Friday, January 29, 2010
In which Mark strenuously attempts to explain that a sabbatical is not a holiday
The simple answer, of course, is "Non". But that simple answer just doesn't seem to satisfy folks. Their skeptical squints demand that I explain more fully just exactly what I'm doing here in the south of France, if I'm not on holiday. I'm forced to find some way of convincingly articulating that fact that I'm actually working when, by all appearances, I spend my days sampling soft cheeses and noodling around on the internet.
And at this particular moment, I needed to do so while pantingly pedaling my way to the top of Le Grand Bessillon (which is the highest point for miles around and, even on days in which winter woodsmoke is shrouding the valleys in a sweet-smelling haze, offers a spectacular view). I was riding with Ollie and Jerome. Ollie is my plumber friend – although, really, it doesn't seem quite right to call him a friend exactly. Friendship usually implies a certain reciprocal give-and-take, and thus far Ollie's been doing all the giving and I've been all the taking. It might be more accurate to call him my patron or my benefactor or something. Anyway, I was riding with Ollie, who was popping wheelies on his fancy new top-of-the-line mountain bike, and Ollie's friend Jerome (the grape-grower) who was on Ollie's other mountain bike. As for me, I was astride the bike I found in our garage, with its creaky gears, balding tires, and squishy brakes that squeal like a terrified schoolgirl (and they would be squealing plenty, about an hour later, on the harrowing off-road route that Ollie chose for our descent down the side of the mountain).
I try to explain: "No, I'm not on vacation; I'm on sabbatical." And I'm fully aware that when I say stuff like that out loud – especially when I say it to rural tradesmen who work with heavy tools all day long – I might as well be saying, "No I'm not wearing a skirt; it's a sarong." And so, I press on.
But how exactly can I talk about my sabbatical without sounding like a slacker. Do I say that, although I teach at UBC, I only teach one or two classes anyway, and so it's no big deal that I'm just not teaching this term? Do I say that, although the main part of my job is to do research, it's not actually me personally who spends the long hours in the lab collecting data, and so it's barely noticeable when I disappear for six months overseas? Do I tell people that, on my sabbatical, I'm mostly expected just to stare at a computer screen and write?
Or do I take a different approach and assert that the objective of a sabbatical is not just to provide me with more time to write, but also to supply the sort of mental stimulation that will promote scholarly productivity for years to come? And do I offer the patently self-serving opinion that, in my case, that objective is partially satisfied simply by being here in the first place?
Yes. I do offer that opinion, and I truly believe it. Although I didn't say it exactly like that on my ride with Ollie and Jerome, that is why we're here: To shake our brains up a bit. And no, I don't mean "shake our brains" in the way that my brain was juddering like a jackhammer on that rocky ride down the mountainside. I mean that, in some eventual way, I benefit intellectually from the accumulation of all these new and unpredictable experiences. Whether it's an unexpected night of existential anguish in Aix, or the dizzying array of raw goats-milk cheeses at the local market, it's all part of the package of reasons why an overseas sabbatical ultimately pays off.
Which means that (and, again, I realize that what I'm about to say may undermine my assertion that a sabbatical is not a vacation) in order to fully repay the taxpayers' long-term investment in my overseas adventure, I really do need to do more than just stare at my computer screen. I need to struggle with the language. I need to get stranded by unreliable automobiles. I need to immerse myself in the weekly open-air market, where people are selling everything from cheeses and sausages and olive oils to hunting knives and chainsaws and queen-size mattresses. I need to spend a muddy Monday morning loading and unloading a truckful of aromatic oak branches that will, for the rest of the winter, smolder unconvincingly in our fireplace. It's not just an errand that has to be done. It's my job.
Just like, when someone invites me go bicycling to the top of a windblown peak, it's my job to say "Oui". And when Ollie chooses to plunge down a precipitous route for which neither my bicycle nor my aging skillset is suited, it's my job to fearlessly follow. That's what I'm being paid to do – to shake my brain.
