March 31- April 4
**This version has been edited from it's original version for your protection. Original available upon request.**
I walked into class late on Monday – the big administrative class with all 40 students. Leslie, Corrie and Cibyl all looked at me as if searching for news of my weekend on my forehead. I gave them the biggest shit-eating grin ever. Later, a girl named Molly asked Corrie why I was so happy. I suppose contentment just radiates out of people. And I was pretty damn content. School went well with a sort of drudgy back-to-reality feeling and I couldn’t really stay focused.
Tuesday night, I called Pierre and said we should catch up. He said he had big news and that I should come to the dance class then we could go for a drink. I dragged Cibyl along, promising her cute French boys. We got there and I realized that it was actually a year-long class that starts in September or something. And there were surprisingly a lot more guys than girls – mostly attractive. AND Marco and Guython were there. How it works is there’s a couple that instruct and demonstrate, with a circle of guys around the outside. The ladies form a circle on the inside and every few minutes, the inner circle rotates. The first guy I danced with was A) ugly and B) mean. At first it was kind of difficult and I apologized for being so clumsy, so he offered to teach me a little while the instructors rattled on. I guess I didn’t meet his expectations because he started getting mad at me and correcting me and shit. So the next time around he passed me directly to the next guy who didn’t have a partner. He mumbled something about how I couldn’t even keep a beat. Then he proceeded to be just downright rude. So that kinda spoiled it. Most of the guys were nice, but eventually I just got tired of it. Pierre had showed up late with some girl and they were staying in their own corner practicing. Cibyl was making quite a bit of progress while I floundered. For the open dance, Pierre came and danced with me for a song – an excellent lead and a delight after mean guy. I do much better with music than with someone calling out the steps. I danced a bit with Marco and with Guython, some other guys too. The rest of them were really nice.
As we left, I pulled Pierre aside and asked him what his big news was. He had broken up with Laetitia. I wasn’t all that surprised and I figured he was better off. She was nice but certainly too high maintenance and pouty. Apparently he had also had another girlfriend for about a week (before breaking up with Laetitia), and a third since the previous Sunday. Oh, the scoundrel! Apparently the girl he brought was one of them – or the fourth, I don’t remember which. Then we went out for drinks. We went to a bar on the Cours Mirabeau (main drag) that I’d never been to. It was fairly empty. There was me, Cibyl, Marco, Guython, Pierre and his soup du jour. At the end of the table there were three or four people that I didn’t know that had tagged along.
We talked a bit about the party in Marseille, I confirmed names I had already forgotten, and I asked Marco how the American girls fared at the end of all of it. Apparently they left early the next morning in relatively good shape. Then we got to talking a bit more. I was fascinated by the sailor phenomenon. I know I’d been joking about falling in love with a French sailor, but I never thought I’d meet actual sailors. But over the past couple of months, studying literature of the region, I’ve found that Marseille and the ocean plays a big part. Half of the stories are about the hard life of the ports, the women abandoned by their travel-thirsty loves, and the call of the sea. We talked about the school that he went to, the kind of jobs they get afterwards, etc. They do three years, a year of internship, then one last year. Most of them work on boats before they go to school to become officers. They usually are offered jobs by the companies they do internships with – which gives them summer jobs and they get paid while they’re in school. Most jobs are 3 months on, 3 months off. Marco, however, is gonna work on a ferry between France and England way up north, where it’s cold and nasty. For him, it’s 3 days on, 6 days off. Somehow we got on to the subject of music. He likes jazz, classical, most rock. He’s 29. He’s quite pleasant. And anyone who knows me knows that I get bored with pleasant real fast like.
We called it a night at about 2am, and I wandered home exhausted, but feeling rather like a human being. The next morning I had class at 9am, which I skipped and slept instead. So far, I had not missed a single class. It’s hard because the classes are small and the school isn’t exactly big. My professor really did send me an e-mail wishing me a quick recovery, as she was sure I must be ill. Whatever. It felt so good to skip a class. There’s something about it that means I own it, I can make that decision, I’m comfortable enough to do something wrong. And it was my only class that day. When I got up, I made plans to do more cool stuff – get out more. I called Kate Peterson in Marseille and we made plans to have dinner together that night. I don’t have class until 2:45pm on Thursday, so even if we ended up going out, I had plenty of time to make my way back and get ready for class. I went to my community service Wednesday afternoon and announced to my host-family that I wouldn’t be eating at the house and that I might not be home all night. Seeing as I hadn’t eaten at the house the previous Saturday, nor the night before, they all kind of looked at me funny. They were not at all accustomed to me going out so much.
I called Vincent and invited him along. We all met up and went to a little Italian place of Kate’s choice. Kate and I had the seafood pasta, Vincent had the gnocchi. We had a lovely chat about hiking trails and writers and music. He knew who Sarah Kane was from her description. I was impressed. Kate got a text message and had to leave in a hurry – there was a problem with her host mom – fell, hurt, hospital, etc. Vincent and I went out to a pub that he knew and we had a couple pints. There was the tail end of a soccer game on the television, then there was a band that played. They were a little to island beach bum for me, but they weren’t bad. We kinda lost track of time and I had well missed the last shuttle. I crashed at his place, and took the shuttle home the next morning.
Thursday was more or less preparation for spring break. Thursday night was my host-mom’s birthday. We had dinner and I got her a box of chocolates with a whole layer of Orangettes – the little bars of orange goo dipped in chocolate, her favorite. I don’t know what was in the water but my host dad and sister were in a tiff. She was complaining about everything and he was mad at her and they were arguing and just couldn’t seem to suck it up to have a nice dinner. Martine had made the whole dinner, chosen the wine, and I’m sure she was takin swigs of Martini Bianco in the kitchen to get through the ordeal. And of course Didier was all “Why do we have to drink, blah blah blah…” and for the first time I was all “It’s Martine’s birthday, she likes dinner with wine on special occasions, no one ever said you had to have any.” And he went back to harassing Anne. They were being insufferable and I was so glad to be leaving.
I left early Friday morning.
