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Share the story of a time you felt unsafe.
The first time that I remember feeling unsafe while traveling was with my sister during the summer we went backpacking through France, Italy and Greece. We had arrived by train into Marseilles, a city that my sister and I had never visited before, we knew of it, but not really, as much as any 17 year old or 20 year old would know of a city. We had a plan of course, my sister and I had friends just outside of Marseilles and we were going to track them down once we had found a hotel. It seemed to be a logical plan at the time. So when we arrived at the train station we disembarked from the train and left the train station and we found ourselves in a very eerie and silent part of the city. There weren’t any women outside, only men and they were looking at us in ways that made us very, very uncomfortable. I had no idea that the train station was located in the Arab quarter of Marseilles and we had to cross it to get to the center of the city where we could find youth hostels and other small hotels. I didn’t show that I was afraid, I took my sister’s hand and we walked up the street towards where I hoped was to be the center of the city, I was looking for avenues, boulevards, people, anything at this point. What I wasn’t aware of at the time was this port city was part of the white slave trade and that young girls went missing occasionally, I’m glad that I wasn’t aware right then and there because I don’t know if I could have maintained my composure but I marched onward with my sister and we found the big avenues and the center of Marseilles. We called our friends and they came to rescue us and we had a happy ending, when our mother found out that we had been roaming in the Arab quarter, ahe almost fainted from fright. We were lucky and we were safe.
laurieanichols 