My job is not, however, to flip my brain over the handlebars or to slam it ferociously against a rock-strewn slope. And, happily, I didn't. Despite the irresistible tug of gravity, and despite my foolhardy faith in a bicycle with wobbly wheels and howling brakes, and despite the fact that I'm no longer much of an athlete but am instead just another aging academic on sabbatical, I remained intact. Barely. There was a moment toward the end of the ride, after we had passed the hilltop chapel of Notre-Dame de Grâces and were hammering headlong down the rocky remains of the ancient Chemin des Pénitents – my thighs cramping, my wrists aching, and my brakes shrieking like a wounded weasel – that I came close to losing control entirely. But I didn't. Five minutes later, Ollie and Jerome and I dismounted our bicycles beside a fountain in the central courtyard of Cotignac, and sat down to enjoy an espresso outdoors under the winter sun.
Monday, January 25, 2010
La Belle Vie
I used to think that our house in Vancouver, built around 100 years ago, was old and full of character. I am afraid the house here has kind of put that to shame. I don’t really know when it was built, but near as I can tell it could have been anywhere between 1300- 1700. Much of the main part of the village was built in the 1300. The first record of Cotignac was from about 1000, but there is also evidence of a large jewish community in the area from the 6th century. Most of the “houses” in the village here are tall (usually 3 stories) and thin. And while I call them “houses,” they are really more like ancient townhouses. They are all attached, sharing walls, rather than stand-alone structures. Our house is like this. The walls are all around 2 feet thick. There are two loooong flights of stairs between the front door and the main living floor. The first floor has Jasper’s bedroom (with an en suite bathroom), a large storage room and the garage. The second floor has Maddox’s room (with an en suite bathroom) and our bedroom (with, you guessed it, an en suite bathroom). The third floor is the kitchen, living room / dining room. There is also a small fourth floor / loft with a TV and a couch and a little office area. There is a lovely enclosed courtyard and garden (with doors opening onto it from the kitchen and dining room and from our and Maddox’s bedrooms). There is a small pool as well which we plan to make full use of as soon as it is warm enough. On the other side of the courtyard is a 2-floor one-bedroom guest cottage.
We have settled into a pretty nice routine here.
I think Mark has written a bit about the schools. Jasper is adjusting well. While she had the best command of the language coming in, I am still a little surprised, and very pleased with how quickly she has adjusted. Jasper is now going to the “cantine” most days for lunch. Judging from the menu, I often wish I could join her. Anyway, this means she is at school from 8:30-4:30. We have been walking her (about a 3 minute walk up the hill) there and she walks herself home.
The adjustment has been harder for Maddox. Frankly, l’ecole marternelle (where Maddox goes) has been of an adjustment for all of us. For one thing, it is clear that he is truly attending pre-school and not daycare. From what la maitress said during our hour-long introductory meeting (mostly in French, so I must admit I didn’t catch all the details) I think school is compulsory here in France at this age. It is much more strict and structured than what any of us are used to. Drop off time is between 8:30 and 8:40. Parents are allowed to come into the classroom to deliver their kids, and help them get their coats off etc, but are not encouraged to linger. School ends at 4:20. Oh, and there is a locked gate around the school grounds. It is kept locked at all times except for the 10 minutes at drop off times and about 5 min at pick up time). The kids get a morning recess and an afternoon recess (at very specific times). It was made clear that being late is not appreciated. In addition, kids are not allowed to be taken out of school on the whim of the parents, but only for appropriate (illness) reasons. A vacation is not an appropriate reason.
I was rather shocked when on one of his first days of school Mme Blanc informed us that his fleece was too dirty. How embarrassing! All I could think was, “You think THAT is dirty? That’s NOTHING!” luckily, I had no idea how to say any of that in french. Since then we have been very careful to make sure he has clean clothes. We have even gone so far as to change his clothes midday on a few occasions. I really don’t want to suffer the extreme embarrassment of being told TWICE that I am unable to keep my son appropriately clean.
