Episode 10: Life, Love and European Armpit Hair
Trip Start
Jul 05, 2005
1
19
Trip End
Nov 14, 2005
Nice, France
Wednesday, November 2, 2005
You left me last in good spirits in Montpellier as I had found dancing and
the sun was out. Well all I can say is that by the time I got out of the
internet cafe the sun had been over taken by storm clouds then never again
parted and I never had another opportunity to dance. So after 5 days of
rainy misery, I finally, left Montpellier, Wednesday afternoon for
Marseille, which I heard was somewhat dangerous, but beautiful and more
likely to be sunny, so worth the risk.
Perhaps now is the best time to reveal that throughout this trip I have been
stubbornly boy cotting certain aspects of European culture, which I refuse
support with my hard-earned under-valued American dollars. Those things
being: Paying for water, paying for the bathroom, and overpriced
transportation and accommodation. This inconvenient set of values, as I'm
sure you can imagine, has been the catalyst for many an interesting
adventure as well as a multitude of blisters and the occasional pee pee
dance. Thus when I arrived in Marseille and discovered the buses were on
strike and the only safe way to reasonably priced accommodation was by Taxi
I refused fall victim to this tourist trap and took a free ride to Nice with
my Eurail pass instead.
Our 1201 am arrival to Nice was somewhat oddly announced as it was proceeded
and followed by pornographic sound bites. Having deboarded the erotic night
train, I walked to the closest hostel to the trainstation, but found that
the only had an expensive room open (and you know my policy concerning such
matters) so I decided to try my luck at a cheaper back packer's guest house
near the beach. I towed my luggage about a Kilometer and a half in Nice's
welcome-drizzle only to find a sign on the Guesthouse's door announcing
that it was full for the night. My only remaining choice was to walk another
post-midnight Kilometer in the rain to an International Youth Hostel.
There, I was greeted by 3 friendly french gentlemen who mercifully booked me
a room and kept me company with guitar sing-along's until long past my bed
time.
The next morning, I checked out of the hostel in hopes that a friend I had
stayed with at the Nice Balboa Exchange would be able to host me for a few
nights, but soon found an email from him saying that was gone on a business
trip to London. Since the terrible Montpellier weather seemed to have also
caught the same erotic night train Nice, I spent the morning finding some
warm cloths (euro-fashionable second hand wool jacket, hat and sweater to
the tune of 15 euros. Good deal) then walked the rainy streets and did some
window shopping along some of the main boulevards and visited a Russian
church, before returning to my hostel to book another night and cook myself
some dinner in the hostel kitchen.
After a hot meal of cous cous (thoughtfully donated by Kira) I took a half
hour nap, before getting and getting ready for a night on the town. I
planned to visit a salsa club called L'Havana to get some dancing in, be it
salsa, then maybe make an appearance at some of the waterfront Casinos to do
some sociological observation.
It was about a Kilometer to L'Havana, but the rain had grown tired of its
pursuit and caught the erotic night train to another destination, the night
was warm much of the walk was along parks of fountains, marble benches and
palm trees that were beautiful by moonlight.
Upon arrival at L'Havana, I quickly changed into my dancing clothes and hit
the floor, excited for the night of dancing, but soon found the linoleum
floor too sticky for turns in my rubber soled shoes, which further
handicapped to my already faltering salsa. A few gentlemen were gracious
enough to dance with me several times despite my apparent lack of grace, but
I soon took found my place in this scene in seat alone OFF the dance floor
after stepping on my quota of toes for the evening.
From my reject seat, I watched the more practiced, appropriately shoed salsa
dancers flash their stuff on the dance floor until a young French gentleman
from a large group in the corner asked me to dance. I agreed and was happy
to find he danced no better than I so I could relax my technique and have a
little fun. After the dance and an introduction (his name is Romain) and a
little conversation, he invited me to sit with him and his coworkers who
were there for a work party for Texas Instruments (Yeah, you got it, the
maker of everyone's favorite mandatory high school calculator the TI82,
though Romain tells me they work more with cell phones). Happy to be
amongst nerds again I relaxed easily into the group and was soon in my
element joking and carrying on with the inebriated gaggle of French
engineers (Frengineers as I like to call them).