March 24-30
**This version has been edited from its original version for your protection. Original available upon request.**
When last we left our heroine it was a Monday night on a three-day weekend. Tuesday, at school, I said to my friends, in only the poutiest tone possible, that I was sick of it. My second language partner had never called back, I didn’t want to bother Pierre too much, and I felt kinda stranded by them sometimes. I just wanted to get out and live a little. So I did. I called Pierre in a rather indignant fashion and I was all “what are you doing tonight, let’s go out, see you in a bit.” More or less. So, I had known that there was a free salsa dance class at the college across the street on Thursday nights, and I was under the impression that it was swarmed with American girls which was a serious turn off for me. I even knew that Pierre occasionally found himself there without Laetitia…dun dun dun…
Then I found out, from Pierre, that there’s also a free 50s rock and swing class on Tuesdays – one hour lesson, one hour free dance. So he said he’d meet me afterward, right in front of our school. That wasn’t until 10:30. So I called Leslie, said I’d work on my homework and go out late if she wanted to come. So I meet Leslie in front of the school, and a couple minutes later we see people pouring out of the dance class. Pierre is there and we chat a bit, then two guys come up behind him. And you are? Oh, friends of Pierre?! Fantastic! Let’s all go get a drink. So two girls – one American, one Swedish, both of whom speak French, Leslie and I, Pierre, Guython (he’s Dutch/French) and….MARCO! How serendipitous. And he is every bit his description.
He’s wearing white pants, a button up (top button closed) and a navy blue sweater with loafers. He’s terribly good looking with well cut brown hair, and looks like he popped out of a Ralph Lauren ad. Guython is a tall, lankyish guy that looks safe and funny. He has a light and relaxed air about him and I hear him speak just a touch of English. And what do they do, you ask? Are the engineers? Nope. Are they students? Nope. Are they intelopers or KGB Assassins? Nope. They’re FRENCH SAILORS! They’re in officers’ school for the merchant marines in Marseille. One of their buddies’ older brothers went to school with Pierre back in the day. So friends of friends join one another for a dance a drink occasionally. This is what I had been waiting for.
We go to a little tapas place where they serve pitchers of Sangria, and we get a little snack. The seven of us made quite the crowd, and here Pierre shines. He’s our fearless leader and the life of the party – he’s THAT guy. He speaks with the server, jokes a bit, gets us all comfortable seated without annoying our neighboring tables, makes friends and introductions where necessary, and starts in a conversation with a couple of cute girls at the table next to us. So I start on Marco – he’s from Nantes, did sailing as a kid, that’s how he got into the sailor thing. He makes a remark about what an incredible guy Pierre is – in the sense that he’s a whirlwind and maybe hard to keep up with.
We decided to move on to the Castel – a bar I’d never been to. Well, I suppose it’s more of a dance place. There’s supposedly salsa night on Tuesdays and girls-drink-champagne-free-with-magic-bracelet. I wasn’t really dressed for it, but I wasn’t about to say no to anything. So we go and the salsa is petering out, and so is the crowd. There’s a group of obviously American girls, dancing very badly, very poorly dressed, and swinging their free drinks about willy-nilly. This is not meant to sound condescending, but in the eyes of the French, we are all this poorly behaved. So the music picks up, we find the girl who gives out the magic-drink-free-bracelets, and we dance. Marco, it turns out, is not as shy as we all thought. Some of our crazy American counterparts took hold of him like he was there expressly for them, and started whipping him about, which he went with. And he kept with it for quite some time. I think he even made out with one of them.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, Pierre told me about a big party in Marseille that weekend, something about a big ball and formal dresses and sailors, and said he would probably go and if I wanted he would take me. I had an outing for school and a play to see that Saturday night. I told him I didn’t have a dress. Then that little voice inside me screamed “STOP making excuses! When have you ever said no to a ball?!?!” He looked me in the eyes, and said “You only get this chance once. Profite.” “Profiter” is the verb “to profit” although its sense is often “benefit” or “take advantage” and it always means “enjoy.” The French use this for everything. You ‘profite’ from life and well-being. Living is profite-ing. I told him to let me know if he was going, and I’d see what I could do.
We left at about 2:30am, well spent and feeling much better. “This is what I needed,” I told Leslie. “Me too,” she said. And I slept so well…Until I had to get up for a 9 am class.
Class was more than a little hard, but the thought of the sailor’s ball kept me going. I had already planned some hair therapy for Wednesday morning, so I did that and I started window shopping, trying to think of how formal it would be. I e-mailed Pierre, and he said he didn’t know if he was going but he’d let me know soon. So I shopped and planned and late Thursday night he tells me he’s not going. But if I still want to go, he’d put me in contact with his friends. He tells me I should already have Marco’s number – he sent me a text message from it. Really? So I check my phone and realized that the message from Tuesday night wasn’t his number. The sneaky little bugger was tryin to set me up! I didn’t care, so I went for it. I sent Marco a text, and he said I could go, he’d buy me a ticket the next day. So Friday I went and splurged on a beautiful grey dress in a little boutique and some cheap but perfect shoes at the H&M. With my pearls and a black wrap…. DELISH! Afterwards, I have my last wine tasting class – champagne. A haircut, a dress, shoes, some champagne, and a ticket to a sailor’s ball and thing are looking a lot better.
Then I call Marco to confirm everything and figure my plans. Well, he says, there’s a small problem with lodging and transportation, so as long as I can get there and back on my own and find a place to stay… awkward. So, clearly, he isn’t out to rape me which I suppose is good news. There’s a shuttle that runs between Aix and Marseille (which I already knew) and the party goes till about 5 or 6am. I find out that the shuttle starts up at 5:45 and there’s the daylight saving change, so more or less 4:45. I planned on that, and everything was good. That night, I went out with Corrie and Leslie for a quick dinner and a movie. They have the short and sweet dinner attitude often, and it had sort of been my mission to get them to relax and savor a little bit. I convinced them to go for Chinese, and we found a cheap little place and we sat outside. The spirit of French gastronomy was with us and we sat and ate and talked and laughed, and missed the movie, so we went to a bar on the main drag for a drink. I had an enormous champagne cocktail that came in a massive glass with elaborate fruit decoration. The music was good, it was a place to be, and I felt like my feet would never again touch the ground.
Until the next morning when the champagne cocktail caught up with me and I skipped the outing. I left a message at the school for the theatre professor saying that something had come up and I wouldn’t be able to make it to the play (I never specified what). I figured a long day of sleep and the date shower would be excellent preparation for a long night of partying. As I’m getting ready, and running late as any young woman should be, Marco calls to tell me that there are three other American girls headed to Marseille for the ball, and they’re also taking the shuttle. If I go with them, he’ll pick me up at the station. He gives me the number of one of the girls – another Katie. Something doesn’t settle right. I feel like we’re being rounded up. But I call her and she seems nice and we agree to meet and we’re all running late. So when I get there, none of them are fully dressed – they’re carrying their sacks of stuff because they didn’t want to wear their nice dresses on the shuttle. Well, shit. Whatever.