So far, in order to give Maddox a linguistic break at midday we have been bringing him home for lunch (between 11:40 and 13:20). I am also a little worried that the “cantine” will be a little more challenging for Maddox food-wise. On the one hand, I want him to be exposed to different food, but on the other hand I also recognize that it will mean he would probably be operating on few calories. I don’t want to make things any more difficult than they already are for him. He is an easy-going kid and seems really quite happy when we pick him up from school. But the language is a challenge. He is making progress though. He is getting more willing to repeat some of the simple French phrases we use with him, and he is learning to count and say the alphabet. But Sunday nights and Monday mornings are a bit hard. Last night, as we were having our good-night snuggle he told me, tearfully, over and over again that he “really, really, really, really” misses us when he is at school… it kind of breaks my heart, but I know he will be OK in a matter of weeks, and that, in fact, the majority of the time he really is relentlessly happy.
Once we have walked the kids to school, we have 3 hours before it will be time to pick up Maddox for lunch. Mark almost always gets right to work on whatever manuscript he is hammering at. I usually read a little fiction for a bit while eating a leisurely breakfast and drinking beaucoup de café. Typically, I try to spend an hour every morning and an hour every afternoon studying French on my computer. I am bound and determined to leave here with better French than what I got here with. So far, I don’t really feel like there has been much improvement. I feel more like everyday I learn more about what I don’t know than what I do know.
Everyday we will visit at least one bakery for some fresh bread. I love this daily pilgrimage. Many days we will also wander around and do a little shopping. I will put up another blog soon about food. Sometimes, on warm days when the sun glints invitingly off the Mediterranean colours of the village, Mark and I are tempted away from our computers etc and we go for a little walk along the cliffs and the fabulous old troglodyte dwellings.
And at 4:30 the kids both come home hungry and excited about their days. We sit around the dining room table together and listen to their stories (Maddox doesn’t usually have much to say, but Jasper is usually up to sharing something). If the kids are lucky they get a treat like bread and nutella (!) or a fabulous pastery called sacristain, with their fruit and veggie. Soon after that Mark and I get into the wine (so cheap! so good!) and start thinking about dinner. We have made a conscious effort to eat all of our meals together and to force the kids to get more flexible with their eating. This also means Mark and I are being more flexible too, finding middle ground in terms of what we are ALL willing to eat.
So, that describes a bit what are life is like on most week-days. Curiously enough, the French school-week is only four days long, Monday Tuesday, Thursday & Friday. Everbody gets Wednesdays off every week. From what I have been able to gather this is sort of a “sport day” so kids have more of an opportunity to engage in sports classes and lessons. Perhaps since the school day goes until 4:30, they felt the need to add these. It was cool to hear that all working mothers get the Wednesday off. Gotta love that!
Sunday, January 24, 2010
In which a car succumbs to a predictable fate and Mark, laughably, takes up welding
It's lucky, for instance, that our house here comes with a car.
It's unlucky, though, that the car is at least twenty years old and – judging by the fistfuls of pine needles and oak leaves that I dug out from under the hood the other day – appears to have spent most of its long life parked out in the lonely woods somewhere.
It's lucky that, after taking it to the local garage, the mechanic pronounced it to be in fine running condition. Of course, given the antiquity of the car, we were only guardedly encouraged by this opinion.
It's unlucky that, on exactly the same day that (in a previous blog entry) I predicted the car would "one day leave us all stranded by the side of some picturesque rural road somewhere" we were, in fact, stranded by the side of some picturesque rural road somewhere. We were chugging our way over the hills to Brignoles, on a narrow shoulder-less highway, when the engine just suddenly died. And not only wouldn't it start up again, there wasn't even the slightest encouraging sound when I cranked the key. But, actually, my prediction was just a little bit wrong: We weren't actually stranded by the side of the road. There was no side to the road. The car was sitting dead right in the middle of the motorway.
It's lucky that, despite being a complete mechanical moron, I was able to get my head under the hood and to diagnose what I thought was the problem: A loose of set of electrical wires. And, in a stunningly unlikely turn of events, after poking haphazardly at those wires for a few minutes, I was actually able to get the car going again.
