Stepping slowly off the train, my eyes adjusted to the black blanket that cast itself over the old town in nowhere France, about three miles from the border of Belgium. Having no clue where I was, I tried to recount the previous events by fitting each individual awkward happening side by side, hoping their grooved edges matched so as the picture might unfold as a panorama landscape in my mind. Then, and only then, I might be able to tell myself why I had woken up in the black night, on a train in a foreign country that speaks a language I can't even comprehend.

Wine. Beer. Whiskey. Bottle caps started to unfold and and glasses were drained before me.

A train pulling up to a station in a country I didn't want to leave: the slow, peaceful, bright ways of the Italians making the best of heat.

I lugged my backpack over onto my shoulders and stepped in a train that was going the wrong way.

Oops.

And now I sit