When the bar closed down, the guys invited me back to Romain's place to
continue the party there which I declined on account of the late hour, the
extremity of my sleep deprivation over the last weeks and my desire to rise
at a reasonable hour to see some of Nice. However, I took down their
numbers and promised to call the next day to join them for another party.
Being the gentlemen they were, they insisted on walking me home and we set
off in a rambunctious stroll down the street, disturbing the sleeping
community as we went. As only 2 of us were sober, and neither of us had
possession of the map, the walk home was a complete calamity of drunken
disorganization. I believe, we began our journey lost by heading down the
wrong street to begin with. After a half an hour of drunken milling, some
of the boys began to sober and progress was made in the correct direction of
the hostel. However we had not swaggered 10 blocks in the right direction,
when we ran into 2 competitively inebriated aussie blokes, who wanted to
know where they could find some food and how to get back to their hotel.
This catalyzed another eruption of drunken disorganization and another 15
minutes was spent pointing, and bellowing my, now, twice torn map.
Eventually the Frengineers tired of diplomacy and pointed the aussies in one
direction and told them to walk straight. As it happened to be in my
direction, the Aussies offered to walk (or rather stubble) me the rest of
the way home.
So kissed each Frengineer on each cheek as is done in france and said Bonuit
with a promise to call them for the party tomorrow and with that exchanged
my french escorts for Aussies. As these gentlemen had about 2 times the
blood alcohol level of my previous escorts, the walk home was even less
efficient than my wanderings with the French, but never the less, extremely
amusing as they both had alcoholically amplified Australian accents to the
extent that I only understood about 60 percent of their ramblings and one of
them to fall madly in love with me and he spent there rest of our inebriated
odyssey calling me precious and delivering such amusing lines as, and I
quote word for word "Precious, I think I love you, I'm going to marry you
some day." "Precious, mum just called and she wants to meet you, but really
love, I need to know, can you bake scones?" "...oh yes she was a lovely
girl, I'm going to marry her someday.... but you first darling, you first."
And after we had taken a wrong turn "Precious! What have you done? I loved
you once, but you've ruined me! You have lead me to my demise!" After
about a half an hour of this droll nonsense, I was finally able to obtain
custody of the map and drag my love struck escorts to the gate of my
auberge, where I thanked them, said good night and promised to earnestly
consider the marriage proposal. Inside I found the previous evenings guitar
player, working the desk, so I sat with him for a while and played guitar
and sang with him while I wound down from the nights adventures.
The next morning, I again, checked out of the hostel, and, armed with a
camera and discman, set out to see the town. I spent the day, window
shopping, meandering through the parks, taking pictures, and riding a train
tour around Nice Vieux (Old Nice) and up Mont Boron to a spectacular view of
the city.
By 5 O'clock, I was exhausted, having slept little the night before, despite
my attempts to be responsible and go to bed at a reasonable hour. So I made
my way down to the rocky beach and made a pebble pillow for my head and soon
fell into a deep power nap. I awoke about a half an hour later, groggy but
refreshed, just in time to be harassed by a undesirable french suitor. After
assuring the him, for the 8th time, that I did not desire his company
further, I collected myself and made my way into Old Nice to have a look at
some of the shops and outdoor markets I had passed earlier on the tour
train.
There I wandered the boutique lined streets, treated myself to some gourmet
gelato (italian ice-cream) and woke myself up a cup of coffee in a cafe
dominated by a 90 Kilo (200 pound) English Mastiff. From the canine coffee
shop, I made my way to the bus station to call Romain about the party in the
evening. We agreed to meet at the famous Palais de Justice in Old Nice at
19:30 and go from there to the party. With over an hour to kill, I decided
to walk back through Old Nice and find our meeting spot before embarking on
further adventures.
When I reached the Palais de Justice, I notice the beginnings of a beautiful
sunset reflecting the in the palaces windows and decided to head to the
beach to watch the sun go down over the water. I was able to capture a few
amazing photos on my way to the beach before my batteries, with their
consistently impeccable timing, decided to die. Stripped of my technology,
all that was left to do was to sit on the beach and simply enjoy the beauty
before me as the colors of the dwaning light intensified then slowly faded
to blackness. After the suns curtain call, I struck up a moonlit
conversation with an French anesthesiologist about Nice, Seattle and Rehab
medicine until 19:28 when I excused myself to meet Romain.