It's lucky too that Quincy is thoroughly sensible in the midst of stressful situations. She smartly suggested that we drive directly to the local mechanic to get the damn thing professionally fixed.
It's unlucky, however, that I just don't listen.
It's unlucky that, buoyed by the semi-magical fact that we were suddenly unstranded, I somehow convinced myself that I could fix that wiring problem myself. In hindsight (and, really, even in foresight, if I had possessed such a thing) my self-confidence was completely preposterous. Not only because I'm a mechanical moron, but also because we have no tools at all – not even the simplest wrench in our possession.
It's lucky, though, that I have some training as scientist, and a desire to test hypotheses before plunging blindly forward. My tests – most of which involved pulling wires in and out of places that they either should or shouldn't be – appeared to confirm that the problem was, in fact, exactly what I thought it was.
It's lucky I didn't end up with a faceful of battery acid.
It's unlucky, but hardly unsurprising, that I not only failed to fix the problem, but also made the original problem much, much worse. Wires that once were merely loose became increasingly impossible to connect at all. Not only that, but my amateurish efforts caused another essential wire – which apparently was as brittle as the ancient pine needles that I continued to excavate from the engine – to break entirely in half.
It's lucky that I was home, so at least I had a familiar bed to lie down in that night. It's unlucky that the night passed as a sort of sadistic parody of my famously miserable night in Aix-en-Provence a couple of weeks before. I spent the night in an all-too-familiar sleepless torment, relentlessly rehearsing my errors and failings, and imagining the immense variety of ways in which any additional attempt to solve the situation would render it even more hopeless.
It's lucky that I don't really take those kinds of thoughts too seriously. It's even luckier that, although we have a nodding acquaintance with no more than 3 people in this entire town, one of those people – Ollie – is a plumber by trade, who drives around in a van stocked with an immense array of tools, including a substantial soldering kit that would come in very handy indeed. It's lucky too that Ollie speaks English with the near-perfect fluency of someone who was born in Holland, which he was. And luckier still that, despite the fact that I'd only met him once before (when he and his wife treated us – near strangers – to a sumptuous feast at their house in the olive orchard, so he certainly doesn't owe me any favors), Ollie was entirely willing to take time away from a massive plumbing project that he's doing at a bar here in town and to instead spend a valuable chunk of his afternoon rehabilitating the ruined wires under the hood of our car. And when I offered to compensate him for his time and effort, Ollie demurred, and suggested that we should soon go bicycling together instead (which we did, today).
Yes, it's freakishly lucky to have accidentally befriended someone so helpful and generous. In fact, just yesterday, Ollie and Nathalie invited us to their house to use their laser printer and fax machine. And, while there, for reasons that remain shrouded in the mystery of his impulsive munificence, Ollie put a welding helmet on my head and a power supply into my hands and invited me to try my luck at arc welding. And while I was amateurishly spraying hot showers of sparks all around, he proceeded to invite me to borrow his motorcycle and his chain saw too.
And, with that, I think that we've entirely transcended lucky, and entered the domain of downright scary.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Salissez mes chaussures, dit l'étranger
I amused myself last night by imagining how Camus might have blogged about our life here so far ("Aujourd'hui, Jasper a vomi. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas...").
Or Garcia Marquez, perhaps: "Many years later, when his own children were grown and he lay dying slowly and painlessly in an antiseptic room instead of succumbing to a tragically heroic fate as he had once wished, the fading sunlight slanting through the hospital window reminded Mark, for the first time in years, of that bright cold day in January when he first rode a rusted bicycle through the scrubby pine forests and olive orchards of Provence and, upon returning home in the late afternoon, he imagined, wrongly, that he would always associate his sabbatical in France with the sweet scent of wood smoke and rosemary."
Alongside the creaky bicycles, there's also a car that came with the house. It's a beater (an old Renault 5 with a shrill engine and floormats that are, mysteriously, always wet), but it's serviceable.
