I Live in a Castle.

It was incredibly hard to leave Brigitte at the train station. She told me that I could always call the next family and tell them there was an emergency and that I could not make it and just stay in St Michel for another month. I think if I had done that, I never would have left St Michel though. I was texting with both Brigitte and her son as my train pulled away and part of me almost jumped off and hitchhiked back, but I stayed strong and continued on my way. I had to stop in Lyon, which was just as busy and crazy as Paris. I was so glad to get the hell out of there. Now, I had emailed a reminder to my new hosts that I was coming, but heard no response. I was a bit nervous that no one would show up for me and that I would have to sleep at the train station or find somewhere else less homeless style to stay. I was actually 99% prepared for that. I thought for sure I would be on my own. Luckily, I wander off the train and look around for someone looking confused also and I instantly find Ken and Lilli. Ken is from the US and Lilli is from Romania. They are an absolute awesome couple. I love them already and am also very intrigued by them. They seem mysterious besides the fact that they live in London and bought a gigantic chateau in France. There is another couple here, which is awesome also, and we get along great and are trying to figure out as much as we can about our hosts. We know that they are stupid rich, own tons of properties and cars, Ken is like some super genius that finished school as a surgeon but now is a CEO of some company and could have retired years ago but didn’t. They are completely normal people though, extremely social, love the outdoors and have an English bulldog named Winchel. I want to know all about them but I know I never will. The internet has been out for like a month here so that’s probably why I never heard back from them. I guess being in an 18^th century castle has its downfalls! It is crazy beautiful here though. I go for walks and runs through vineyards and plan on drinking from every winery I can find. I am in the Bourgogne region now, no longer Bergerac. I am in awe at how many different wine regions there are. France is my favorite. Oh ya, the castle….OUTRAGEOUS. The two towers connected to it are from like the 13^th century and they look just like out of a story book. There is a chapel, huge barn, caretaker house, a couple random houses and a vineyard all on their land. This place is so big that Ken didn’t even know he owned the vineyard on his land until the mayor told him. Who accidentally owns a vineyard?! I think I will have a lot of good adventures staying here. Tomorrow Ken and Lilli are heading to Turin, Italy to pick up a couch, so Zane and Brittany (the other 2 workawayers) and myself asked if we could hitch a ride into Italy. We figure if they are going, we had better take advantage of it. I think we will be hitting up Turin, then to Genoa and maybe Bologna before coming back. We can only be gone a few days so we don’t want to spend our whole time on the train OR all our money. Who knows how this will work since we have had no way to plan besides looking at a map, but we figure if we can’t catch a train or bus, at least we have our thumbs and hopefully can look pitiful enough to catch a ride on the back of a hay truck.