On the shuttle, they get into a heated conversation about how awkward it’ll be. Apparently they know Guython through a Dutch friend of theirs. Well, Katie and Sarah are students here in Aix and the other girl was visiting from Spain where she was studying abroad. They’d been over to the guys’ house plenty for dinners and all, but had never met the girlfriends. Now, there are three guys in one house, and Guython lives up the street. Balthazar, Marco, and a guy they call Vincent (actually his last name) live together. It’s Vincent’s older brother that went to school with Pierre. Guython, Vincent, and Balthazar all have girlfriends. Marco does not. Guython’s girlfriend is down visiting from Paris and they were supposed to go out to a nice dinner. Will that be weird? What will the girlfriend think? Who’s gonna be there? Should we get really drunk or just a little? Do you feel like you’re back in high school, yet? Because I sure did.
We get there and wait a bit, then Guython shows up. Turns out, Marco had planned to come get us, but at the last minute asked Guython to come because he had too much “work.” Now I was confused and awkward. The traffic in Marseille on a Saturday night is no joke, but the huge gala/ball added on significantly. When we arrive at the pre-party, there’s a garage with a punch bowl and a keg, delicious appetizers, and a rapidly growing crowd. The girls are staying at the house (hence the awkward lodging issue), and they head upstairs to get ready. I head for the underdressed French girl smoking a cigarette and ask for a light that I don’t need. We chat a bit and she seems cool. She’s waiting to get ready because her dress is real tight. Everyone seems nice enough, plenty chatty, and I find Marco. He had to work the bar at the ball, so he’s kinda back and forth. He introduces me to Vincent and Balthazar and I meet a couple of cool girls and we get to chatting about French music and rock, the U.S. and food. Turns out they’re the mystery girlfriends.
When the other American girls come down (Katie 2 & Co.), they don’t seem to notice, until the K2&Co. make their little circle in the corner and start throwing back boose. They very subtly sneer at them without ever dropping the conversation, and I’m suddenly glad I came alone. Other than that instance, I don’t think they hardly took notice of them. At some point, a guy decided he wanted to sing, so Vincent grabbed a guitar and they brought out a mic and an amp. Wonderwall, by Oasis, and a Johnny Cash song were not the first things I expected. And he didn’t even have an accent. Not to mention he knew all the words. Normally, when French people sing American (or in this case, American and British) songs, they blabber on and maul the lyrics to all hell. Apparently the guy was Swedish – probably had something to do with it.
As the party goes on, one of the girlfriends introduces me to a guy nearby that had kinda be sneakin glances at me for a few minutes. His name is Vincent, but it’s his first name. He seems nice, if a little bit quiet. He’s got that young face – barely visible facial hair, pale skin but the cheeks that rouge all over like he’s always overheating or embarrassed. He’s tall, grey suit, slender, medium length curly dark blond hair that doesn’t hang in his face. He’s from Champagne, from a little town outside Reims (looks like Reems, sounds like Rance with a nasal ‘n’). He likes rock, doesn’t like dancing too much, mostly he’s just a big scaredy cat. We notice that the crowd has significantly thinned as people left for the ball. We gather the last – girl who got ready late and her boyfriend, American girls, Balthazar, Guython and girlfriend, Vincent and girlfriend, Vincent from Champagne, me, and other assorted folk. We march up the street en masse, and I find myself talking a lot with Vincent of Champagne and the mystery girlfriends.
As we approach the ball, I realize that balls in France are not necessarily invite only. They sell tickets. If you buy tickets in advance, you go in the short line. If you buy tickets at the door, you go in the long line. And I recognized the huge posters on the gates. I had seem them plastered all over Marseille and Aix, even though I hadn’t paid attention. Somehow, that put me at ease. I wasn’t just another American girl to be taken advantage of, and it wasn’t awkward because I wasn’t necessarily anyone’s date. It was actually more of a “hey, we like this ball thing and you might like it too, so I’ll buy you a ticket.” And I didn’t feel so weird about taking the shuttle and going without Pierre. Vincent and Guython announce that Marco is tending bar at the “French Lines” room (apparently there are 6 rooms) and we will all meet up there. Eventually. As we forge through the massive crowds all up the walk to the school, we find the coat-check and lose half the group. There were some two or three thousand people, so it was a bit snug. We checked out coats and got drink “tickets” carnival style. We pushed through to the French Lines room, where the beverage served was champagne. Marco was tending bar with a load of other good looking young men in suits. The room was full of Marseille’s elite: the Commandants and professors of the merchant marines in this the great port town and gateway to the world, and of course their lonely wives. They were playing a sort of poppy jazz and soft rock. I asked Vincent de Champagne to dance and he was still scared. “Not here,” he said. “These are all my professors.” Guython and girlfriend (Nathalie, it turns out), said they were gonna find the club music, so we went with them and somehow lost the American girls. Outside, between the big party rooms, it was freezing as hell. Nathalie took hold of Guython’s arm and teasingly said something about how it was the man’s duty to keep the girl warm and shield her. She kind of winked at me, then I realized we were down to just us four. I took Vincent de Champagne’s arm and smiled at him in the most non-threatening way possible.
Apparently, another friend of theirs was tending bar in the club room, where there was an INSANE amount of people, granted it was a much bigger room. There was a round bar in the center with more attractive sailors tending bar, although I can’t remember the specialty drink. There was a DJ, flashing lights, people screaming and gyrating, and as we approached the bar, two bartenders climbed up and did a strip tease.
They wanted to head to the next room, so we ended up in the 50s room, where Guython showed off those dance classes and tossed his girlfriend about like a champ. Vincent let me lead for a while, then we sorta developed our own thing. We moved on without the others to the salsa room and then outside for a break. We headed back to the French Lines and found the majority of the group. We grabbed a table and some champagne. The band changed and the new one had a fiery little british woman in a leather vest singing 90s rock songs that you could move to and within five minutes I had him dancing again. We tore it up. And it turns out that all of those guys had been taking the dance class for years. So they were real good. Vincent and I made it up as we went in what I feel was a more comfortable groove than the high pace calculated dance steps. We stepped outside for a bit and I went to have a cigarette, then realized that mine were in my coat, in the coat check, on the other side of the school. Vincent de Champagne, my French sailor/knight, went and bummed a cigarette and a light from some guy, lit it, and brought it back to me. How French is that? We went back inside and we were sitting there with the American girls (one of which was falling asleep and drooling), other Vincent and girlfriend, Guython and Nathalie, and some random friends of theirs, one of which was a very drunk girl from Lyon. She started chatting with me (and by chatting I mean drunken ranting) about regional specialties and how you have to taste everything. Then she insisted at least 50 times that I try frog’s legs, apparently a specialty of her region. At some point she asked me something that I didn’t understand and Vincent de Champagne explained that I was American and kindly translated her drunken ees. The party started closing down and people were heading out – it was 3 am. We went to the coat check, made our way off campus, then stopped and realized it was just the two of us. He asked me where I was staying and I said I hadn’t planned on it – that I was going to take the shuttle back when it started again. Then he offered to let me stay at his place, just down the street. At worst, I’d sleep and get a later shuttle – too bad, huh? So we headed down the street and he said that he could always take me back to Aix the next day if I wanted.
