Late start

Hello, lovely people! Happy New Year!!! It's been a long time since I last wrote on here, but (I really shouldn't start every post with the same sentence and just make sure I post more often!) here I am, relaxed and happy after a long, eventful and...ehm...filling Christmas break. Life is back to normal, with lots of (interesting) work and a fair bit of socialising (mostly at weekends).

I have realised there are many things I haven't had the time to write about on here. My trips to Strasbourg, Brussels and The Hague would probably deserve a post each. Not only because they were good (seeing M. is always very very nice!), but also because they were complicated. I find it crazy that whenever I go anywhere I always have so many anecdotes to tell (from the replacement bus, to the guy who forgot me on the train because he had diarrhoea, to inaccessible trains...). The journey back to Lux (via Charleroi) was also quite adventurous. The assistance was about 20 minutes late so new passengers were already boarding by the time I managed to get off the plane. They also lost my wheelchair, made me walk out of the plane and made it clear that "It would be nice if Madame walked faster". When I finally got into the terminal building my wheelchair still hadn't reappeared and I got asked if I was absolutely sure I had my own wheelchair. I didn't even bother responding, otherwise I would have said to them: "No, I just like to tell people I have one and see how they react when it gets lost." Well, eventually they found it, but they still managed to drop me off at the wrong bus stop. Luckily I am now an expert when it comes to wheeling trolleys along.

Accidents aside, travelling on your own is fun. Had I been with friends I would never have met an Indian raw-vegan guy who gave me a suspicipious-looking mushroom (they are called Chaga mushrooms, Siberian stuff) which is rich in antioxydants. Or started a conversation with the father of two wee boys while the train broke down in the middle of nowhere and have got a chocolate bar from him for admitting that I get just as dirty as his two kinds when I eat chocolate. Nor would I get to high-five a little cheeky girl on the platform. It's little things, I agree, but they're enough for me to keep being an optimist and believing in human beings.

I know the world out there can be cruel, tough or even dangerous, but I firmly believe that we are all connected and that we are meant to interact and get along. Of course it's a bit idealistic and naive to think that we all love each other - it would be impossible...but hey, let me believe this world is a good decent place. Yesterday, I forgot my wallet containing a large sum of money, bank cards and documents in my office (first time this has ever happened to me - I blame it on the lack of sugar in my diet). I found it buried under a heap of paper, intact. The cleaning lady obviously thought it was better to hide it. Today, in town, at least five people offered to help when they saw I was fighting against very strong wind...

These are only some of the many reasons why I am not afraid. I am not afraid of travelling by myself. I am not afraid of talking to strangers. I am not afraid of trusting people and I am not afraid of people who are different from me.*

In case your blood sugar level wasn't high enough by now, here's an extra fix of sweetness for you.

* This holds true for everyone but Luxembourghish bus drivers who are total arseholes and I have been planning to take revenge. Short-term action plan: a newspaper article, long-term action plan: a book. Yes, I have started keeping track of all the weird things that have happened to me so far and I believe something's going to come out of it sooner or later :)