”, I don’t know how to say much.

I’m not so sure anymore but I think my father had accompanied me to Paris to put me on the train to Lille. In Lille I change train, I pass under the English Channel to arrive in Dover.

In Dover, the organization that offered the language course offered a cab to take us directly to the host family in Folkestone. As the language course represented a considerable financial effort for my parents, we decided that I would take the train from Dover to Folkestone and from there I would take a cab. That will save a lot of money.

I go to the ticket office to buy my ticket, feverishly reciting the sentence I had learned by heart. The ticket agent then asks me a question. When I didn’t understand, she ended up selling me the ticket, looking annoyed. In retrospect, I think she simply asked me if I wanted a single or a return ticket :D.

I arrive in Folkestone and I have to wait a little while before finding a cab. It’s a small suburban train station, it’s not crowded. I show the address to the cab, get in and discover the traffic by driving on the left. It drops me off a few minutes later in front of my hosts’ house. I manage to reach my destination, I am a chef.

I knock on the door. No one opens… The cab driver who is kindly waiting to check that everything is ok seems to ask me if there is a problem. As I hear the television through the door I am not worried, I signal that everything is fine and he leaves.

I knock on the door again, still nothing… After a little more waiting and hesitation, I decide to open the door. I then come face to face with a woman who seems very surprised to see a stranger in her house 😀 After checking, it isn’t my host!

I come out a little taken aback. The address seems to be quite correct!

As a reminder we are in 2003 and the means of communication aren’t those of today. I have a simple phone card to call my mother in case of emergency. As I don’t see how she could help me, I prefer not to call her, she might get worried.

At this very moment, I have no idea what I can do. I meet a few people to whom I ask for directions, showing the address I have. They all confirm to me that this is the house I come from.

I start wandering the streets hoping for providential help.

And this help will come 😀

I pass a house where a woman is mowing her lawn. I don’t know if it was the look on my face calling for help or the sight of a lost kid with his suitcase that caught his attention. Anyway, she approaches me and I manage to explain – I don’t know how – the situation to her. She then takes the sheet with the contact information of my hosts and calls them. They will arrive on foot a few minutes later, I am saved!

The explanation is simply that there was a small error in the address that was given to me. In Folkestone there are streets that end in dead ends. In this case there is the word “close” at the end of the address. The subtlety is that there can be exactly the same address a few blocks away without the “close”. The organization had forgotten to mention the “close” 😀

After this event, this stay went very well and 17 years later, it remains very good memories.