Gare de Lyon

The story of Jordan's terribly, hilarious bad luck which someday must be turned into a movie. You'll understand afterwards.

So there's this guy who just moved to Paris named Jordan. He's originally from Utah then San Fran then Madrid and we just met him at St. Merri last Sunday. Since Aubrey's mom and sister are in town, they decided to go to Fontainebleue this past Saturday and Zabrina and I tagged along. At Carter's farewell hangout, we invited Jordan to come, too, since he is fresh into France dwelling.

We all planned to meet up at Gare de Lyon around 12:30 that day and by the time Jordan actually made it to the station, he had accumulated quite the collection of stories and a few self-portraits. But we'll get to that.

Our train left at 1:19 but the hour leading up to that was quite hectic. Zabrina and I arrived first, sat down on some benches and waited for the rest of the crew to show. Aubrey and her family got held up at Chatelet but when they did arrive, I was so excited to meet Suzanne! Aubrey made it to me first and said, "Okay, when my mom and sister get out of the bathroom, greet me with the bises so they think we actually do that on a regular basis!"

Meanwhile, I was playing phone tag with Jordan trying to figure out where he was and if he would make it on time. The second time I called him, he was clearly not listening as I had to repeat "Hall 3" about a gazillion times over the phone. Exasperated, he explained that 1) some homeless guy was hassling him, 2) he was trying to take a passport picture for his Navigo pass, and 3) trying to listen to my directions through the gare. Not a good combo!

It was nearly five minutes until our train left so we walked up to the platform and called him again. Apparently everything that could go wrong that morning did for him. But we'd get to that later, we had a train to catch. Minutes to go, we were running from machine to machine trying to find the ticket to Fontainebleue for him but some old guy was holding up the yellow machine while we scrambled around on the black machine with no luck. Another frantic French guy was behind us doing the exact same thing. He, however, did not make it on the train because karma is too good (he yelled "shut up b-word" on the phone behind us) and Jordan's ticket printed at a glacial pace. With literally seconds to spare and convincing the platform worker to not blow his whistle yet, we all jumped onto the crowded train.

Now begins the story of the awfully, hilarious morning for Jordan. Apparently he started out by going to the Orange store to try and get a French phone plan. They shot him down real fast saying that the online deal he saw is only good online and in-store deals are different. But he has an American bank card and only French bank cards work.

Then he tried the train station to get a Navigo. There he was told he needed a photo so he went to photocopy his license and use that photo. Upon further inspection, the copy machine in the metro only took 20 cent coins and Jordan only had a euro coin on him. He went around asking for someone who could break his euro into change but nobody could, not even the store he went into. How is that possible? It's one euro! Then he found a homeless man and tried communicating the fact that he wanted 20 cents in exchange for one euro. Obviously the guy understood nothing and Jordan doesn't even speak a word of French so basically the homeless guy held out his change and Jordan picked out a 20 in exchange for the euro and ran off to the machine. What he didn't expect was that the homeless guy followed. The copy machine ate his money, endured a nice kick or two I'm sure, and still wasn't working. A security guard came by and said that the machine is actually broken. All that hassle for nothing. Except now he has a homeless guy trailing him. He went to a nearby photocopy store but they weren't even open yet so his next attempt was the photomaton machine. In the meantime, Mr Homeless man was still begging Jordan for some money or food or whatever and Jordan was just trying to lose the guy. Didn't work. He sat in the photomaton machine and that's when I called him on the phone. Apparently he just sat down and chose the cheapest option for a photo and was getting blabbed at by the homeless dude who was pulling out pics of his daughter and speaking in French and trying to help Jordan with the machine (or so he thought) and I was telling him where to meet us in the station....blah blah blah....in the end, he ended up with a nice big portrait of himself and a stalker.

The fact that his picture is of him on the phone made me want to die laughing.
I told him to try again and this time, to select the passport photo option. He still wasn't gettin' it so apparently the homeless man started pressing buttons (which Jordan thought meant 'helping') and instead of getting 5 little passport photos, he ended up with a mug shot. Literally. Just look for yourself.

It's an Orange is the New Black mugshot. Oh my word. When he pulled that thing out in the middle of his story, I was nearly in tears. His new friend was not only begging for money after landing a pretty sweet deal of an 80 cent increase, but now just got him a free mugshot. Thankfully, Jordan got the message and called it quits with minutes to go and us waiting for him on the platform. Now commence the ticket fiasco and the 'seconds to spare' bit.

Basically after we finished at Fontainebleue, I took him and Zabrina to get falafels in the Marais and that ended up being the best thing that happened to him thus far that day. At the end of the day, he ended up with a Navigo that won't work for another week and a half, no SIM card because apparently Orange "ran out" due to an increase in tourists watching the Euro Cup, a bomb falafel sandwich, and two self portraits. Not to mention the awesome story that really needs to be sent into Hollywood.