When we got to his place I went straight for the bookcase with the stereo, as is often my habit. I looked at the hodge podge of CDs – some Miles Davis and Norah Jones, some odd hard rock, and some funky, hipster foreign things I’d never seen before. WE talked for a while, and I think we fell asleep at about sunrise. We slept until about 11:30. The next morning he offered me a shower and breakfast. So I took him up on it, except my stomach kind of hurt. His shower was a guy’s shower – two bottles of man smelling multi-purpose soap. So I smelled like coconut man. And after he showered we sat around talking about music, movies, authors, and theatre. There was a French movie out about people in the North of France (not all that far from his hometown) with crazy accents, supposedly the most popular movie ever amongst the French. I asked him if he wanted to see it… that day. So we decided to see it in Aix.
He drove us to Aix, and I mostly slept on the car ride. We had some time before the movie so we grabbed a coffee and I made him try caramel crêpes. The movie was hilarious – and we never so much as held hands. Then he drove me home and we exchanged numbers. Mission Friend: Accomplished.
(Canyons, grottos, and caves, oh my!)
Dearest friends and family,
This week brings us a little bit of every weather – literally and figuratively.
First of all, there are a few things I’ve forgotten to mention recently. One, I’m taking the wine tasting class! It’s wonderful! I went to the first two – Côte du Rhone, then Bordeaux, and missed the third because I was sick. I was tempted to go but ended up sleeping through it. This coming week brings us the last course – CHAMPAGNE!
I got the best grade on my midterm in my French class! That’s pretty cool. I haven’t gotten any of my other midterms back though, so that could be interesting. I still have no motivation whatsoever to do homework and it only gets worse. Senioritis is setting in. I’m SO done with school, with the people I go to school with, with the degree hanging in front of me like the holy carrot, like a bribe, like an anvil that’s gonna slam my world to pieces in two months. I try to be a good Thumper and not say mean things, but I could strangle some of the girls I go to school with. One little story… the teacher described something as banal – same word and same spelling in both languages – and the girl asks what it means. Okay, maybe it’s the accent, but when we tell her it’s the same in English and say it sans French accent she still doesn’t know what it means. This is the same girl that can’t derive meaning from context – ever! How do you make it to your third year of studies at an accredited institution in the most powerful country in the world, next to China, and not know what banal means?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Okay I’m done.
So I went out with Pierre and Laeti this last Wednesday night. The Scat Club has concerts every night at midnight (1am on weekends) and the bands play for hours at a time, and they seem to always be decent. This week it was a group that played a mix of American blues and rock. And the guy didn’t have the slightest accent. It was damn good. The only issue I had was being the only one in the place who knew what a honky-tonk was.
Before we went out, we had a good conversation about my withering social life in France. I told them I was about ready to take a French lover, just to break out of the box. They said they could introduce me to Marco (or something like that), then there was that awkward exchange and laughter that signals an inside joke that I’m on the outside of. Apparently, Marco is a good-looking, nice kind of guy but he’s a little uptight – even more so than “the puritanical Americans” to quote Pierre. That’s a scary thought. Pierre says it takes at least a month of working on this guy to get him in the sack. I told him it was too much work. I need to get out more during the week, but when the weather is shitty it can be really discouraging.
And the weather has been a real joy…NOT. The Mistral (the nasty wind off the Rhone) is here and it gets incredibly cold and incredibly strong. It rattles houses and overturns garbage cans, and carries off little children in the night. That’s why they named a nightclub after it. Despite the wind and rain and shitty cold that’s got everyone staying home, I’m feeling much better and my cold is just about all gone. Everyone and their dog got sick this week. It was sort of pathetic. So social stuff was thin. I swear, this week will be better.
I guess that brings us to Friday, when I felt it was just necessary to brave the cold. I went for a drink with Leslie then we went to see The Darjeeling Limited. It’s definitely a particular taste that aligns with mine. I loved every second. It’s layered with subtle details, imagery and symbolism. I can see how it would be a bit bizarre at first watch, but I find that the obscurity is fun to pick through for all its themes.
Saturday morning we left at 7:30am and went off another fabulous adventure. First, we drove to Millau where we visited a fabulous bridge, onward to Roquefort, where we ate lunch and took a tour of the Caves (cellars, but they really are caves in a cliff) where they mature the delicious cheese, then through the Gorges du Tarn (Canyon of the Tarn river). We stayed in a great little hotel on the edge of town, where we ate dinner and made a trip to the local extremely large supermarket. Then Sunday, we went on some lovely mountain drives to the Parc des Loups (wolves) and visited the wolves. Then we ate lunch. Then we drove some more and tried to walk around town but it was way too cold, so we spent the night at a hotel that smelled funny. Then this morning, we went through the Gorges de l’Ardèche (Canyon of the Ardèche river) and visited the Grotte de la Madeleine (Grotto of the Madeline).
So the fun part is that it was Easter weekend and almost everything was closed. So our weekend focused on scenic drives, eating, and tourist attractions. And oh how we ate! The French have mastered the regional specialty. Martine always orders the regional specialty on principal, and I usually copy her because she always finds the good stuff. So Didier was completely right when he said that all the French ever think about is food. The specialties of the regions were sausage, lamb, Roquefort, and naturally carbonated mineral water. For the French, what gives food its allure is its origin, its roots, its “terroir.” The wine comes from these vines in this place, the sausage from these pigs, the cutlets of succulent lamb from those sheep right there, and this water came from a source just over the hill.
When we took a tour of the caves in Roquefort, they insist on the secret recipe of mold that they add to their cheese and how the caves and their ecosystem for the taste of the cheese, and now that they have laboratories and factories, it just means that they can maintain the precision and tradition of their craft. They really are quite serious. And you’d be serious too if you worked in a place that stunk as bad. That cheese STINKS! Wheeeeewww…. But they had a video thing that told the story and projected sweet stuff on the cave walls, describing the discovery of the caves and of Roquefort and so on. I think it was Charles de Gaulle who said that it was impossible to unify a country that had 300 different kinds of cheese… but he neglected to mention all of the variety right down to the gassy water.