And it's not like we really need a car very much. Right in the center of the village, just a couple of blocks from our house, there are half a dozen shops that supply Cotignacians with basic necessities such as bread, cheese, wine, and entire skinned carcasses of rabbit, head and all. There's a bank with a bank machine (and that's handy because we're going through Euros as though they were rupees, or dollars). There's a hardware store where, among other things, we can get spare keys made. And these include not just the slim little streamlined keys we're accustomed to using in our modern doorlocks in North America, but also those elaborate cast-iron things with cloverleaf handles that look like the sort of oversized gimmicky prop brandished by grinning civic leaders in cheesy 1950s-style "key to the city" ceremonies. And there's a tiny, but surprisingly well-stocked supermarket of sorts – the one in which Jasper famously vomited on her shoes a couple of weeks ago – that sells pasta and milk and toilet paper and couscous and Nutella and little pots of thick tangy sheeps-milk yogurt that immediately became my fermented breakfast food of choice.
I don't have great confidence in our damp and belchy car, and I'm sure that it will, one day, leave us all stranded by the side of some picturesque rural road somewhere. But we did drive it to Brignoles (about 20 km away) last week to buy some things – like peanut butter – that can't be found in Cotignac.
The next day, Quincy went further afield to do some shopping in the larger metropolis of Toulon. Although, really, she didn't see much of Toulon. She spent her time in a mall, and at Ikea. She might as well have been in Burnaby. She returned home with a squishy plastic nightlight with an unpronounceably cute Swedish name, and a new cell phone. Which now brings the total number of telephones in the house to four – three of which actually work, two of which have French phone numbers, and none of which I intend to ever touch.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, we all had lunch in an olive garden. And, no, I don't mean one of those faux-Italian restaurant franchises of the sort that you can find dotting the suburban landscapes of North America (and, I assume, Toulon). I mean a real olive garden. We've met some people (Nathalie and Ollie – he's a plumber here in town – and their three kids) who live in an old farmhouse inside an olive orchard, and they invited us over for a lunch that went on for several hours. Beer and wine and bread and olive oil, muscat squash and rice and monkfish simmered in herbs and tomatoes, and salad, and three cheeses, and finally a cake – a galette du roi, with crowd-pleasing prizes baked into it, accompanied by crowns to wear on our heads.
Afterwards, while the kids were turning windblown branches into a sort of fort in the woods by a spring, I picked some twigs of wild rosemary that I found growing in the rocks nearby. I wandered into a hunters' shelter there by the spring, where I found a woodfire still smoldering. I tossed the rosemary into the embers and it smelled so good. I barely noticed all the fresh dogshit underfoot.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
In which we attempt to adjust to a Francophone world, and Mark – to his relief – does not get arrested
Take me, for instance. Yes, I've been able to struggle through some interactions with my amateurish deployment of French. But I live with the constant threat of being linguistically lost. There are a few contexts in which I feel confident – like when I'm buying bread or pastries (really amazing pastries) at one of the three bakeries that are within a five-minute walk from our house. But I feel very differently about the prospect of, say, answering the telephone when it rings. I did answer it once and was somewhat relieved when there wasn't actually a real person at the other end of the line; just an automated recording of some sort, which I didn't understand at all and which refused, as automated recordings are wont to do, to acknowledge my feeble requests to speak more slowly and with a more childlike choice of vocabulary words. No, generally, I leave the phone-answering to Quincy.
Maddox too struggles with the language. His knowledge of French was essentially zero at the time of our arrival, and he didn't have much chance to splash around in the shallow end of the linguistic pool before we plunged him directly into the deep end of full-time daycare at l'école maternelle. We've been trying to coach him a bit at home – teaching him French phrases for "Hello," "Thank you," "I'm thirsty," and stuff like that, and he is doing a great job of counting all the way to neuf – but he's clearly not happy with the language. The director of l'école maternelle, Madame Blanc, reported to us that he resists saying anything at all in French. He refuses to answer "présent" at morning roll-call, or to repeat even the simplest words in French when prompted. Intriguingly, his refusals aren't limited to just the linguistic domain. Madame Blanc also reported that he refuses to write out the letters in his name (which he's been doing since he was, like, two), and that he's unable to use scissors (which is crap, because I know from experience that he likes nothing better than to take a pair of scissors and turn any sheet of paper – no matter how indispensable it might be – into a pile of tattered strips). I'm guessing that his apparent dumbness at daycare is strategic. If he was older and, say, in prison, I suspect he'd be refusing meals and flinging feces in a willfully misguided attempt to attract media attention to some sort of idiosyncratic sociopolitical cause. But, well, he's four; and we're not worried. At the end of the day, when we walk him home, he always claims to have had some fun.
