November 13, 2016
7:05pm
I got my GoPro out and began video taping my friends as we sat around waiting to board the plane. This weekend’s adventure: Amsterdam. We sent our last Snapchats then boarded the plane. Mine had said “Hope our plane doesn’t go down” with the “Friday the 13th” filter Snapchat offered.
10:30pm
We flew over Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam, and finally landed in Amsterdam. We got our bags and made our way towards our hostel loving life and admiring the Christmas lights which adorned the gothic tops of government buildings, giving us the little slice of the holiday season we’ve all been missing.
11:00pm
As we checked in to our hostel we, one by one, connected to wifi. Simultaneously all of our phones began to flood with incoming calls, texts, Facebook messages from friends and family. Most read something along the lines of “Tell me your not in Paris.” But others were a little more detailed, telling us about what had just happened.
We googled and searched our timelines looking for more information and piece by piece it started to come together. ‘Hostages in Paris: 2 dead’, ‘Soccer game gone wrong: Suicide bombing.' So much was happening and all so fast that my brain can hardly process it. We had been 30,000 feet above the city of love as hundreds of terrified Parisians ran for their lives. I spent a large part of that night in the lobby of the hostel trying to find new updates every couple of minutes.
2:30am
I tried to sleep. Every branch that hit the window, every time someone tossed in their sleep, every time someone opened the door, I flinched and tensed up. It’s hard trying to reclaim a feeling of safeness when the threat is no longer an ocean away. Knowing that at any moment and in any city something like this could happen. I tried to stay as still as a possibly could as I let my own mind tear wholes in my sanity, thinking all we do is go to huge touristy cities. That could've been us. Attacks like this, that are done on this scale, are purposely done to instill fear. Mission accomplished. I got approximately 45 minutes of sleep that night and about an hour the next night.
November 14, 2016
8:30am
While in line for the Anne Frank house, where thankfully there’s wifi, I opened Facebook to find a handful of new notifications. This person and that person have been marked alive in Paris. That itself just made it all the more real. Even though my friends were lucky enough to survive, there were other friends, family, loved ones out there who never received those notifications.
With travel comes a world of opportunity, new experiences, new places, and new people. New people to care about, to worry about, to give you a reason to care if something happened in a country that’s not your own. Just the week before while in Italy we had met some girls who had taken a gap year to study in Paris. We kept checking our timelines to see if they posted anything, were tagged in anything, any sort of post saying they’re alive. Two days after the attack one posted a blog post describing her experience. She was at the Eiffel Tower when the attacks begun and had to run into someone’s apartment where she spent the following hours pacing back and forth.
I’m not even going to lie, being so close to a situation like this has been straight up terrifying. Feeling the repercussions of an event like this is something I would’ve never thought I would’ve had to do. Our university planned trip to Paris was canceled, all travel by means of plane has been discouraged, and today we received an email asking us not to wear any university or ‘American-esque’ apparel, as that would make us targets. Myself being a blonde-haired blue-eyed American in Spain, I stand out enough as it is but now I have to worry about being a student? Crazy to think that this is the way hundreds of students are being forced to worry and analyze their surroundings, never believing they’re completely safe.
As we spent our last night in Amsterdam, we wondered if we’d even be allowed to leave the country. We had no reliable way of knowing how bad the situation had been or what was going on in the world. Was France declaring war? We’re the boarders of all European Union states being closed?
When we arrived back to our university I had learned that we had gotten extremely lucky that our trip to Paris was planned for next week because our hotel that was booked was on a street close to the shootings. Had there not had been a planned trip, my roommate and myself would’ve most definitely been in Paris the weekend of the attack because one of our favorite bands was performing in the city that weekend. Prior to the attack on Paris was our week long fall break where we could travel anywhere. A couple friends and myself took a plane on November 2 from Madrid to Italy. The next day authorities found a terrorist cell in Madrid.
I’m extremely lucky that, so far, I’ve always been one step ahead or behind of whatever new hell is going on but there’s always that uncertainty. That vulnerability and uncertainty is the worst part of being a student abroad, and it’s everywhere. You never know where you’ll be or who you’ll be with when something might happen. Before Paris we would just pick a city, book our tickets and be on our way. Now we research. Is that city safe? Do they have any bad relations with ISIS? Can we get there without a plane?
Being in the midst of all this conflict forces you to be subjective, I can’t help but think about it. In fact Paris is all I could think about for this past week or so. In class I couldn’t focus for more than 5 minutes without trying to find a new article. It was the only topic I cared to talk about in conversation. It’s been eating at me because it’s not the last time something like this will happen. I have friends studying all over Europe, and it takes most of my daily energy to worry about their safety. With the newly released threat of attacks on US cities I’m equally distressed and paranoid that I’m not home with my family right now. As I and I’m sure many other students around the world right now feel, I’m torn between trying to fully enjoy and immerse myself in this experience while cautiously trying to suffocate my longing for home, for a lasting feeling of safety.
For my friend's blog about her experience in Paris that night click here.