Then we went to Millau to see this incredible bridge. The biggest pillar is taller than the Eiffel Tower. I think they said that the tallest one is the tallest bridge pillar in the world. Anyone watch those History Channel specials on bridges? I’m sure it’s in there. It’s super long and super tall and it connects two hilltops, cutting out a two-hour detour that drove people mad. Its whole story is pretty cool – a company that just built it without borrowing money, just went to the bank and oop, voìla! Then they did it in two and a half years. And when they built it, they constructed pieces on both sides and pushed them out, fully constructed, until were in place. No, literally pushed them out. Look into it.
Millau used to be a big center for tanneries, because of the river, but that is no longer, so they have big stuff to make up for it – bridges, supermarkets… The big chain her is called Casino. For me, this is terribly amusing, but the fact that they called large supermarkets “hyper-marché” sends me into giggle fits. So we went to the “hyper-marché” called the “Géant-Casino.” And it’s like a French Costco, so Costco where everything is miniature. On the other hand, you could look at it like Costco is the biggie-sized version of Géant-Casino. Anyway, I got to do some shopping with the fam which always makes me feel at home. Seriously, I love grocery shopping. Granted, I had forgotten my toothbrush, which is why we were there… But it’s so big and cool. And they have a café-bar and a bakery-pastry shop and a jewelry store, each separate in this massive chic warehouse. They even had a super-chic hair salon. I almost got a haircut but settled for a box of dye.
The next day we wandered about, and found ourselves eating a scrumptious lunch at a restaurant next to the wolf-park. And as we sat there, the sun disappeared and by the end of lunch there was a veritable snowstorm. That was pretty cool. It had done the same thing in Roquefort the day before and when we left the Roquefort caves, it was clear. But after the wolf park it was still cold. We went to the next hotel and tried to walk about town but it was glacial. So we stayed at the smelly place. It looked like a hotel but was technically a bad and breakfast. Martine, in explaining the French terminology, added that the B&Bs in France are non-professional but they end up being better a lot of the time. Then they showed us to our rooms in what felt a bit like the forgotten underground level of the psych ward from the 50s. The hair dryer was broken, the showerhead was broken, and I’d say it smelled like my grandmother, but my grandmother smells pretty damn good, so it smells like most people’s grandmas. They told us that we might be able to see wild pigs in the morning from our windows. This is not to say that I’m complaining. I had a great time and it had a lot of character.
The cuisine, unlike the view, was not the best. Didier is a great barometer for meal speed. Me, I talk constantly and end up eating a cold meal. He devours his. But he tolerates the wait between courses. If I finish, and the next course isn’t ready, he waits a certain amount of time before he turns into a five-year-old boy and starts whining about how he’s hungry. Then he starts listening in on the conversation at neighboring tables, which would be fine if he didn’t comment loudly, which drives Martine nuts. He’s quite the gossip, but in a sociable sense. Everywhere we go, he has to talk to people like he’s always known them or always lived there. I find it fun, but Martine doesn’t always like it. She travels with a map and a reservation, and he doesn’t want any of it. Then the last day – no matter when or where – he gets antsy and rushes things. I swear it happens every time we go somewhere. He always wants to cut lunch short and get back on the road, he no longer likes stopping for pictures, and he gets generally sour. Martine chastises him and adds on an aperitif and a coffee at the end as retribution. And as time goes on I get a better sense of their history. I get the impression that they’ve been together a very long time. Vance, where Martine really grew up, is close to Nice, where Didier grew up too. I hear stories about the nightclubs they went to and the food they loved and how Didier’s southern accent is more from Nice than Marseille. Apparently, every time they went to the nightclubs, Didier always left the car at the valet, no matter the car. He’d take his mom’s car or his dad’s car (which I think was a Mercedes Coupe), or even the company delivery truck – VALET! That is so him…
So we took off this morning and drove through the Gorges de l’Ardèche. And we stopped for the hour long tour of the Grotte de la Madeleine, so named because the cavern could hold Notre Dame de Paris inside. It’s big, I’ll give it that. They had a presentation like the one at the caves in Roquefort – a video with projections and a light show and the story of the shepherd whose goat ran off and oop, voìla! The caves are strangely warm, extremely humid, and not as colorful as I had imagined. Even so, they’re a lot prettier than my photos suggest. We went all the way down to 154m below the surface, right about level with the river (imagine you’re inside the canyon walls). Then, we ate. I had this thing that was like an herby meatloaf in sausage skin. No, it was not a sausage, but more the consistency of finely ground beef and served in a meatloaf sense. It was served with wine and a gratin of potatoes. Dessert was the local fave – chestnut crème with whipped cream. It is extremely sweet, and quite the experience. On the drive home we found a herd of goats in the road. So we stopped and got out and hung for a bit. They’re friendly enough, for goats. They come pretty close but they don’t like being touched. How capricious.
So now I’m home and the boredom sets in. I think the part I like about traveling is the traveling part. I find myself a bit preoccupied with the life I left at home – work, school, friends, boyfriend, family, graduation is coming, etc. I’m anxious to get a head start on this thing they call “adult life” after college. I try to not be in a hurry but it makes me more impatient. There’s a life here that is wonderful and unique and charged with culture, and I fit in well enough, and I’m trying to assimilate, but not really. I have a life that suits me just fine that I miss and that’s missing me. I guess if I was stuck here with no option to return I’d be acting differently, but I’m not – I’m here on borrowed time. So I feel simultaneously strapped for time and impatient– I want to have the time to do it right, but I’m anxious to get back. I’m trying to enjoy it, but that’s not something you can force. Right now, the things I enjoy the most are the weekend trips with my host family.
In the next week – French friends and more adventure.
One last thing: my phone number! Some people have had issues because I can't seem to type my own number correctly. It is, if calling from the U.S., +011-33-672-092-183.
Cheers!
