Travels and Travails

First of all, let me just say that Airborne tablet things are grosss. Does anyone like those things? And has anyone ever actually not caught a cold because of those things? This does seem a good business plan – your product works when nothing happens. I think it’s a placebo…otherwise, why wouldn’t they come in pill form so you don’t have to violate a tall glass of water with this alarmingly large beige tablet, forming a hissing concoction that looks like radioactive urine and tastes like gritty Gatorade. Or vice versa.

Also, they’re the brainchild of an anonymous 2nd grade teacher.

Anyway. I’m writing this in the hotel room…I don’t know what day or time it is, but I think it might be Sunday. I’m concerned about the fate of the blog because I don’t have internet access and because my computer keeps shutting down despite the apparent full charge. This entry has a fifty-fifty chance of being disjointed and/or tedious. I’m sorry…it looks like I’ll just have to post what, when, and where I get the chance. This means dates probably won’t line up, so be forewarned.

Mom and I are headed to the south of France for a week to meet up with Bri and the Wilk. parents before I go off on my separate way to Aix-en-Provence. This means some compulsive order – and disorder – of tickets/passports/money/etc. in an extra-secret pocket and now which pocket was that? Also, it means walking fifteen feet behind a bustling woman with a red suitcase (Mom) who neither slows down nor speeds up…this is more annoying than I’ve just described it, trust me. And certainly, it means planes.

Because I can’t sleep on planes – I just fall into this horrible pseudo-nap coma state for several minutes before waking up feeling less rested, more frantic, and extremely sore in my neck – I chose to take the trans-Atlantic from Philly to Paris to practice my recognize-a-Frenchman skills. I’ve determined that ethnicity is definitely not the way to do it (obviously), nor is shoes (thanks, global whatsit), but that it’s something more intangible (je ne sais quoi) about the carriage (???). For instance, the cute indeterminate Asian kids sitting across from me were American, as given away by their bounciness (and, okay, the way they shouted “look, PARIS!” as we pulled into the dingy gate at CDG airport). The clothes-hanger sitting several rows down, despite stick-thin appearance and chic wardrobe, was also American – she made lots of eye contact and lacked any invisible boundary wall. The aged rocker Mr. Andrews look-alike (plus a foot of hair) was French, albeit a groovy, LSD-induced French, as indicated by a certain positioning of the mouth (in addition to a red passport). Hopefully I get better at this skill by the end of the summer…as of now, I’m not even sure if my theory is true, or if it has some regional qualifiers.

In any case, the French flight attendants are certainly cooler – it’s the only word I can think of – than their American counterparts. The men get to wear black trench coats and slick back their hair like the singers in some Europop band, and the women all have jackets with Nehru collars, bright lipstick or jazzy pillbox hats, and neck scarves tied around the necks in typical French fashion. Their shoes are not comfortable or practical.

French flights are also seemingly doing better than their American counterparts when it comes to cutting costs…I don’t know why, because it seems French are paying equally as much, if not more, for gasoline. The seats seemed roomier, the blankets fluffier, and they actually gave us drinks and crackers free of charge. I’m not sure if the French are doing this or not, but US Airlines is also: charging a bag fee for large or extra bags, advertising shamelessly on napkins, barf bags, and the backs of tray tables, discontinuing air conditioning during the park and taxi stages of flying, and somehowww always always always making me sit on the wing, just next to the giant turbo-charge jet. Maybe that last one isn’t a money-saving scheme. But what the heck, US Airlines? How is that even possible?

Also, the guys in the security part of the airport smashed this cookie I was saving in lieu of dinner (rumored to be veggie ragout) into a zillion pieces. For the first time in basically twenty years, I forgot to take the mini Swiss army pocket knife off of my keychain and got caught. But, before unearthing the giant shining blade from where I had hidden it in the false bottom of my carry-on, they had to crush the shortbread into dust. Yeah take that. And I did.

However…all that aside, I’m now in France. You can tell that you’re about to land in France when you’re on a plane because of those lines of tall, thin, dark evergreen trees that are definitely pictured in art of the French countryside by Van Gogh, etc. – are they cypress? I’ll call them cypress. Also, I think I may have seen gorse (but I’m not sure)…by the sides of the road are these large bushes that have waving yellow flowers all over them, which both my mother and I independently imagined to be gorse.

In addition to local flora we saw on the drive from Toulouse to Collioure – a small village not far from the Spanish border – there were also some larger monuments to be had. Mountains, for one, which Mom argued were the foothills of the Pyrenees, and some small watchtowers at the peaks of said mountains, and some ruined castles and fortresses, and some not so ruined castles and fortresses. I was kind of incoherent/insensible through most of this drive, but I did manage to snap a picture of Carcassonne from a lookout we stopped at briefly just after lunch.

Upon arrival at the hotel (our windows overlook the town and are a stone’s throw from the sea), I tried organizing and sorting my belongings into our clean, if spartan, room. It seems some oil pastel crayons that I ingeniously packed between some stacks of books came un-packed and colored up the aforementioned stacks like a deranged two-year-old. Fortunately, no items of clothing were hit, and, though I fell in the shower and gave my shin a good-sized lump trying to get the stains out of my suitcase, all is under control. At least none of our bags were lost. All of which is to say, if a huge purple bruise shows up in future photographs of me, that’s why.

Things to look forward to in future entries (and remind me if I’m not writing at all about them): strange foods, the Tour de France, French hommes, gurning, the Eurocup FIFA thing, some kind of music festival, and anything else you can think of.

A bientot…