It's been a lot easier on Jasper, since she arrived here with an excellent command of French already. Still, she was anxious when we walked her to l'école primaire the first day, and was actually fighting back tears as we introduced her to her teacher that morning (which is pretty notable given how famously stoic Jasper usually is). She told us later that she spent her morning recess alone inside, just trying to get acquainted with her new surroundings. But this period of nervous adjustment was short-lived. By her second day of school, she was already rattling off the names of all her friends (Josephine, Jelena, Marie-Justine, etc.), and excitedly studying times tables and practicing how to write in cursive.
This quick transition, and the discovery that she could so successfully make that transition, seems to have emboldened Jasper more broadly too. She now insists on walking home from school unaccompanied by a parent, and she's excited to start exploring Cotignac on her own as well.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Cote d'Azur: The land of ice and snow
Well, if you were looking out our windows this past weekend, you might have thought that it was North Dakota out there. Snow on the ground. More snow falling from a gloomy sky. People hunched against an icy wind as they attempted to navigate the slippery streets.
Of course, if you look past the frigid wind and whipping snow, it's pretty darn prototypically and picturesquely Provencal. Underneath the dusting of snow are the pleasing planes of red-tiled rooftops joining each other at odd angles astride stucco homes painted pastel shades of yellow and orange and brown. The houses are packed into tight terraces that march up a steep hillside that stops suddenly against the spectacular backdrop of a huge undulating face of a curving cliff. The cliff face is punctuated by holes and folds in the eroding rock, and abandoned caves, and an ancient fortress of some sort. And at the very top of the cliff, standing like sentinels at the edge of the looming plateau, are two large towers, hundreds of years old, slowly crumbling, but still an imposing sight to see every time I look out our living room windows.
It's sunny today, actually, but it's still freezing cold. So it's a bit of a relief that a man – wearing a beret, by the way – arrived today to pump 1000 liters of heating oil from his truck into the holding tank for our furnace.
Actually, I'll count that as a significant personal achievement. Not only am I more confident that we can keep this drafty house warm until more appropriate weather returns, but I'm practically giddy with delight that I was able to actually arrange for this fuel delivery, entirely in French, without the whole event going off the rails in some cascade of erroneous assumptions and linguistic faux pas. Quincy and I had a similar moment of emotional uplift late last week, simply as a consequence of walking out of a local Allianz insurance office, having successfully employed our limited command of French to buy some "l'assurance scolaire" for Jasper that, apparently, schoolchildren in France all must have. It's this sort of thing – somehow accomplishing in French something that I've never actually had to in my native language nor was anticipating at all when we moved here just over a week ago – that makes me think that, yes, we will manage.
My favorite part of that whole insurance episode was when we paid for the policy. Credit card? No, not an option. And so I pulled some cash out of my wallet, while the insurance agent reached under her desk to retrieve some battered-looking little metal box from which she made change. A crummy little cash box. That cracked me up. I mean, here we are dealing with one of the largest financial companies in all of Europe, and it's like we're buying a couple of cucumbers at a roadside stand.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
the importance of First Impressions
So, while Mark was off having his not-so-homo-erotic odyssey, I was in Cotignac navigating my own little version of dante’s inferno. My main goal for that Sunday (a week ago now) was to do a little shopping so we would have some food basics for the house. Since Mark was still away, there was no choice but to take the kids along with me and hope that their jetlag state would not lead to some sort of embarrassing melt down. It turned out the embarrassment came in a form I would not have predicted.