I’m convinced that the Europeans strains of the common cold and flu are just as different as the culture. I have no immunity here. Within 24 hours, I went from perfectly fine to an invalid with a head made of snot. And then that leads to coughing, and soreness, etc, etc. But if there’s one thing the French do well, it’s the remedy. There’s a remedy for everything. Got a red wine stain? Got a flat tire? Got a cold? They know just the thing. It’s that vulnerability thing again. My host dad, Didier, says “here you take this, it works wonders, doesn’t taste very good, but it works.” It’s an inhaler for the nose and mouth. You spray some toxic mess up your skull and it supposedly clears it all out – and, yes, “pulverize” is in the title. Then Martine comes along, after my nap, with a tray of tea and cookies, and tells me she has just the thing, then she brings in the family stash of medicine (it’s big), and starts prescribing. This for my throat, that for my nose, those for my aches, that to sleep, that cleans the bathroom, and that one takes out garbage. I tell her it’s really fine, Didier gave me the snot pulverizer and she huffs and says he’s an idiot, etc, etc. Turns out that the pulverizer is mint oil… pressurized mint oil. I wonder if he knows.
But I lay in bed and sip tea, and nap, and watch French movies on my laptop, and occasionally someone peeps in to see if I’m still alive. And last night, Didier and Martine went out to the movies, and Anne and I watched the third “Pirates of the Caribbean.” I get the impression that she only comes out of her room when her parents aren’t there. I’m slowly catching on to her patterns. The movie wasn’t even over when they got home and she went straight to her room. Just wait… I will crack this case.
So with midterms and the getting sick thing, I can tell you it’s been a little rough. There have been some lovely visits from friends this week, though. Last Saturday, Kate Peterson came to visit. She and I did theatre together back home and now she’s doing the program in Marseille. We got to commiserate about our fellow students (a good deal of whom are what the French would call “nulle,” that is to say useless). I am often disappointed and annoyed at the sheer incapacity of some of them. It’s not nice to say mean things, so I’m gonna stop right there. Anywho, Kate came and we went to a little café-restaurant for lunch. A half pitcher of wine, salmon and rice with saffron crème sauce, profiteroles, and a coffee later, we were well caught up. We had surprisingly more to talk about than I thought. We both find that there is a quality and pace of life here that is seductively tempting, but we both miss our lives back home a little bit. It’s not that we want to go back right away, but the distance has let us realize the parts we like and the parts we don’t. And the more practice we have in this life, the more we think about how to make the other one work better. And we’re coming to know ourselves better – our goals, our needs, our wants.
I haven’t had a lot of time this week, because of school, but I find myself going for walks without a point, just to get out of the house and look around. Last Sunday, a guy approached me in the street, asking whether or not the mini mart was open (nothing is open on Sunday), and we got to talking. Normally I avoid these things, but you can’t keep your guard up all the time. So he invites me for a coffee. And I said yes, but with a great deal of reserve. And we went to the main drag and I had yet another experience of being talked AT. After learning that I had a boyfriend and wasn’t interested, he proceeded to tell me a long and graphic story about how he met a woman on vacation that he shagged in the airplane, in the parking garage, in the train station bathroom, in the train, and was taken aback when she answered her phone and told her husband she’d be home soon. When he asked her what the hell, she replied “but I’m on vacation.” This was all to mean that life is life and experience is experience, and sex isn’t necessarily love, but pleasure, and it’s fidelity of the heart that matters. Then he told me how his girlfriend of a year went back to Japan for an indeterminate amount of time, and he told her not to wait for him. Should she find herself with other men, she shouldn’t feel guilty, etc., etc. I sort of agree with him, but I can’t help but think of a practical application.
Let’s say, for instance, I make eyes at a guy in a bar, we dance and make out, and then he wants to leave together. Where do we go? Back to my host family’s house? I can just imagine the “Good morning everyone, this is no-name-sailor number one, we met last night, he stayed the night, hope that doesn’t bother you, I’m very responsible and representative of the discerning young American woman.” I don’t think so. Or maybe we go to his house… his small apartment on the other side of town, and I have no idea where I am, and… How do you say condom in French? I’m sure I could figure out the vocabulary, and practice saying it in the shower, but really? Now there are some cultural differences where sex is concerned. Women are allowed to have a sexual appetite, one-night stands are not necessarily stuff of the devil, sexual education is standard, and abortion is legal. It’s incredibly easy to pick up guys in a bar here. But that doesn’t mean that I make French friends, I don’t necessarily get a good conversation out of it, and what about STDs? AIDS, anyone? I’m not condemning the practice, I’m saying it’s not what I need to round out my study abroad experience.
I would love to meet more young French people, but even if you meet them, how do you keep them around? Leslie and I went to the theatre for student rush tickets and there was a wait list around the block, so we headed down to the main drag for a drink. To hell with the theatre, let’s go try a new bar, right? So we’re about to sit down when we see Noah, the American guy from Berkeley that does some kind of science. We met him randomly at a pizza stand a few weeks back. He’s kind of a shady type. He seems like an alt-rock loving, Birkenstock wearing, bad French speaking nice guy, but he doesn’t like bars or beer, and prefers to drink whiskey alone. Good for him, but something’s off kilter. But there he is with two French girls in a trendy bar on the Cours Mirabeau. He works with them, and he leaves in two days, he explains, which is why they’re all out for a drink. The quiet one who’s kinda twitchy (Celine) just quit smoking, and the round and jolly one (Natasha) speaks broken English and might as well be a juke box. We had a pretty good time chatting them up, when a high school friend of Natasha’s shows up. So she joins us, and we have drinks, and we laugh and so on, then they’re hungry and ready to move on, so we swing by a pizza place, and head to find other people. WE happen upon the friends, a huge group of em, outside a bar. So there’s this ridiculously huge circle of people, and the new comers form an inner circle and go around doing the cheek-kissing bit. This cornerstone of French politeness seems a bit drawn out and strange of us who don’t know each other. But it’s cool and we all stand about chatting, then off we go to the next bar. And somehow our group thins. So Leslie and I eventually find ourselves alone and in O’Shannon’s, the habitual pub.
Then a couple of fairly cute guys start to chat us up. They had been standing and we had nabbed the last stools, so one of em joked saying he’d buy us each two drinks in exchange for our seats. Turns out one’s studying political science, the other journalism. We chat about this and that, one of them speaks English, and they’re nice enough. So one of them asks if we have made a lot of French friends. And we explain how we’re told to be wary of French boys and they kind of laugh, and say they both have girlfriends. And they say that even they find the Aixois (people from Aix) to be a bit snobbish. Funny thing is, everyone says that, but I’ve met very few people that are actually from here. But it is what we like to call “bougey” or “bourgeois” in the sense that they’re a bunch of rich snobs. Apparently, Aix is the second most expensive city in France, next to Paris. Anyway, we have a lovely groundbreaking conversation and they leave. None of the people we met with Noah even gave the hint of seeing us again, making friends, nothing. I can’t say I blame them, but it’s still hard.
