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Woke up very early (before 5 AM, it’s been at least 5 days since I last woke up after 6 AM) to get the Lyon metro.

In the tram, which turned out to be my 60th « train », or rather rail transport, of the Warm Up trip, I realize that I would have arrived and left Lyon in the same night. Talk about a speedy visit.

In the high-speed train for Lyon, something shocks me: the silence. I had never quite realized how quiet the French trains are (mostly the fast, long-distance ones though). It’s really appreciable, to be able to finish my night while being whisked away through France. The climate is slowly changing to the Mediterannean one, and we eventually get to see the sea. I’m closing on home.

Here I am now, back in the Ville Rose, for the ultimate hour of waiting. I don’t want to finish this trip with a metro/bus ride home, come on! So I board the last, final train of this short adventure. 20 min pass, and it’s with the head full of emotions that I set foot in my hometown of Colomiers again. From an external point of view, that’s way too much emotion for such a small station on such a random destination though.

As I turn into my street, I’m welcome by the surprising sight of the buildings on the other side of the road being inhabited now. Have I been away for only three weeks really, or three months? I can hardly tell. I have both the feelings that I left just a couple days ago and that the trip is just starting, and that I haven’t been home in months… How time flies when you’re busy enjoying life!

I turn the key, and enter the house. I’m not sure yet if I’m happy or melancholic to put down the backpack. But bittersweet end means good end, eh?

This journey has been crazily instructive, about mistakes to avoid, things to pack or not pack, my mental, harder regions to travel by public transports… But it all went pretty smooth, comme sur des rails. All it took was 21 d, over 16,000 km, 62 trains and other rail transports (and six buses erf), and over three days spent in trains.

Next step: 2024. All Europe. 5 months.

I’m ready.