"I was flying back to France from the UK after a friend's funeral. I'd been living in Paris doing a French-language course and living with a host family who, to be honest, weren't particularly welcoming. It was late at night when I got back to the apartment, only to find the entrance code to the building had changed something the host family had neglected to mention. They must have already been in bed, because nobody was answering my calls."
"I rang my girlfriend back in the UK to ask if she might be able to book me a hotel online this was before smartphones. She had a look, but everywhere was 350 a night or more, which was crazy money for a young student and absolutely out of my budget. At this point I was feeling stuck, hopeless and quite hungry. I wandered over to a McDonald's and the staff there clearly realised something was not going well for me, so they offered me a couple of burgers for free as they were closing up."
I returned to Paris late at night after a friend's funeral and found the building entrance code had been changed without warning. The host family was unreachable and I wandered the streets with a suitcase, struggling to find affordable accommodation. Attempts to book a hotel from the UK showed prices around £350 per night, far beyond a student's budget. Hungry and stuck, I accepted free burgers from sympathetic McDonald's staff and sat on a bench to eat. A fellow Brit approached, revealed he was a bank executive in Paris, and offered unexpected assistance after hearing my situation.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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