Am I Lyon to Myself?

View of Lyon

So my solo travels have officially started. Not sure how I feel about them yet, but I need to give it a little more time to sink in I think. I left by train from Switzerland (Bern I think it was) and headed off to Lyon, France which is where I am currently residing. The train ride wasn't all too bad actually. A few things to note though, definitely set an alarm before the estimated time of arrival for the next time I travel by bus or train. Luckily I didn't miss my stop though. Also it was slightly confusing when I got on, because I had a designated section and seat number for the train ride, but when I got to that spot there was a kid crying his eyes out in my seat so I figured that asking him to get out of my damn seat wouldn't be a very nice thing to do. I thought I was all smart and stuff before I left by writing down the directions from the train station to the hostel but I clearly missed the first step or two because it took me a while to find the street I needed to be on. It was hot as all hell and having a heavy backpack on my back didn't help. I asked a few people for directions and everybody was very friendly (I honestly don't know what people talk about when they say that the French can be snobby.. they have all been so polite to me). This one lady who spoke very broken English even offered to walk me to the street I needed to be on which was incredibly helpful. It made me wish I could actually speak French a little better, because we were trying to talk to one another but the language barrier was very evident. So after walking around for about an hour - which should have been maybe 15 minutes from the station - I finally arrived at my destination.. or did I? When I reached the address of the hostel all it was was a large wooden door that was locked. There was absolutely no signage of the hostel anywhere to be found. As you can imagine this was a little bit worrisome. I gave Patrick a call and asked him to double check the address and see if he could maybe find a phone number of the place. He was very helpful but unfortunately none of the info got me any closer to solving the problem. After asking several locals (nobody had even heard of the place) I decided to just sit around outside and see if anybody would come in or out of that door. About an hour later somebody finally come out and I did not hesitate to catch the door before it shut again. Once inside I still thought I had the wrong place. It seemed very residential.. After going up 4 flights of stairs I was pleasantly greeted by one of the hostel workers. I had found it!! I was warmly welcomed with a glass of wine and given a little tour of the location. It is a very small hostel but it is quite nice. A lot of people my age are staying here who are pretty much all doing what I am doing and some are just as lost as I am so that's kind of nice I suppose? As nice as it is here in the hostel its kind of a hassle as well. The first night I was here, people went out relatively late and came back late as well. And the concept of other people might be something they can work on (not to sound like an ass or anything..) It was pretty noisy and apparently a couple of the people staying here got stuck in the tiny elevator for about 45 minutes. It holds like 4 people maximum but they squeezed in 6 and it got stuck.. So other people thought it would be a good idea to entertain them while they were in there by blasting Bob Marley's Buffalo Soldier followed by a compilation of Abba songs. Lucky I'm a heavy sleeper so it wasn't much of an issue.

The dessert I had after the veggie burger.
Not sure what the ¨freedom¨ is all about though.
Maybe they thought I was American?

Lyon itself is quite nice though, and apparently has the best food in all of France. As a vegetarian that might be harder to prove, however this one veggie burger I had last night was phenomenal (..and expensive). I've already done a tour of the local record stores and found a few sweet records. One which I had been looking for for some time. The hostel I'm staying at is located right in between Le Rhone and La Saone rivers.
The other people in the hostel must think I'm an old man or something because while everybody else is going out I've been hitting the sack pretty early every night. I'm going to try my best to stay up tonight though and go out with some of the people here. I've just been unbelievably exhausted these last few days. Hopefully I can find my next wind though.
Also why is it so warm!? Its 27 °C already and its not even May yet..
So I was going to end this entry with a bad pun about France, none really came to mind so I looked up French jokes in google.. oooooooh boy.. is all that I will say.

I love lamp.

Went up and down these stairs several times
with Leon - my hostel friend - because we
got lost..