I could tell a lot of travel stories, but I've chosen this one because of the sequence of events. It was like a domino chain, when you push the first piece and cause all the others to fall.
I was in Spain in 2002, and I was going to leave Seville to meet a couple of friends in Paris, from where we would travel West. The first problem was my losing the flight connection in Barcelona, where I also lost my baggage - with 30 days of photographic film in it. I was told to wait inside the baggage claim area, wasted a lot of time, and my friends left without me. I had little money to spend on phone cards, so I made a collect call to my mother in Brazil, asking her to call my friends' family to check what the situation was. She doesn't speak French, but she repeated what I taught her to my friend's sister, who has authism.
Once in Paris I got lost in the subway. Having finally found my way to Gare du Nord station, I was cheated to buy a TGV ticket, which costs many times the regular train. It's so expensive that my car was empty, it was only me and a gentleman.
Not all the stations had their names written, my French wasn't good enough to understand the loudspeaker, I didn't know where to drop off. I tried asking for information, but the man refused to talk to me. The result is that I left the train in the wrong place.
It was after midnight and everything was closed in the huge Rennes station, but I didn't know where to go, so I decided to "sleep" there. I was reading my book when a man approached and started talking to me in a very excited fashion. He was really strange and anxious, which made me feel relieved when he said he was going to buy us something to eat on the street. The big mistake: he left his backpack. I knew it's travel lesson number one, but I failed.
He was taking ages to come back, so I went towards the railings to check if he was downstairs. That's when I saw some policemen with dogs entering the station. In my mind the situation was obvious, they were after the backpack, so I walked to the opposite side, went down, left to the street and picked a taxi. I had a huge book of european youth hostels - no mobile to google those days - and luckily there was an address in Rennes. I didn't look back.
The following day, I resumed the train trip to Quiberon, from where I would finally access the Île d'Houat. The weather was not good, and there was talk of putting off boat trips! Eventually they left even with a rough sea, and I could meet Paula and Samuel.
I remember my feelings vividly, although it happened so many years ago. I felt as if there was a dark cloud above my head, which I couldn't get rid of. I've never felt so overwrought. I was suspicious of everybody around me, as if they all wanted to see me breaking. Now I know that's why I took so many poor decisions. I knew I had to go on, though.