On the short walk to the main square (it is about a 4 minute walk), Jasper started to complain of a tummy ache. I chalked it up to jetlag and assured her that it would be a short walk and that we would be home soon. We found the tiny, but surprisingly well-stocked little store. It is about 1/3 the size of Nadi’s (for those of you who are familiar with the little kitsilano store) and has everything from a nice selection of produce (very much unlike Nadi’s) to toothpaste to, of course, an amazing assortment of cheese. And of course, bottles of probably great wine starting from 3 euros. About halfway through my perusal of the store Jasper actually started moaning. Uh oh. Given that this is a kid who us usually pretty stoic about bodily discomfort I started to get a little more worried. I asked her if she needed a bathroom immediately for any reason and she said she didn’t think so. I hurried up and made a few more choices and got into line. I had just finished the transaction (feeling slightly smug that all had gone well, language-wise) when I looked up and saw Jasper making an unmistakable bodily gesture that she was about to vomit. I tried to shoo her out of the store before disaster hit, but unfortunately she vomited right smack in middle of the front entry way. It didn’t look like she was quite done, so I again tried to shoo her out of the store. Her next upchuck was outside, but was still right smack in front of the store, right between the lovely racks of fruits and vegetables.
I was torn. In several ways. A part of me wanted to be a good mother and comfort Jasper first and foremost. A part of me wanted to look shocked, run away and pretend I did not know these little vomiting foreigners. And a part of me wanted to make sure I handled this in a somehow appropriately French way. Since I have no idea what that would like, I just did my best. I got Jasper and Maddox settled outside by a tree, just in case Jasper needed to vomit more. And then I went back to the store to offer to help clean up. I was actually glad they let me help. I was also really glad that one of my few meagre phrases of French is “I am sorry.” I got a lot of practice saying that one that day. I am not sure what all they said in return, but they seemed understanding and not overly appalled. AND, I have since shopped in there and they did not run me out on a rail.
Sadly for her, Jasper is still certain that the pain au chocolat was to blame and she still isn’t willing to eat one. This works out well for Maddox who has been quite willing to do his part and eat Jasper’s for her.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
In which Mark returns a rental car in Marseilles and finds himself enduring a Homeric epic journey home to Cotignac
But no, my journey home from Marseilles was pretty much the opposite of erotic. And if it wasn't exactly Odysseyian, it was still unexpectedly long, circuitous, and fraught with frustrations. It began with a simple premise: After arriving in Cotignac with Quincy and the kids on Saturday, I would drive alone to Marseilles on Sunday to return our rental car, and then return myself home by train and bus. Train from Marseilles to Brignoles, I figured, and then the bus from Brignoles to Cotignac. Should be home sometime Sunday afternoon, I thought. But I thought wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong. Not only was I not home Sunday afternoon, I wasn't even home by Sunday evening. And instead of spending Sunday night relaxing with my family as we settled in for our second night in our new home in Cotignac, I instead spend an almost completely sleepness Sunday night alone in Aix-en-Provence, tossing and turning in a strange and costly bed, lamenting my lack of serviceable language skills, obsessively revisiting the false assumptions and wrong turns that had characterized this unexpectedly challenging day, paranoiaically imagining another surreal series of obstructions that might surely strand me again tomorrow, and flipping through the pages of my phrase book in rueful preparation for these possible privations. I felt sure I might need to know how to say, in French, "You mean there is no service on Monday either?" and "I've lost my contact lenses and cannot see," and "Please stop the bus because the coffee I drank this morning has affected my bowels in a way I had not anticipated," and – of course – "I am humiliated."
What transpired that grim Sunday to have delivered me to such a desperate and sleepless lonely night in Aix? I won't bore you with the details. Instead, I'll just say that I learned a few things firsthand that I really should have anticipated in advance, had I been better prepared and less willing to blithely trust my own ignorant optimism. I learned that, in France, even international car rental offices are liable to be closed for a two-hour lunch break between 12:00 and 14:00. I learned that, despite the physical presence of a passenger train station in Brignoles, there is no train that actually reaches there from Marseilles. I learned that there are a surprisingly large number of bus companies in France, each of which is decidedly regional and highly circumscribed in its scope of operations, and none of which seems to know or care very much about where the other companies drive their buses to, or when they do it. Also, I learned that bus services tend to be severely curtailed on Sundays, and that some buses – like the one to Cotignac – don't run at all that day.