My goal this week is to really get out there. I will make French friends if it’s the last thing I do.
A little tardy these last two posts – mea culpa. Alas, I have been an extremely busy little bee. Vacation came and went, classes picked up again, I added on at least two activities, and went through a sad spell, which I am presently coming out of.
But before we get there, I would like to share a couple of things that I find to be both wildly irritating and a beautiful texture of life here. First, I walk past the water services building every morning on my way to school. It looks at first glance like an indoor pool. Alls I know is - the toxic stench of chlorine and dirty toilet water makes me violently nauseous for half a block. I’m just glad it’s not my bus station across from it. It seems to stink everywhere here. Most of it is exhaust, but garbage and dog pee are running close behind. The second thing, is the cell phone that plays music… I want to smash them. Remember in the late 80s and early 90s when it was cool to carry a boombox around and blast your tunes to the world? Well, the cell phone music player has replaced it. Teenagers seem to think it’s cool to blast their shit everywhere they go – on the bus, in the grocery store, in front of the school. At least the degenerates who share their iPod earbuds have mastered headphones. Now while these things annoy me, I also find them to be part of the daily sights, sounds, and unfortunate smells of a life, a locale, and a culture.
So this week it was back to school. I have zero motivation to do homework. I don’t think it has anything to do with France, because I’ve never really liked doing homework, but I really don’t feel like it now. I would rather sit in cafés silently observing (and avoiding crazy old ladies). Nonetheless, I find it getting easier. And I not only understand my professors, I understand their humor, and I enjoy it. It’s refreshing, I suppose. We have a couple extra-curricular requirements: a community service for two hours a week, and a club for one or two hours a week. I chose an after school program helping immigrant youth with their English homework. It’s a Catholic organization that organizes it, but there is literally NO religious stuff happening or being spoken of. I admire the French for their incredibly rigid separation of church and state/education. So I had one hour with each of two students. The first, Ms. Grumpy, was sweet but clearly not interested in homework, so I talked to her about music. She likes rap and R & B and promised to make me a list of French musicians that she liked in return for a CD of American music. The second, Sarah, is 15… huh? So we bonded over the fact that she has the same name and age as my little sister. She was much more content with life, and will no doubt be fun to work with. My “club” is yoga – not sure how that’s a club, but okay. I went to this yoga place not far from the youth center in the heart of the Senegalais neighborhood. It was a much more meditative class than I’m used to, but wonderfully soothing. So I think I’m gonna switch to the Thursday toning class. Apart from that, the cooking class was cancelled because not enough people signed up, but the wine tasting class started Friday afternoon. Bouche-de-Rhône = Syrah, Chateauneuf du pape = delicious and priced accordingly.
Pierre turned 32 this week, so we got together for a drink to celebrate. Our adventurer thinks he can get me to try windsurfing and ride on his incredibly fast motorcycle. I figure I’ll try everything once, but I’d rather stay with Laetitia and sunbathe. Apparently, he knows a good spot for practicing windsurfing, and he plans to drag me along. He is also determined to come and visit the U.S. this summer. So we’re trying to come up with road trip ideas. I think it’ll be like last spring break. I promised him southern California beaches. So feel free to volunteer hosting! Then this last Friday night, he and Laeti and I all had dinner and we swapped some music and movies. He swears he’ll make me speak French like a native by the time I leave.
My host family, as per usual, is glorious. I was just sorta down on Thursday. No real reason. Well, I think it’s a mixture of things. First of all, I’ve spent the last three and a half years on my own schedule. I eat when I want, I go out when I want, I do my own laundry and wash my own dishes. Now, I count on my host-family for those things. It’s nice being able to apply all we’ve learned about France being a collectivist society and blah blah blah but I’d really like to do laundry and take a shower at two in the morning and maybe just walk around naked some. I also feel kinda weird not working and not doing things like laundry and dishes. You’d think it would be a blessing, but the blessing is turning into a listless sense of uselessness. And there’re things I wanna go and do but I find myself worrying about missing dinner with the fam. I also find that it’s hard to meet young people and just hang out – it’s really a drunken orgy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – I like sex and boose as much as the next guy, but I would like a little conversation every now and then. It seems that no matter what you say to the contrary, a girl who goes out alone is lookin for a lay. So my goal is to check out more literary-oriented cafés and Café-Théâtres. And I think I need to sever the imaginary umbilical chord. Everyone says they wish they had done more with their host families, but I think I probably do more with them than most.
So when all of this hit me at once, with the stress of a growing workload and a general homesickness, I just about lost it. I went to the kitchen to find something to drink and Martine asked me if I was okay. I said yes and began to cry. She chuckled and said I was clearly a bad liar. So she talked me out a bit, and I explained that I was just a little overwhelmed and homesick. She said it was a bummer that I hadn’t found anyone that I had really bonded with as a friend. She mentioned that the daughter of a co-worker did theatre, she’s 22, and she made me write down my cell phone number to pass along. As Didier passed through the kitchen he said I must have the blues (in English, with a really heavy French accent). At the dinner table, they all seemed to amp up the buffoonery to make me feel better, and Anne even talked to me. It’s funny how they deal with things. Instead of walking on eggshells they all bombard me with questions about random things and bicker with one another to make me laugh. It made me feel right at home.
The hard part about making friends and connecting with the French is that you have to make yourself vulnerable. You have to need them. Like when Anne helped me ski, and the family when I was sad, you gotta put yourself out there and look a little lost. That often means going places without a trail of American friends. And so I kinda need to separate myself. And that’s hard. But we’ll see.
And I figured that it would be good to get out of town for a while. So I made plans for spring vacation. My friend Jason is teaching in Austria on a Fulbright, so I’m going to go visit him. I’ll take the TGV (Train de Grand Vitesse = very fast train) from Aix to Paris then a plane from Paris to Vienna. I’ll spend the weekend in Vienna, where Jason will meet up with me, and I think I’ll see the King Tut exhibit. Then we’ll head back to Lintz by train (where he’s teaching). I’ll spend a couple days there, then go off to the Czech Republic for a couple days, come back through Lintz, take the train back to Vienna and fly back to Paris. Then I’ll spend a couple days in Paris – the Centre Pompidou and such, and come back to Aix by the TGV. That makes for ten days of bliss. I made reservations last night. The part I like is the traveling. There’s something chic, exciting, and almost mystically meditative about it – be it by train, plane, or motor car.
Next week is midterms. So time flies and we embark on what feels like a new chapter… a new phase.
As per usual, vacations come and go in the blink of an eye. If you stay out all night drinking and you sleep all day recovering, they go even faster. It’s how the cookie crumbles. And I am one tired cookie.