I arrived at the Palais de Justice just in time to..... BE ON TIME for,
possibly, the first time in my life, a fact that was not properly celebrated
by Romain as he did not know me well enough to appreciate my debut of this
common courtousey. From there, we took his car to his house where he made
us a quick simple meal of spaghetti and meat sauce before we headed out of
town to the party.
It took us a good hour to get to the party as Romain has a habit of getting
lost, which, considering my nature, makes us a terrible team, but we always
seem to unlose ourselves eventually and have a good time while we are at it.
The party we attended was a small, but enjoyable housewarming party, where
we ate pasta, sipped wine, gorged ourselves on chocolate and spent the
latter half of the evening singing along to french and american songs played
on the guitar. It was long past the witching hour when we finally said our
au revoir's and drove back to Romain's, where he let me crash on his futon
for the night.
The next day, Romain was heading to his home town of Lyon to attend ANOTHER
house warming party (I still haven't figured out if this was just a
coincidence or if house warming parties are the new French fashion in which
case I'm going to have 3 as soon as I get home in order to remain
euro-chice). He invited me to come with him as I had missed my opportunity
to see the lovely town when I missed my flight from London. After much
deliberation, concerning my anxiety about returning to the frigid north, I
decided to throw caution to the wind, pack my thermal underwear and
accompany him to Lyon.
On the 5 hour drive to Lyon we talked of all subjects concerning life, love
and our favorite MacGuiver episodes under a sky of enourmous cumulous clouds
that reflected the light of the setting sun.
The Lyon house warming party had larger more energetic feel with people
mingling throughout the living room, kitchen and balcony. Much of the
evening was spent,talking, dancing, eating and drinking. When most of the
party had taken thier leave and only a few remained, we all sat on the
balcony and chatted in French and English. Because of my distict American
presence it was not long before the volatile subject of the United States
was breached, the air turned thick with French hostility and for a moment I
feared I had fallen into the company of Anti-American lynch mob. However,
I was sensitive to their frustrations, as I shared many, and did my best to
speak candidly and honestly about pros, cons and truths of my country. And
in the end, Diplomacy ruled the day as they were all quite relieved to be
assured that not all Americans were Anti-French, war-mongering,
freedom-fry-eating, Bush-Lovers and we all seemed to feel the bond of
humanity that bridges all cultural differences. Leaving the conversation
with my head still attached and a few new friends, I retired on the futon
for the night.
The next morning, Romain and I joined the hosts and the left over guests for
breakfast of chocolate chip bread and coffee then set out to see Lyon. We
spent the day wandering through and amongst the, lush parks, quaint public
squares, hidden churches and famous monuments of beautiful city of Lyon
before meeting a some of Romain's school friends for a drink and heading
home.
The ride home was again filled with in depth discussions of life, love and
European armpit hair so that by the time we reached home it was as if we had
been friends for years.
The next morning Romain had to wake up early to go to work (I'm still not
quite clear on what he does for Texas Instruments other than that he works
with a machine called "the Death Star" which is cool enough to require no
further explanation as far as I'm concerned) I spent the day sleeping in,
organizing my bag, playing guitar, washing up and just taking the
opportunity to be lazy.
Then walked a few Kilometers into town to meet Romain for FRENCH cuisine in
a FRENCH restaurant in FRANCE YAY! Romain insisted that I have the Duck
liver if I really wanted to eat french food. I deliberated on this matter
for quite some time until, against my better judgment, I ordered the
expensive plate. It came out in classic French style, in an extremely small
portion (slightly larger than a golf ball) and attractive presentation of
greens and bread. As suspected I wasn't fond of the duck liver, but ate it
anyway, insistent upon taking the opportunity to partake in a real French
culinary experience, whether I liked it or not.
After dinner we returned home, talked, watched some video clips on the
computer and fell asleep exhausted from the past days adventures.
Today Romain has returned to "the Death Star" and I am left to amuse myself,
which, really, can never come to any good, but I plan to take advantage of
the long sought after sun and wander along the beach into town and walk Mont
Boron then meet Romain in town to hang out for the evening. I hope to visit
Monaco tomorrow. Italy looms in the near future. More news soon so stay
tuned.
Je T'aime,
Sandra
