Hello, my nearest and dearest. It’s day three on my French adventure, and I’m feeling more displaced and less giddy with freedom and wonder than I had anticipated at this point. Day one was pretty good, arriving at my super cute hotel (Hotel Caron de Baumarchais), walking around the Marais, going to the Hotel de Ville and Places des Vosges just to make sure it was the way I remembered it, and treating myself to a decadent French dinner at an outdoor café, complete with a demi bottle of wine. Yesterday, though, I felt unexpectedly blue. Paris is awesome, but when they say it’s for lovers, they have a point. It’s weird being alone here. I didn’t know how much I’d miss sharing it with somebody.
What a strange ride this has all been so far. I’ve been plagued with technological problems – crappy Wi-Fi signals, no networks for my iPod Touch (oh, that’s what makes it so different from the iPhone – you don’t pay for the service, you don’t get the service), banking snafus, a nonworking cell phone, and a general unfamiliarity with how to work with my new Mac. France is not wired the way the U.S. is wired, either. They seem to limp along fairly contentedly in what to me feels like the dark ages. So thus far, not exactly relaxing. But I’m on the train to Avignon now, watching neon green fields pass by at top speed. The cows are all white and the trees are all bare. The houses look like quaint little boxy models dropped into a diorama. I’m actually feeling pretty nauseated – not from carsickness, I don’t think, but just from general nerves. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. I had breakfast delivered (I actually just asked for a croissant and café crème, but they brought me the whole kit and caboodle – croissant, pain au chocolate, baguette, butter, two kinds of jam, honey, coffee, milk, fresh squeezed orange juice, a boiled egg, yogurt, and a kiwi. (How does one eat a whole kiwi? Peel it? Slice it?) And of course they charged me 17 euros for the whole spread. So French – they treat you like a queen, whether you ask for it or not, and you certainly pay for it.).
I overestimated my familiarity with Paris and the metro system and have suffered for my hubris in not bringing a travel book with me this time. I’ve gotten lost a few times and paid for cabs when I should’ve been on the train. Of course, I had this idea that there were apps for all that, not realizing how little access I would actually have through my iPod. Just finding the right train to get on this morning was a little nightmare in itself. The second I got out of the cab, a somewhat disheveled looking fellow grabbed my bags and asked if I spoke English and where I was going. He was no porter – he insinuated himself into the situation for a tip – presumably the way he makes a living – but I was grateful for his help, since I had no idea what to do or where to go. The cab driver looked at him disapprovingly, and I think wanted to warn me, but I knew the score from all my past experiences with homeless guys trying to direct me to parking spaces in the Mission, and for once, I was willing to pay for the unofficial aid. I was a little alarmed that he might abscond with my bags, though, and I trotted after him like the helpless female I have so infrequently felt myself to be (until this trip, that is). He kept up a good clip and, after encountering an error on the computerized ticket machine when entering the code I got online, he went through the line at the information desk and talked to the representative for me in super rapid French. Then he sent me in generally the right direction, with five of my euros in his pocket. (He looked at them twice, and I wasn’t sure if I had given him too much or too little, but c’est la vie, as they say.) From there, I wheeled around madly with my two giant bags, asking various people where to go in broken French and trying to understand their answers in equally broken Frenglish. It truly wasn’t self-explanatory, since my train information was posted with a different destination, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason with the platform and train numbers. I worked myself into quite a sweat tearing around. Once in the car, I hefted my mammoth bags onto the overhead rack with superhuman strength fueled by sheer panic. Now my back hurts. Duh. Even now, I’m a little skeptical that I’m headed for the right place. If I’m not, neither is the girl in the seat across from me, though, and she’s French, so I’ll follow her lead.
Ugh, my pathetic, broken French. If I gain nothing else from this trip, I hope I master the language a little. One thing that is both a blessing and a curse is that my accent is very good, so that when I say just a few words, people start pouring forth in their native tongue, and I’m then left to stare at them in mute incomprehension. My cab driver from the airport said he actually thought I was French at first. Maybe he says that to all the américainnes, though. I was semi-convinced that he drove me all over Paris to boost the fare before dropping me at my destination, because how else could the total be so outrageously high (close to $100 US???), but who knows. He talked a lot about politics and Obama and Sarkozy and Libya during the drive, and I just made noises like I knew what he was talking about.
I watched an episode of CSI Miami and another of X Files in French last night. I figure if I keep the TV on in the background, maybe one of these days I’ll actually start to catch what they’re saying. I pick out words and short phrases, but by the time I actively recognize them, a whole string of other sounds has already flown by. I was practically ecstatic to find a BBC channel this morning at 6:00 am, but that only lasted as long as it took for all the bad news to start pouring in – radiation levels in Japan, the military actions in Libya, etc.
I may sound like a complete bumpkin saying this, but I’m eager to get to the countryside. I love Paris, don’t get me wrong. It’s spectacular, but how can you pass those unbelievable buildings and not comment on them to somebody? And I feel a little stupid walking around by myself with my head up in the air and my jaw slack staring at stuff. Plus, a Friday night in the Marais is filled with hilarity and hipster hobnobbing that can make quelq’un seule feel completely alienated. I know I did. I walked really fast around the crowds, like I had important business, but I was really just going to the Jewish quarter for a falafel.
And my god, I miss my animals. The thing about my sweetie dog Bodie, especially, is that I never feel really alone when I’m with him. He may act mostly as a silent witness to my life, but he’s company none the less, and I miss that snuggly, warm company so much I get a lump in my throat just writing about him. I hear tell from the folks that he is totally happy and at home, exercising his puppy-est tendencies with their dog. That’s awesome, but it doesn’t sound like he’s reciprocating my longing in any way, the little shit. He has reportedly corrupted Brinkley with his insouciant lounging about on heretofore forbidden furniture, but so far, he’s not getting any people food – even on the sly, so they’re still maintaining some kind of doggy decorum over there.
I hear cat Ed is hanging in there, too, making preliminary moves on the gal who is staying in my room.
Please write to me and tell me what’s happening there. I miss you guys already!
XOXO Carla
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