It seems that my dream of café-sitting is harder than it seems. It’s good for an hour with your friend after class, sure. Have a beer, have a chat, have a smoke, take the next bus, no biggie. But when you’re all alone with a stack of homework and a dictionary, it’s not exactly warm and fuzzy. You start to feel like the old lady next to you with whiskers and musk – just waiting for someone to ask for the time, for directions, for a light. And like most people of her generation, she talks about the weather. “Oooh, that gust was chilly wasn’t it? Better switch sides so you’re in the sun,” she says.
“Pardon?” you ask, because her accent is strong and she doesn’t speak very loudly.
“It’s chilly today isn’t it…even in the sun. All these people here for the sun. Look over there, the bistro in the shade, no one, here it’s full because of the sun…” and we’re off. For the next hour and a half she talks – without stopping – and you can’t get a word in edgewise. There’s no polite way to decline the conversation, and she’s already pegged you for American, so now she feels it’s her duty to educate you in the history of the region. You put your face in your book, you nod, smile, and look away, and she’s still goin. You think to yourself, “now this is silly. Why am I ignoring her? She’s lonely, she’s nice, and she’s French. I really ought to profit from her knowledge and I am here to practice my French after all. If anyone has patience it’s a lonely old lady.”
So you turn and listen…and listen…and listen. She knows an American who lives down the lane, he doesn’t speak French and he’s lived here for 30 years, and she lost her husband two months ago, and she’s originally from Paris but he was a half-Italian from the south and he had an awful accent, and she prefers Marseille to Aix because Marseille is more cosmopolitan and you can here all the languages but Aix is a bourgeois town full of snobs, and she likes languages and she teaches herself by listening to songs and reading old used books that she finds at the antique market the first Saturday of every month, and she can hardly walk any more, and she’s tired of sitting in bistros and drinking coffee but she doesn’t have much choice since she can’t walk that much, and she takes the minibus around town, no she just rides it to get out of the house and see what’s new in town, and she doesn’t like the new quarter because it has no character, and wet cement isn’t good for your health, a little humidity is good but not too much and you don’t see female waiters often because it takes gusto to see to all those people and carry heavy trays and that waitress there, she’s Spanish so she can handle it, and she doesn’t care for King Louis XIV, as if she was alive in the mid 1700s, but the Good King René was good, and so on and so forth.
Now that your ears are numb, an hour and a half later, and you know everything there is to know about history and health, you pack up your bag while nodding and pay your bill while smiling and as soon as she takes a breath you thank her for the conversation and book it. She really was very kind, and I enjoyed the lesson immensely, but I have my limits.
Then of course, there is the nightlife. Vacation time suggests that the bars will be packed with college students while statistics show that 6% of French people spend their vacation skiing in the Alps. Those six percent are the bourgeois college students of Aix-en-Provence. Bye-bye! Leslie and I headed to one of the two popular Irish pubs for some pints only to find it dead. Maybe it was the Monday night thing, but the crowd present was just a hair on the old side of what we were looking for, so we moved on, around midnight, to a bar we knew to be pretty cool. It was overflowing with 20-somethings that were reveling in the freedom of Monday night. We sat at the edge of the terrace (read sidewalk with tables) and watched the crowd dynamic to find an approach. The music was good, the crowd pretty alt, and not a person looked at us. Not one. We got drinks, we smoked some cigarettes, nothing. We’ve learned at school that the French are not as freely sociable as Americans, but for a bunch of drunk 20ish kids, they were being either aloof or shy. We resolved that we’d have to be painfully American and just start approaching people if we wanted to make friends. We decided that Monday was not the night for such things and had almost gotten ready to leave when a guy, trailing a couple friends, approached and asked us if we had a white car. Of course we said know and he asked if we were sure. Yes, we were sure and why did he ask, and apparently they had seen a white car pass with two girls who were yelling obscenities or something but they didn’t get a good look at them and was it us. Well no, but isn’t that funny, and now we’ve made friends.
Tony, our fearless Frenchmen, had spent some time in the US and spoke adorably broken English, though much better than most of his friends. He invited us over to his table and we learned the cause of his friendship – save for one girl that was wasted (and clearly in heat) and the shy girl in the corner – we were the only girls amidst a sea of boys. There must have been eight or so guys with four girls. They were all very nice and we had a great time, each one in turn came up and talked with us, a bit in English, a bit in French. Then the bar closes and Tony invites us to find food and continue the party at his friend’s place. We get to the chwarma place and then realize that only three guys are left and we’re the only girls. One silent eye-movement conversation later, Leslie and I decide that the odds are not in our favor, exchange phone numbers with Tony and politely decline. We walk home safely, and I seep all day the next day.
Not that we drank much – we didn’t drink much at all – but we both felt it pretty hard the next day. But a lil’ tabouli and some sparkling mineral water did the trick. Leslie and I met up and sought out the Musée Granet – the biggest and reportedly best museum in Aix. There were a lot of paintings… some sculptures… and a lot of stuff inspired by Cézanne. Cézanne, Cézanne, Cézanne…. What…ever. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the time, energy and skill that went in to these paintings. I know all too well that I couldn’t think of or paint these things. I most assuredly relish the preservation of historical artifacts. But paintings are paintings are paintings. And after a while, they start to look the same. And then as soon as it looks different, “it’s too simple,” people say. Or “I could have done that myself,” to which I like to reply “Ah, but you didn’t, did you?”
And after a day of rest, we go out again. Clearly, we had already hit on a sweet spot, but it’s always good to diversify. So we head down the street to a bar that we’d heard a lot about – IPN. And we head down the narrow stairs to a hot, humid, and EMPTY? basement. Okay not empty, but six people does not a bar-full make, and it’s already Wednesday. And what do we see but beer pong. Yes, friends, beer pong. Google it. Now there is nothing more amusing than skinny European boys playing beer pong on an undersized table in a tiny basement bar. Perhaps another time. So we head back to our hot spot and text message our friends. Packed again, the Sextius Bar (as it is called) has blues night with a live blues band, and many of the same people as Monday night. We sit alone and though we see one of our friends (who comes over for the obligatory cheek-kissing) he is pre-occupied with a group of French girls. Leslie and I dig the music and have found a much cheaper combination of beverages. While at ease, laughing a bit, I accidentally make eye contact with the man sitting alone behind Leslie. He’s not scary, but he’s nothing extraordinary. He continues to try making eye contact. This is how American girls get in trouble. When things get awkward, we look them straight in the eye