“Stella, Stella, why are you crying?”
“Broken, lonely, breathing with all my might!”
“That’s all we need to do sometimes”
“So am I doing”, Stella replied.
“Let us cry and flood your heart”
Luna hugged her tight, and together they cried.
With the flood, they washed all ill feelings away
And Stella, again started shining bright.
You know what Stella suggests these days?
“Keep breathing, one day you’ll be alright.”
– to all broken Stellas out there 🙂
HUGS!
I had no plans to sleep or even to lie down. “I will go to the Eiffel tower, and then just wander through the streets of Paris the whole night”, I had thought. I was reaching to the CDG airport at around 22:00. And it would take one more hour by the train to reach Paris. I had to look for a locker to store my luggage, eat dinner and find out the way to the Eiffel tower, where I was going for the first time, alone and reaching at midnight! The only aim for this time was to reach to the Eiffel tower.
Yes, most of the things went as planned more or less. Using the underground metro for travelling is no longer a mystery now. I had spent probably more than a day (meaning 24 hours) to figure out where and how to take the right train and where to get down if I needed to change another one when I had gone to Stockholm alone for the first time. The process was similar in Barcelona. And I had expected the similar procedures for Paris too. And it worked out. Maybe, it is the same throughout Europe.
It was already past midnight when I reached there. The tower which I used to see only in photos, was right in front of me! It looked magnificent with lights glowing all over.
But after some time (maybe at 1:00), the lights went off.
Anyway, mission accomplished! I reached to the Eiffel tower. 🙂
Then I started strolling around as there was nothing to look at to the tower after the lights went off. What I found after changed my plan of wandering around the streets for the whole night. There was a grassland nearby where a lot of other people were drinking, chatting and some lying down. I decided to lie down for a while.
The sky was clear, stars visible, gentle breeze and soft grass on the ground. And I was in front of the Eiffel tower! Well, that was another ineffable feeling.
Two other visitors were lying nearby. We just started talking, and kept talking and kept talking and kept talking… until morning! Yes, we did not sleep at all. They had come from Bordeaux with a plan similar to mine :). Only that they arrived in the afternoon and also climbed to the top of the tower. I will do that during my next visit probably.
How we spent the whole night… Photo: That friend, who just started talking and we spent the whole night talking!
Yes, the tower is impressive, but maybe the grandeur of the tower is too glorified that we expect too much that we do not find it as we expect it to be. Like those friends as they were saying, and me too!
Dear ….. (I do not know your name ^ ^),
[Random scratches from the diary. Do not mind the grammar, tense, … 🙂 ]
One of the best parts of the MSc in European Forestry program is the European Forestry Field Course during which students get this unique chance to visit different forests and universities across five different countries to learn about the forests, forestry practices and issues, that covers more or less the whole of Europe; Romania in the east to Austria and Germany in the central Europe and France and Spain in the West and Southwestern part of the Europe. The first year in Finland already covers the boreal forests of Northern Europe. I am proud that I got this opportunity. And we travelled the whole month of May, to the abovementioned countries and forests with professors of the consortium universities of the program. Our team is already amazing, with friends from different parts of the world. And then we were visiting together to other parts we had never been to before. So, it was not only forests and the natural resources we learnt about but also new cultures and social lives in different parts of Europe.
[You can click on the stars in the embedded google map and find out more about each consortium universities of the program]
Many times, I remembered that day when I cried alone after getting the email from the coordinator (I was living alone in a room in Kathmandu) where the Erasmus Mundus scholarship was proposed to me.
I created a group blog for our batch; to share the memories, some learnings, some experiences in new places, or just some photo albums and etc. But you can find the posts written only by me as I was the only one posting there (all of us have our own preferences obviously). So in the links below, you can read the country wise blog posts from our field trip. All of the posts were written during the field trip, so the layout, arrangement might not be that impressive. There was no internet everywhere we went. (We are foresters 🙂 ) Somewhere, there were more learnings, at other places more fun, or more field works. But I have edited some of them later after the end of the trip.
So, the posts are not only about forestry but also other aspects of life, like culture, music and so on. I hope you will find something interesting.
Read all the field stories from
Romania – https://europeanforestry.school.blog/category/romania/
Austria – https://europeanforestry.school.blog/category/austria/
France – https://europeanforestry.school.blog/category/france/
Germany – https://europeanforestry.school.blog/category/germany/
Spain – https://europeanforestry.school.blog/category/spain/
We (me, Camila, Prakash, Simon, Surya and Trung) were sitting outside a bar as some of them decided to have ‘Shisha’ and some drinks. A lady came nearby to our table and started speaking something in Romanian (?).
“Sorry, English only” I said.
“Could you give some lei please! To buy something to eat”. Oh, she’s smart; she can speak English as well.
She was behind me. I just stayed silent, smiling.
“We do not have cash. Only cards” Camila said.
The lady just vanished.
“That was smart.” We all laughed together. “When did you learn this trick?”
“Already in Brazil.”
After two minutes, the lady reappeared again. “How much could you give?” she asked with a card reader machine on her hand, ready to press the amount. Camila was shocked.
“One cent”
Mumbling, the lady vanished again!
[The reappearance of the lady with a card reader is just a joke we created. We have no intention to hurt/offend anybody]