I don't know why I thought it might be easier than it was. I mean, I've traveled by cross-country bus plenty of times before, even in countries where I speak the language well, and it's rarely transparent or straightforward or stress-free. I don't know why I thought it would be any simpler while jet-lagged and linguistically impaired. There was a time, back when I was a cringingly un-self-conscious 19-year-old reader of Kerouac and Ginsberg, when I indulged in a peculiar affection for the grim uncertainty of long-haul bus travel – the monotony, the delays, the missed connections, the overnight layovers in fluorescent-lit way-stations in some cold unsavory section of a city I didn't know, while some surly janitor mopped the floor around a snoring drunk sleeping two seats away from where I madly scribbled an endless longhand letter to a girl I'd dated a couple of times and who had already told me she wasn't interested in dating me anymore, and who certainly wasn't interested in my ten-page tedious sophomoric screeds about fluorescent way-stations, surly janitors and snoring drunks. Yikes. What the hell was I thinking?
So, anyway, I spent the night in Aix – a town that hadn't figured into my plans at all when the day started – feeling like a failure, and trying to sleep but failing at that too. I tossed and turned as the dark night crawled by. I unendingly rehashed the day's disappointments. I anxiously imagined ever more outlandish mistakes and humiliations that I might have to endure when morning finally arrived. As I lay there wide-awake all night, thinking that this was about as miserable as I've ever felt, I actually found myself indulging in the cliche'ed thought that maybe this whole hellish experience was all just a bad bad dream.
Now, somewhere in there, even if for just a moment, I'd like to think that I was able to take a step back and enjoy a little perspective on what I was being forced to endure: A night in a quaint hotel just off the famously lovely Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence. For many people, I guess, that's not exactly a living Hell.
Oh, and I guess I should mention this too: Once Monday morning rolled around, everything went just fine. I was back in Cotignac in time for lunch with Quincy and the kids.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Travel Daze
We had two nights in Amsterdam, in a Marriot hotel. So, it didn't exactly ooze old-world charm. But, it was pretty damn spacious and the price was right. For old-world charm we spent a day in "downtown" Amsterdam. It was freakin' cold and we were really not prepared for it (we had fleeces & rain jackets). But we really had to get the kids out of the hotel room. We would have driven each other crazy. Or at least I can assure you, they would have driven me crazy.
Since we weren't really dressed for the cold, and we didn't want to hear the kids complaining -- about the cold, & about walking -- we opted to take a canal cruise. I thought it would be perfect: It's a boat, it is covered and warm & we would get to see the beauty of Amsterdam. I quite loved it. The kids were squirrelly and kept asking when we could go back to the hotel room. Sheesh. Lord knows what they thought would be fun about *that*! Anyway, when they got too squirrelly, we played rock-paper-scissors. They loved it and giggled madly. Later that day, Jasper said that was the best part of the whole day. I guess we should have saved our euros and stayed in the hotel and played rock-paper-scissors all day. Screw it. I loved Amsterdam and was glad to have seen it. Squirrelly kids be damned.
One of my favorite memories from our time in Amsterdam was our first dinner there. We went down to the restaurant. We were all exhausted, starving and a little bit nauseated in that way that only jetlag can make you. We chose a few things from the menu that we thought the kids would eat. Maddox had been wiggling around in his chair and Mark and I were taking turns chastizing him and trying to get him to sit the way one is supposed to sit in a restaurant. And then we realized he was doing it! He was sitting still! Ha. He had fallen asleep. He slept straight through dinner. He was so cute slumped down in his chair with his little hoody pulled up. One look and any residual irritation evaporates at the site of the curve of his back. Sweet.