Everyone has a special power—mine is to get stuck in random places when travelling or narrowingly avoid disaster… or sometimes a mix of both.

On Tuesday, I took the train to Paris to visit my siblings. The timing was perfect. I had less work and fewer chores to do in Nantes and November 1 is a bank holiday in France, so we would have the chance to spend time together. I booked the return trip for November 2 to make it a long-enough-but-not-too-long two-night trip since I’m staying at my brother’s place.

Travelling between Nantes and Paris is usually very straightforward. Dozens of high-speed trains connect the two cities and it’s only a two-hour trip. The only two potential challenges are train and accommodation prices but I got cheap tickets and I pay my brother in travel advice plus pastries.

When I got to the station on Tuesday morning, I discovered the train was 40 minutes late because of fallen trees on tracks close to Ancenis. It was complete mayhem with all trains travelling through the region delayed or cancelled.

My train eventually left and it was packed—1053 passengers according to the driver. And five other trains with several thousand passengers arrived at the same time at Montparnasse station.

I took the subway to my brother’s place, picked up the keys at his workplace, walked to the apartment… and my phone beeped.

“OUIGO 7623 cancelled”, the SNCF app informed me.

This is French for “your train is cancelled”, and English speakers will appreciate the witty “OUI GO/We go” pun most French people over 60 don’t even get.

At first, I thought it was one of the automatic notifications, as in “your OUIGO 7623 is cancelled, replaced by OUIGO 7624”.

I checked back an hour later but no alternative was offered.

The app offered an explanation—an upcoming storm was going to hit France on Wednesday night so my train was cancelled and actually, absolutely all trains were cancelled for the entire day.

“I’ve never seen that before! Do you have any friends coming on Thursday night?”

“Nope,” my brother replied. “The couch is all yours.”

So I rebooked myself on a Friday evening train.

After getting stuck in Brazil during the pandemic and after facing tornadoes and derechos in Canada, I’m now stuck in Paris and the wind is picking up. At least, I’m away from the coast, where wind gusts of 170 km/hour are expected.

Should be fun!