The Kindness of Strangers
I was in Paris, at the train station that takes you to the airport. My flight was very early in the morning, so I planned to stay at the station until five in the morning and then go to the airport. This dude that I didn’t know started talking to me. He was very friendly at first. He even praised my French and made small talk.
Then he asked me where I was from and I totally lied because I wasn’t about to give a total stranger all of my information.
He asked me if I was going to the airport and I said that I was, early in the morning. At some point, I realized another guy was kind of circling us, keeping an eye on our conversation.
For some reason, this gave me a bad vibe. I was kind of far away from the other people because I was using a machine to buy tickets and several of them were not working. I started walking towards the entry where there were more people, but this guy followed me and was still trying to talk with me.
The other guy continued to follow us and that’s when I knew that something was wrong. The guy talking to me said, “Do you know that the station closes in like 15 minutes?” I wasn’t able to hide my surprise. He told me they didn’t close before, but due to the number of vagrants, they started locking up at night.
He tried to touch my arm but I pulled away. My situation was getting really dangerous really fast. He said, “You don’t want to spend the night here. It’s a dangerous neighborhood and a pretty lady like you…one can only imagine what is going to happen to you.” He offered to go to a hotel with me.
I was looking at the reflection of the glass wall and realized that the other dude was getting closer to us. At that moment, I was certain that they were going to abduct me.
Then, my guardian angels intervened. I heard this Spanish-speaking lady somewhere nearby (I’m Spanish-speaking).
I looked at her and she was with her two adult children. I almost cried. She was Mexican and for some reason, I was convinced she was going to help me. I walked towards her and said very fast a low in Spanish that those guys were harassing me.
She seemed to understand exactly what my situation was and said that we should stay together. I spent the rest of the night with her and her adult children until the train station opened again the next morning. I’m forever grateful to her and her family. They saved me. Story credit: Reddit / sapheless