By Bill Fonda
Sisters Carly and Sophie Antonioli of Acton saw the police and emergency vehicles near the La Casa Nostra restaurant in Paris as they were walking back to their hotel after dinner the night of Nov. 13.
“At that point, we thought there was a fire, because otherwise, why would there be such a commotion?” Sophie said.
They, along with everyone else, would soon find out — a series of attacks at the Bataclan concert hall, outside the France-Germany soccer game at the Stade de France and restaurants in the 10th and 11th arrondissements (districts) of the city left more than 120 people dead. The sisters, who were staying with Carly’s friend Ugne Vaiciulype of Lithuania in a hotel near the epicenter of the attacks, moved to a hotel in another part of the city the next day.
They are now in Madrid, where Carly, a 20-year-old junior at Boston University, is studying this semester as part of the BU Madrid program.
Carly went to Paris with Vaiciulype Nov. 12. Sophie, a 17-year-old senior at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, flew to Paris that night, arriving the next morning. Earlier that day, Sophie signed a National Letter of Intent to run track at Lehigh University.
“Sophie was so excited,” her mother Jill Salamon said. “You don’t have a lot of days like this.”
Salamon said she and her husband Greg Antonioli got the call from their daughters at about 4:20 p.m. Eastern time (10:20 p.m. Paris time) Nov. 13, saying, “There’s a shooting. Everything is taped off. We can’t get to the hotel.”
“They had to think of a way to go around,” Salamon said. “I don’t know how far they walked.”
“It took us about an hour to walk home,” Carly said.
Salamon and her husband went online to find out any information they could, but little was available at the beginning.
“Then, within about 20 minutes, it was all over the news,” she said.
At first, Sophie said they had no idea of the scope of what happened, and the fear came once they learned more and that whoever was responsible hadn’t been apprehended.
“It was really scary. Everyone on the street looked suspicious to us,” Sophie said.
Carly said they would have been more frightened right away had they known how large the attack was.
“All the streets were dark,” she said. “No one spoke our language.”
Sophie said she had only seen a dead body once, before a funeral, but sticking out of one of the white sheets on the ground near the restaurant was a right hand in a black business suit and white shirt.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to forget that,” she said.
Salamon said she called a number at the American embassy in Paris, but there wasn’t much the embassy could do, and that BU in Madrid wasn’t able to do much, either.
Once the girls got back, Salamon said, “They went back to their hotel room, closed the shades and did not move.” They stayed in contact with their family, texting all night.
Sophie said they turned on French television in the hotel, but didn’t understand what was being said, so they went to the CNN website, where they saw constant reports of increasing casualties.
“We thought it was bad enough when we were there, and then it got worse and worse,” Sophie said.
A family friend who used to live in Paris and was in the city visiting put the girls up in a hotel in the 7th Arrondissement, the district which is home to the Eiffel Tower.
“They were very happy to get out of the hotel and happy to be with my sister’s friend,” Salamon said.
The girls took a 25-minute cab ride to the friend’s apartment near the Eiffel Tower, then walked to the hotel.
“We’re all a little tired,” Carly said Nov. 14. “I don’t think any of us slept.”
Carly said the day after the attacks was a gray and rainy day, with an “eerie feeling everywhere,” but people were going out.
The morning of Nov. 14, Salamon, a registered nurse who works for Acton Nursing Service, worked at the service’s flu clinic at Acton Town Hall as a distraction from the news.
“I couldn’t watch CNN for another minute,” she said.
Carly is staying with a host family in Madrid. The girls went to Madrid Nov. 15, which had previously been planned, and Salamon flew to Madrid to meet her daughters Nov. 16. She and Sophie are scheduled to come back Friday, Nov. 20, and other family members are headed to Madrid to visit Carly Nov. 21.
Salamon said her two oldest daughters — a third daughter, Ruby, is a 15-year-old Acton-Boxborough sophomore — have friends who travel all over the world, but they always thought of Europe as being safe. Carly is supposed to be finished in Madrid Dec. 18, but wants to stay and travel, her mother said.
“It does make you feel like it could happen here,” Salamon said. “It could happen anywhere.”
Carly said that although the attack “makes me miss my family a little more,” she still wants to stay and travel.
“I’ve been in Europe three months,” she said. “I don’t know when I’m ever going to be able to do that again.”
Support from friends, family and school
Carly said that when BU Madrid students travel overseas for the weekend, they have to provide information on where they’re going and how long they’ll be there in case something happens.
According to Carly, five BU Madrid students were in Paris — although she, Sophie and Vaiciulype were the only ones to see any of the aftermath of the attacks — and the program sent a group message to all of them.
“They were in constant contact with everyone all weekend,” she said.
Once all the students were back in Madrid, officials met with them Nov. 16, and the program gave their information to the counseling center at Boston University in the event they needed it. They also offered their services to Sophie.
“They really reached out to her to include her in that,” Carly said.
Carly’s professor from the Boston University School of Hospitality Administration sent her an email asking if she needed help, and the school’s dean checked in with a cellphone number in case she needed anything.
“They were pretty on top of it,” she said.
Furthermore, BU Madrid was in contact with BU Paris, as well as the director of the university’s global programs.
Sophie heard from four of her teachers at Acton-Boxborough, said Salamon, who received a text message and phone call from Sophie’s coach Lisa Owen the morning of Nov. 14.
“She said, ‘I know the girls are OK, but what about you?’” Salamon said.
According to Salamon, she kept all the text messages she received so she could show them to her daughters.
“The support from friends and family has been amazing,” she said.
Posted Nov. 18, 2015
Bill Fonda 