Adam From Virginia Tech

On Friday we arrived into Nice, France fairly late, around 9:30, without a reservation at a hostel or hotel. As we are walking around looking for a cheap place to stay we run into Adam in a Best Western. Adam is staying in a hostel that is a 15 minute walk from the Best Western. He is a student at Virginia Tech, studying this semester in Switzerland, but is down in Nice for the weekend with fellow students. He spent all day at the beach with his classmates drinking who knows what. At this point I’m not sure Adam could have told me.

I walk to the front desk and he is asking the Best Western manager something when he hears us talking. He wheels around and comes up to me and turns out to be a close talker. His eyes are trying their best to focus on me and his speech is in the ‘I’m trying to talk sober’ mode.

Adam (Face about 3 inches from mine) “Do you speak English?”
Me (Leaning back far enough to be comfortable) “Uh, yes. You need something?”
Adam “I was out to dinner with my friends and I left to go to the hostel and couldn’t find it, but then I came back and they were gone”
Me “So you left all your friends, while eating dinner, to go do something. Right. Now you can’t remember where your hostel is?” Well we are going to look for a hostel too so maybe when we find yours we can stay there. Why don’t you walk with us. So, what’s the name of the hostel?”
Adam “I’m not sure.”
Me “You just arrived today and can’t remember the name. Anything about the hostel stand out?”
Adam “It was a long French name.”
Me (Nodding my head like that tidbit helps…in France) “Do you remember how you got there? What you passed on the way?”
Adam “People told me to take a right at the KFC”
We take a right at the KFC and most of the hotels in Nice are this direction
This goes on for 20 minutes as walk with our packs trying to find this hostel with the long French name. We weren’t going to leave him on the streets, but we finally ran into a couple of his friends. I don’t think they were looking for him at the time, but they seemed relieved that he was OK. It seemed like it was common for Adam to do this and they figured he would show up at some point.

After a long day of traveling it was nice to have that time and eventful conversation with Adam.